The new Environmental Laboratory will be a mecca for the best and brightest at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center to protect the nation at home and abroad, officials said as ground was broken this morning.

Some of the 300 engineers, scientists, technicians and administrative staff who will work in the $15.9 million facility were joined at the 700-acre facility on Halls Ferry Road by a slew of senior staff and public officials.

“We are professionals, we are innovators, we are experts, we are national and international problem-solvers,” said Dr. Beth Fleming, director of ERDC’s Environmental Laboratory. “These are words that describe ERDC and the environmental laboratory.”

To be built by Edwards-based First-Yates, the two-story, 85,000-square-foot building will stand just south of existing multiple-story ERDC Geotechnical and Structures Headquarters Building on ERDC’s perimeter on Porters Chapel Road. It is part of several other large-scale improvements at ERDC, including a cutting-edge supercomputer and upgrades around the ERDC Information Technology lab. The environmental lab will incorporate the latest in green technology.

Mayor Paul Winfield, on hand beside U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, referred to his mother, Linda, a 27-year ERDC employee, before joining 10 others in turning dirt.

“I feel like I’m an extension of the environmental lab family,” Winfield said.

Wicker said ERDC and the new lab “amounts to Mississippi’s best-kept secret.”

“My hat goes off to those people who came before us in 1929 after the great flood,” Wicker said, adding the facility will be a “place of education and a job engine” for the state’s top-flight engineering talent.

Completion of the new building, expected in October 2010, will put all of ERDC’s environmental lab employees under one roof for the first time. Currently, they are spread throughout the installation.

“We’ve gotten the hand-me-downs for a long time, but now we’re going to have our own building,” Fleming said in closing remarks.

ERDC is one of Vicksburg’s largest employers, with about 1,663 federal employees, contractors, students and temporary staff on an annual payroll of $77.3 million.

It was created in 1928, following the Mississippi River flooding in 1927, with the initial purpose of designing systems to manage the river and tributaries for navigation and flood control. In the years since, several additional labs covering other engineering areas have been created.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com