December 18, 2002

Electronic newsroom

02-87

Brookhaven Lab Added Over $31 Million to Long Island Economy in 2002

UPTON, NY - Brookhaven National Laboratory purchased more than $31 million worth of supplies and services from Long Island businesses in fiscal year 2002, a period from October 1, 2001 to September 30, 2002.

In addition to Brookhaven’s buying goods and services from Long Island vendors, most of the Laboratory’s approximately 2,900 employees live in Suffolk County and do most of their shopping on Long Island. All told, employee salaries, wages and fringe benefits account for about 58 percent, or almost $269 million, of the Lab’s $463 million budget.

Owned and primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Laboratory creates and operates major facilities available to university, industrial and government personnel for basic and applied research in the physical, biomedical and environmental sciences, and in energy technologies.

In fiscal year 2002, Brookhaven made 4,260 purchases on Long Island. Out of those, 3,735 orders totaling $25.5 million were placed in Suffolk County, and 525 amounting to $5.6 million were made in Nassau County.

Mary-Faith Healey, manager of Brookhaven’s Procurement and Property Management Division, which handles purchasing for the Laboratory, said, “We are glad that we can help to support local businesses. We hope Brookhaven Lab’s contribution to the local economy will help to soften the impact of the current recession.”

Construction of new buildings, repair of the Laboratory’s aging infrastructure, and environmental cleanup accounted for a large part of the local expenditures in fiscal year 2002. For example, Frendolph Construction Corporation of West Babylon, the top vendor for fiscal year 2002, was paid over $4 million to work on a number of projects, including Brookhaven’s new Booster Applications Facility, where scientists will perform research to determine the effects of radiation on humans in space. Also, Frendolph is building two new storage facilities, each about 20,000 square feet, on the Laboratory site, and has renovated several older laboratories and offices. The average age of the Laboratory’s 378 buildings on its 5,300-acre site is slightly over 40 years old, and over 100 buildings date back to World War II or earlier.

The number two vendor, Hinck Electrical Contractors of Islip Terrace, received almost $1.9 million for upgrades to the electrical distribution system around Brookhaven’s site. Old oil-filled switches were eliminated, and cabling, some of which was more than 50 years old, was replaced for more reliable electrical power around the Lab site.

Bensin Contracting, Inc., of Holtsville, the number three vendor, was paid over $1.3 million for several projects, including installing groundwater treatment systems. One such system is an ion-exchange filtration technology that will be used in a pilot program to clean up strontium-90. Also, a treatment plant at the Laboratory’s western south boundary has been installed to clean up volatile organic chemicals.