Fate of Oconee County’s Campbell Conservation Research Center in Hands of Conference Committee

A joint Congressional House-Senate Conference Committee is expected to report out early this week its version of the appropriations bill that funds Agricultural Research Service facilities such as the outside Watkinsville.

The bill is likely to seal the fate of the Center and determine the procedures for disposing of the property once ARS brings the operation at the Watkinsville research facility to a close.

The Conference Committee will have to resolve differences in the House and Senate versions of a bill to fund agriculture programs in the current fiscal year. The bill the Committee reports out will have to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by President Barack Obama.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in which ARS is located, currently is being funded by the second of two continuing resolutions, which will expire on Nov. 18–this Friday.

Given that neither the House nor the Senate versions of the bill specify that the Campbell Center remain open, the issue now seems to be when the doors will be closed and what happens to the land.

Sandy Miller Hays, director of the information office of the ARS in Beltsville, Md., told me on Tuesday of last week that the future of the Campbell Center remains undecided until Congress has acted, but she did say that at 2 p.m. on Dec. 5 ARS will open buy-out and early retirement options to eligible employees.

For details, go to Oconee County Observations.