Dead Animal House

More than 20,000 pounds of long-dead rodents and other small critters were exhumed from College-owned Rennie Farm last fall. The Hanover Center location served as a graveyard for mammals—used in lab experiments and potentially contaminated with small amounts of radioactive chemicals—in the 1960s and 1970s. Michael Blayney, Dartmouth's director of environmental health and safety, says the project is all about "lessening our historical environmental impact." Restoring the 230-acre property is "the right thing to do," he says, even though tests indicate no significant biohazards at the site. The reported $1- to $2-million cleanup is not unlike what other schools have had to deal with as scientific methodology and environmental awareness evolve. Before incineration became common, it was accepted practice to dispose of lab-experiment animals by burying them in plastic bags, says Blayney. The voluntary cleanup at Rennie "removed a lot of liability" from the College, he adds.