Despite ties to the Carnegie Museums and world-class research going back decades, the Powdermill Nature Reserve is off the radar for many Pittsburghers. That could change as the quiet spot goes through a public transformation, reinventing itself and perhaps the way science and the environment are taught in the region.

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Joe Stavish, assistant coordinator of education at Powdermill Nature Reserve in Rector, takes a close look at a species caught in a stream behind the Reserve as Tyler Hillman, left, 12, looks on. Click photo for larger image.

The scientific outpost for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is undergoing a cutting-edge, $3.5 million expansion that centers on green building and environmental protection. When it's done this time next year, its days of being a little-known jewel of Westmoreland County should be over.

The focus on eco-friendly building and education comes at the same time that Powdermill's parent is finishing its own expansion of its Dinosaur Hall in Oakland, to display the world's third-largest dinosaur fossil collection. The new hall also will carry messages on the environment -- and evolution -- thereby clasping hands with its rural nature center.

Pittsburgh, which is already becoming a worldwide leader in green building -- boasting the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and upcoming office and housing developments by PNC and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust -- will be staking a place as a leader in eco-friendly education, too.

The plan is for Powdermill to be taking the lead.

"We call it the nature center of the future, centered on environmental sustainability," Powdermill's director, David A. Smith, said recently.

Creating a great indoors

Powdermill's outdoor spaces are pristine and beautiful and a model of the Pennsylvania outdoors. Centering on Powdermill Run creek, they are filled with protected forests, ponds, streams and animals. But step indoors and the beauty quickly fades away.

The center's facilities, tucked along quiet Route 381 in Rector, 60 miles east of Downtown Pittsburgh in the Laurel Highlands, are rustic and drab. The main building has only a small exhibition space filled with old-fashioned, stuffed wildlife and cramped offices. The bathrooms are tiny and open to the outside, forcing visiting students to queue up in bad weather. Next-door, the classroom space is dark and cold.

The new facilities should make a world of difference. They will include new gallery spaces, butterfly and herb gardens, an outdoor classroom, a Solar Decathlon house by Pittsburgh college students and green-friendly restrooms and heating-cooling systems.

The center also will continue its decades-long research on birds and other native animals.

Wastewater created by expanded activities at the center will be treated by a "marsh machine," which filters waste through a system of plants, gravel and pipes, making it reusable for plants and animals. The processed water will flow past an exhibit gallery, showing visitors the practical uses of the process.

Building materials and construction practices for the new Powdermill buildings will follow green building rules. The center already has a permeable, grass-covered parking lot that prevents runoff into nearby streams (one of the worst causes of pollution in rural areas).

Building green in a rural area such as this is no easy trick. There are few sewer lines to tap into, and building new roads and buildings creates runoff into streams, killing plants and wildlife.

The expansion, designed by Pfaffmann + Associates, will be in step with nearby conservation work by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and the Loyalhanna Watershed Association. When the new Powdermill facilities open next fall, visitors not only will learn about preserving the environment but also will be walking through a permanent exhibit on eco-friendly building itself.

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Billy Deemer, 8, of Turtle Creek and other students collect specimens in the stream behind Powdermill Nature Reserve. The students participate in the "Currents Connecting Cultures" distance-learning program. Click photo for larger image.

Powdermill will be "a centerpiece of all that great protection work that's been done" in the area, said Scott D. Izzo of the R.K. Mellon Foundation, which granted the project $3 million. "Thus it becomes a great vehicle for educational programming and public visitation for people to learn about some of these kinds of initiatives."

"Part of stewarding your environment is trying to figure out what you do as an individual to take care of what is around you, and I think that's a great thing about what Dave and his group at Powdermill are trying to do," said Bill DeWalt, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History director.

Powdermill is "engaged in the teaching of [the environment]. You find a lot of green buildings -- Pittsburgh is known for green buildings -- but you go into these green buildings and no one ever explains to you why they are green. What is it about them that makes them constructed in a way that is better for the environment?"

Bird watchers

Powdermill was established as the biological field station for the Carnegie natural history museum in 1956, after the Richard King Mellon and Alan M. Scaife families donated 1,160 acres of land in the Ligonier Valley. It now totals about 2,200 acres.

The center's best-known research -- bird-banding -- began five years later. More than a half-million birds have been caught, charted and banded since 1961, in the nation's longest continuing bird-banding operation.

Powdermill is coordinating (with thousands of volunteers statewide) a five-year study of birds across the state called the 2nd Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas project. The atlas will provide data on where birds are moving and in what numbers and could have an impact on conservation efforts.

Researchers also listen to recordings of birds flying overhead at night. "Bioacoustical monitoring" lets them follow species from remote parts of Canada that would be difficult to track otherwise.

Such research will continue, as will the center's current public education programs for children, adults and educators. In addition to the $3.5 million in construction, Powdermill is trying to raise $4 million in endowment money to fund staffing and research.

It is the first capital campaign in the center's 50-year history, and Carnegie Museums president David Hillenbrand -- who has been pushing education and museum cooperation during his first year in office -- is likely to push it when announcing a systemwide capital campaign later this month.

Two new Powdermill researchers are being funded with $1 million grants from the Heinz Endowments. The grants are about more than just strengthening the center's research, said Caren Glotfelty, the Endowments' environment program director.

"It's a really nice way to strengthen the connection between the two institutions. Powdermill is the field station of the Carnegie natural history museum, but in recent years before Bill DeWalt's time those ties were weakening a bit."

Out of a rut

There is a reason the center has a low profile outside rural Westmoreland County: DeWalt said previous museum officials in both Powdermill and Oakland got into the rut of using it as a private research outpost, without much public interplay. He took over directorship of the facility after taking the Natural History job in 2001.

To turn it around, he tapped Smith, a former commercial real estate executive with a doctorate in economics and a board member of both Magee-Womens Health Corp. and UPMC, to become director in 2003, and he seems to have been the right fit for a center going through a major transition. Smith has "really done a fabulous job," DeWalt said. "His combination of gregariousness, enthusiasm and connections has been just absolutely wonderful."

The expanded facilities are due to open next fall. The Oakland museum will open its new Dinosaur Hall at about the same time, which DeWalt said will be threaded with messages on protecting the environment, evolution and humanity's role in making animals extinct -- themes that will pulse at Powdermill, too.

"The whole ecological dimension is not all that well represented here at the museum," he said. "We certainly talk about biological diversity and will do more in the future, but Powdermill is alive."

Map key

When the new Powdermill facilities open next fall, visitors not only will learn about preserving the environment but also will be walking through a permanent exhibit on eco-friendly building itself.
1 Lobby/reception area	12 Medium classroom
2 Special exhibits gallery	13 Large classroom
3 Permanent exhibit space	14 Outdoor amphitheater
4 Restrooms	15 Outdoor classroom/courtyard
5 Mud room	16 Herb garden
6 Marsh Machine: wastewater treatment and support	17 Picnic lawn
7 Education center	18 Butterfly garden
8 GIS lab	19 Field equipment
9 Administrative offices	20 Deck
10 Library and conference center	21 Exhibit hallway
11 Kitchen

If you go: Powdermill Nature Reserve

The Powdermill Nature Reserve is on Route 381 in Rector, off the Donegal exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It is about an hour's drive from Pittsburgh.

From November through March, Nimick Nature Center is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and on Sundays during public programs. Two nature trails are open every day from dawn to dusk.

The center will hold Sunday educational programs at 2 p.m. this winter, but there's no schedule yet. Other programs for children, adults and educators also are offered.

Information, including directions: 724-593-6105 or www.powdermill.org.