The idea to build a road connecting St. Patrick Street to St. Joseph Street on the campus of South Dakota School of Mines & Technology originated more than four years ago and might come to fruition this year, thanks to an appropriations bill that was recently signed by President Bush.

The bill, which was part of a consolidated appropriations funding package, was a combination of 11 of the 12 appropriations bills that fund government operations and agencies for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2008.

The bill includes $382,000 for a connector road that will connect St. Patrick and St. Joseph streets on the west end of the campus above the football field, providing another entrance point to campus, access to the Black Hills Business Development Center, and additional parking areas.

According to the School of Mines, besides providing better access to laboratory space and the Black Hills Business Development Center, having another entrance point to campus is also valuable for emergency access and to improve traffic flow during high-volume events held on campus, such as the state track meet.

Tim Henderson, the school's vice president of business and administration, said the project was a 2012 project, which meant that any funding the school had collected had to be combined with federal funding.

The school currently has $1.4 million on hand for the project, but it is a $2.5 million project, and the federal funding wasn't there until now, Henderson said. Even with the funding from the appropriations bill, the state still must authorize the project, which could happen this legislative session so they can begin construction, he said.

The project will be completed in two phases, he said. "Work could start this summer."

The other projects that the School of Mines received funding for through the omnibus appropriations bill was $282,000 for the Black Hills Nanoscale Minerals Institute, called BH-NMI, and support language for the expansion science, technology and engineering exchanges with Mongolia. The School of Mines currently has a memorandum of understanding with the Mongolian Technical University in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The agreement has served to promote collaboration among faculty and students.

The purpose of the proposed institute is to assist companies with engineering and manufacturing of products and processes that use nanoscale minerals.

The school reported that this has significance to the local and state economy because Rapid City is near the center of high-quality, vast deposits of minerals that have the potential for such development - namely montmorillonite (commonly known as bentonite) and mica. The institute would build upon ongoing state and local investments at the School of Mines in the Center for Accelerated Applications at the Nanoscale, the Composites and Polymer Engineering Laboratory and major analytical instrumentation.

The presidential signature on the omnibus appropriations bill completes the appropriations process for the federal fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. The school reported that the first and only stand-alone appropriations bill passed and signed earlier, the Department of Defense Appropriations bill, benefited School of Mines researchers by enabling them to work on projects of direct benefit to the armed services.

The appropriations bill had the support of South Dakota's congressional delegation, and School of Mines President Charles Ruch applauded the move.

"The delegation's continued support allows us to work to benefit the state, region and nation through collaborative education and economic-development efforts," he said in a prepared statement.

Contact Kayla Gahagan at 394-8410 or Kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com