Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and other state officials broke ground on the $31 million project Tuesday at the 15-acre Taylorsville site - nearly 20 years after the first request for a new public health laboratory was made to the Legislature.

"This has been a long time coming," said David Sundwall, executive director of the Utah Department of Health. "I asked [the governor] to meet with us to discuss this project and thanks to his strong support, here we are today."

Built in 1972, the three-story, 33,000-square-foot structure on the University of Utah campus opened when Utah's population was 800,000, said Patrick Luedtke, director of public health laboratories. Now, the growing state has nearly 2.4 million residents, with about 55,000 babies joining the masses each year.

Once completed, the Unified State Lab (USL) will feature negative air pressure lab spaces and dedicated biosafety facilities for testing potentially dangerous agents like avian influenza, anthrax and the SARS virus.