Campaigns Homestake mine Mine transfer progresses slowly
Mine transfer progresses slowly
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Mine transfer progresses slowly
?Taking this mine over isn?t a small task,? Snyder said.
Still, Snyder is working to complete the deal before Jan. 1.
Homestake owner Barrick Gold Corp. of Toronto has agreed to donate the giant mine, which is closed, for use as an underground research laboratory.
State officials originally predicted the property transfer would be complete by mid-month. Land surveys and deeds for the underground mine and about 165 surface acres are complete, Snyder said, but reviewing those documents has been time consuming.
Other details ? including such items as transfer of keys to buildings and making snow-removal plans ? also are taking more time than expected.
Snyder plans to move the state Science and Technology Authority office from Rapid City to a Homestake building in Lead in January. ?But first, we?ll have to do some remodeling,? he said.
The Homestake gold mine and the Henderson molybdenum mine in Colorado are the National Science Foundation?s two finalist sites for a proposed national Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, or DUSEL.
Henderson is a working mine, so, unlike Homestake, it is already accessible. Homestake is closed, but it?s 8,000 feet deep. The DUSEL proposed for Homestake?s 7,400-foot level would be the deepest lab in the world. Deep mines shield sensitive experiments from cosmic radiation.
Opening a national laboratory is a long process that requires approve from the NSF, the White House and Congress. A DUSEL might not be ready for experiments until 2012 or later.
Gov. Mike Rounds has a faster plan. He hopes to attract experiments to a state-owned ?interim DUSEL? at the 4,850-foot level at Homestake. Experiments at the interim lab could begin as soon as 2007.
Rounds and other Homestake advocates, including physicists working with the state, say the interim lab could help persuade the NSF that Homestake is the best location for DUSEL proper.
Snyder said Wednesday that since October, when the Legislature approved the governor?s plan, the science authority had received more than 50 ?letters of interest? about the interim lab. Those letters represent more than 70 universities and laboratories in six countries, Snyder said. He called the response ?pretty phenomenal.?
In October, the Legislature also approved $19.9 million to help re-open Homestake and make it ready for scientists. That money will pay for an additional 9.3 ?full-time equivalent? employees that the state science authority hopes to hire in the coming year.
The first new employee will be a project engineer, Snyder said. He hopes to fill the position in January.
Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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"Defenders of the Black Hills is a group of volunteers without racial or tribal boundaries whose mission is to preserve, protect, and restore the environment of the 1851 and 1868 Treaty Territories, Treaties made between the United States and the Great Sioux Nation."
Speaking about radioactive fallout, the late President John F. Kennedy said,
"Even then, the number of children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs might seem statistically small to some, in comparison with natural health hazards. But this is not a natural health hazard and it is not a statistical issue. The loss of even one human life, or the malformation of even one baby who may be born long after we are gone, should be of concern to us all. Our children and grandchildren are not merely statistics toward which we can be indifferent."
July 26, 1963 upon signing the ban on above ground nuclear tests
