A profound effect: Lab could change the way Lead thinks about itself

By Bill Harlan, Rapid City Journal Staff
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LEAD - Almost six years ago, when University of Pennsylvania physicist Ken Lande first suggested converting the Homestake gold mine in Lead into an underground laboratory, the proposal looked like it might save a town.

On Sept 11, 2000, Homestake Mining Co. announced it would close its giant gold mine by the end of the following year. The mine was Lead's economic bedrock for 125 years, and the town took the news hard.

Lande knew the mine well. He had worked for three decades on a neutrino detector devised and built by his colleague, Ray Davis and installed 4,850 feet underground at Homestake.

Lande and Davis made important discoveries about the neutrino - a subatomic particle produced in stars. By 2000, however, the "neutrino tank," as miners called it, was past its prime. New experiments in underground labs in Canada, Italy and Japan were making science headlines.

When Homestake announced the mine closure, Lande put two and two together. Homestake was 8,000 feet deep, and it had an infrastructure that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to replicate. Homestake was the perfect hole in the ground for the world's deepest, roomiest, most sophisticated underground laboratory.

Physicists loved the idea. Homestake was enthusiastic. The town of Lead was euphoric.

"At that point, we thought this would be a turn-key operation," Lead Mayor Tom Nelson said last week.

Under that scenario, one day, Homestake would close as a mine, and the next day, it would open as a national laboratory. Miners would work immediately, drilling and blasting out caverns for experiments, keeping the hoists running and performing hundreds of other tasks necessary to support a very deep hole in the ground.

National laboratories such as Fermilab near Chicago, Brookhaven in New York and Lawrence Berkeley in California employ hundreds of people and attract experiments worth hundreds of millions of dollars - facts not lost on economic-development officials throughout South Dakota.

Lead was saved.

A couple of problems

Then came the glitches.

Barrick Gold Corp. of Toronto bought Homestake Mining Co., and the Canadian company had concerns about liability.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives rejected a legislative remedy engineered by South Dakotan Tom Daschle, who was then Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate.

In 2003, Barrick Gold and Homestake turned off the underground pumps and sealed main shafts. The mine began filling with water.

Still, the proposal had legs, thanks to Barrick, a Sioux Falls philanthropist, a team of scientists from throughout the nation and elected officials from throughout South Dakota - including Gov. Mike Rounds

Now, Homestake is among four sites seeking National Science Foundation approval as the preferred site for a national underground laboratory. Gone, however, are the days when Lead residents thought of the lab as a "turn-key" fix for the town's economy.

Slow, uncertain process

If, in the next few weeks, the National Science Foundation does pick Homestake as its preferred lab site, the scientists who propose the lab will get up to $15 million over the next three years to develop a more detailed plan for a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory.

As the DUSEL plan develops, with help from the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, the state of South Dakota will begin work on a smaller interim lab 4,850 feet underground, at the same level as the old Davis experiment.

The number of jobs in the first two or three years, therefore, likely would be in the dozens.

The number of jobs would increase sharply in fiscal 2009 - assuming the White House and Congress agree to spend the $300 million or so it will take to get a DUSEL up and running. "That's a huge project," state science authority director Dave Snyder said. "It takes a lot of people."

University of Minnesota physicist Marvin Marshak, who authored a competing proposal, says if Homestake were picked, 50 or so permanent staff could run a fairly large laboratory. "The big economic development is in construction and installation," Marshak said.

California physicist Kevin Lesko, of the University of California at Berkeley, who is leading the Homestake science collaboration, predicts a bigger permanent staff.

The lab could employ hundreds of workers if Homestake attracts big experiments, Lesko said. He envisions a lab similar to the underground laboratory at Gran Sasso, Italy, which has a large surface campus with offices, classrooms and technical-support building.

The South Dakota Science and Technology Authority already is planning for an extensive visitor and education center, which would attract tourists and students.

But all that development would come slowly, and windfalls would be unlikely. "If people think this is going to bring an extra 2,000 or 3,000 people here, it's not," Snyder said.

And everyone associated with the DUSEL process warns that a number of factors could stall the project - including rejection by the White House or Congress. In the 1980s, ground had been broken in Texas for the Superconducting Supercollider when the project was canceled.

No golden goose

That uncertainty has tempered local euphoria.

"I keep saying to everyone, don't count on it," Trish Fahey said, co-owner of a new Real Estate Group office in Lead.

"We're not waiting for the goose to lay the golden egg," said Sheila Alexopoulos, who in December, with partner Leslie Christiansen, opened the Main Street Bistro in Lead.

Still, when a team from the National Science Foundation visited Homestake in March, they reserved the entire Bistro for dinner. "They had a great time," Alexopoulos said.

Christiansen said the scientists were especially interested in a 1942 newspaper story, posted on the wall, reporting how Christiansen's mother was the first woman to get a scholarship from the South Dakota School of Mines. She later worked on the Manhattan Project.

The Bistro is across the street from the Lead Opera House - a historic theater midway through a $7 million renovation - and the Blue Dog Framers & Studio Gallery. The Blue Cactus Bar is next door. Fahey and Alexopoulos hope those businesses and others will help grow an arts and entertainment community here.

Alexopoulos said much of her business comes from Rapid City, and Fahey's real-estate customers are coming from throughout the nation, attracted to a town with cheap real estate next to hiking, skiing and a national forest.

Marshak, the physicist who created the Soudan Underground Laboratory in an old mine in northern Minnesota, offered a reminder to Lead residents. The purpose of the underground lab is scientific research, he said, which also can affect a local culture.

"People have gotten too hung up on economic development," Marshak said. "It's not about that, especially at Homestake. It's about the future. It's about the relative depopulation of rural America, especially in the northern tier states and even more critically in western South Dakota."

An underground laboratory, Marshak said, whether it employs 50 or 500 people, can change the way a community thinks about itself.

"It gives people a reason to come there and to stay," he said.

Snyder, who retired to Lead after a successful career in agribusiness, took the job at the science authority because he thinks a lab could enrich an area he loves. Like Marshak, he urged people in Lead, the Northern Hills and the state to think beyond short-term numbers.

"Our vision is more long term," he said. "This is a 30- to 50-year project."

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