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June 30,2007

Awaiting NSF decision, state gets
jump on Homestake

Firm poised to enter mine

By Bill Harlan, Journal staff

LEAD -- Technicians are poised to re-enter the Homestake gold mine, but so far the National Science Foundation has not announced whether the mine will be the preferred site for a national underground laboratory.

The NSF decision is expected any day.

The Homestake proposal is competing with proposals from Colorado, Washington and Minnesota. The winning site gets up to $15 million over the next three years to develop a detailed science and engineering plan for a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory.

The South Dakota plan includes reopening Homestake, which has been slowly filling with water since it was closed in 2003.

Scientists in a nationwide consortium, working with the state science authority, hope to begin pumping water out the mine by September. Then they'll establish an "interim lab" 4,850 feet underground, well in advance of the national lab 7,400 feet underground.

To make that plan work, the science authority has to proceed as if the National Science Foundation had chosen Homestake.

For example, a new elevator compartment - a "cage" in mine parlance - already has been certified for re-entry into the Ross Shaft, one of two shafts that descend 4,850 feet into the mine.

Dynatec Mining Corp., the company chosen to re-enter the mine, also is performing a last-minute safety procedure on the thick cable that lowers the cage into the shaft, changing the section of cable that connects to the cage.

"Dynatec is instituting the most current engineering and safety standards for this type of work," science authority director Dave Snyder said in a written statement.

On Friday, devices called "controllers" for the powerful electric pumps that will remove water from the mine arrived in Lead.

Dynatec already has hired 13 specialists for the re-entry, including a project engineer, and 10 more positions are yet to be filled.

An NSF decision on the lab first was expected in April, then it was delayed. A committee of scientists reviewed 250-page proposals from all four sites, plus reams of other materials and notes from visits to all four sites.

NSF staff and NSF attorneys also are working on the decision.

If the NSF chooses another site, work at Homestake likely would stop.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or at bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com