Homestake Project Important for South Dakota, by Gov. Dennis Daugaard:

Statement

The Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake holds great promise for education, technology and research in South Dakota. While the path to realizing these goals has not been easy, we do have a clear plan for moving forward. A review of recent events will make the plan easier to understand.

In 2007, South Dakota reopened the Homestake Mine for basic physics and early science, studying the most basic building blocks of all matter. We also began refurbishing and improving Homestake's infrastructure. As we reopened the former gold mine, scientists worked with the National Science Foundation (NSF) on a long-term goal: converting Homestake into a national Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, or DUSEL.

In December 2010, the National Science Board, which governs the National Science Foundation, decided that the cost and scope of DUSEL were inconsistent with the foundation's overall mission. Despite that setback, we received some good news. The Department of Energy (DOE), which manages all national laboratories in the United States, agreed to study how it might take over the project. We soon received more good news. The National Science Foundation approved $4 million to continue operating the Sanford Lab through September 2011, and the DOE included $15 million in its proposed budget for fiscal 2012 to run Sanford Lab for another year.

Currently, a committee of experts appointed by the DOE is assessing plans to locate three major physics experiments at the Sanford Lab. One of these -- the Long-Baseline Neutrino experiment -- would partner the Sanford Lab with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. Another DOE experiment would search for a rare form of radioactive decay, and a third
experiment would intensify the search for a mysterious substance called "dark matter." The DOE assessment committee's report is due at the end of May.

We also have a number of reasons to be optimistic about the long-term future of the Sanford Lab. For example, although the National Science Foundation will not manage the lab, that agency remains interested in funding experiments at the Sanford Lab. In simple terms, the NSF does not
want to be a "landlord" but is willing to be a "tenant." The project also has received letters of support from dozens of major research universities and national laboratories. The science community nationwide strongly supports the research at Homestake.

Here in South Dakota, we're doing everything we can to keep the project on track. The staff at the Sanford Underground Laboratory continues to prepare the 4,850-foot level in Homestake for the first major physics experiments. A neutrino experiment will begin making ultra-pure copper underground this month (May). Another experiment, the LUX dark-matter detector, could
produce results as soon as 2012.

Meanwhile, physicist Kevin Lesko of the University of California at Berkeley and geologist Bill Roggenthen of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology are leading a team of scientists and engineers who are tailoring the original plans for DUSEL to meet the new requirements of the DOE.

We also are continuing to work with all three members of our congressional delegation, and with delegations from California and Illinois, to communicate the importance DUSEL research to the United States and the world. Scientists at underground laboratories in Japan, Canada, Italy and, most recently, China are working on research that could soon yield transformational discoveries about the fundamental nature of our universe. Even at a time when our federal government needs to cut back, we should not allow the rest of the world to move ahead of the United States in this important research. Sanford Underground Laboratory is positioned to become a world leader in that field. While we don't know what the DOE will ultimately decide to do, I can assure you South Dakota is doing everything possible to make this a reality.

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