The December 2003 Cascade Checkerboard News included an article about the proposal for siting the National Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (NUSEL) under Cashmere Mountain near Leavenworth. On behalf of the University of Washington NUSEL proposing group, I offer this additional information.
One of the important considerations in the national search that led to selection of Cashmere Mt. as a potential NUSEL site was minimizing environmental impact. The geographic requirement for NUSEL - the possibility of achieving 7400 feet of peak cover with short tunneling paths - is extreme. Very few candidate sites exist within the US. All of those identified to date involve public lands. Cashmere Mt. was not only the most suitable site (by a large margin) geologically, but also involved the least impact to natural areas.
We want to explain why this site was chosen, and to relate the site's characteristics to the discussion in the Checkerboard News:
1) CCN: "There are serious concerns about the proposal's impacts to roadless areas..."
The surface opening to the laboratory, known as the portal, will not be in a roadless area. The portal is reached by crossing the bridge at Bridge Creek, then traveling 0.8 km upstream on an existing forest service road. The bridge was built for large equipment (logging towers) and is rated at 40 tons. Thus no new roads or river crossings are required for NUSEL. There is a parking area (serving the group camp located nearby) at the portal. The road and parking area are in current use by recreationalists. We do not intend to extend the road or use the parking area after construction.
We support efforts to restore or rehabilitate areas on the north slopes of Cashmere Mountain that have been previously used as logging roads. We have no intention of reopening any closed roads.
2) CCN: "Boring and construction would require industrial staging areas in the valley."
While we will need a staging area in front of the portal site, we will make every effort to minimize the construction footprint. The area in question was, until recently, in private hands. Much of it was cleared -- it appears to us that a previous owner clearcut all of the larger trees except for those immediately bordering Icicle Creek. The parking area mention before is one of the cleared areas. We believe that area would be sufficient for our staging area.
The construction would be done by a tunnel boring machine, a technology popular for city tunneling because it minimizes noise and powder pollution. We will ask the contractor to assemble the TBM underground, in an initial opening we will excavate, and to take other steps to minimize the surface footprint.
The Checkerboard News did not mention another impact, our desire to do a test coring of the tunnel path. This also will not require the use of any new roads. A coring rig will be taken by helicopter to a suitable site on the flank of Cashmere Mt. The purpose of the test core is to determine directly the rock quality, temperature, and porosity deep underground. The entire staging area for this operation would be about 30 feet across. When finished - the coring stage is brief - there will be no visible evidence of the investigation. The reason for the coring is to make sure the deep rock is suitable. If it were found to be geologically unsuitable, NUSEL plans would be abandoned. Clearly it is in everyone's interest to make this determination.
3) CCN: "360,000 cubic meters of waste material... would be hauled down Icicle Creek Road in truck-trailers ... noise, dust, and diesel fumes would impact the valley."
Most of the crushed rock produced by the TBM must be trucked from the area. (Some is needed for the road beds inside our tunnels.) Although our work is still in a preliminary stage, we estimate an average of 40 trucks per day for 2.5 years. A great deal can be done to minimize and mitigate the impact of the hauling. Steps include fully covered loads, wheel washes, caravanning trucks to provide quiet spaces, and running trucks only during normal working hours. If possible we would like to avoid trucking on the busy summer and fall weekends. While we do not want to underestimate this impact, we also hope others can place this impact in perspective and work with us on mitigation measures. Icicle Creek Road currently handles 400,000 vehicles per year -- this number has been increasing rapidly because of recreational use. Our trucks will increase traffic flow an average of 3% over the 2.5 years of construction. Trucks have a larger impact than cars or RVs, but skilled drivers and modern, low-emission vehicles will make a difference. The University of Washington has conducted many large construction efforts responsibly, with great sensitivity to both public concerns and the environment.
Once the laboratory is operating, it will be designed to be one of the cleanest areas on earth - we go below ground to escape cosmic rays, then build cleanrooms devoid of dust, smoke, or any other contaminants. For this reason, when the lab is finished, we will be the strongest advocates for cleaner air in the Icicle Creek valley.
Because of our concern for cleanliness, no internal combustion engines will be allowed inside the portals. We also will discourage cars near the portal intakes: we will transport scientists, technicians, and others to the underground laboratory by electric vehicles. We have suggested to Leavenworth environmentalists that NUSEL would provide an opportunity to institute a nonpolluting public transportation system along Icicle Creek Road, in cooperation with our system.
If one takes the long view, NUSEL could help provide the resources and motivation for reducing the traffic, parking, and air quality problems that currently exist.
4) CCN: "Icicle Creek... used for fish and irrigation, that could be a problem. And how will waste water be disposed of?"
We have had several meetings with the Department of Ecology about water quality and use issues. The University of Washington will do nothing that will harm fish or effect irrigation uses of Icicle Creek water.
5) CCN: "Substantial cutting and filling could be required to "improve" the Icicle Creek Road for heavy truck traffic and giant drilling equipment."
We understand that there are plans to renovate the road above the 4-mile point, regardless of NUSEL. If this renovation were done as part of the NUSEL proposal, NUSEL would provide funding and encourage interested parties to work together on planning and to mitigate impacts. Our project does not require widening or straightening the road: we do not know if others have plans that require such work, however. We do require that the road surface be upgraded, because the current surface is old and not of a standard that would hold up under trucking. Our proposal would be to improve the road before construction, and to repair any road damage after construction. Underground electrical cable and fiber optics would be installed under the roadway in the initial renovation.
We know there is a history where a previous road improvement harmed roadside climbing areas. For this reason we have contacted recreationalists to ask them to help us avoid such problems in our plans. We intend to have the recreational community at the table with the County, the USFS, and us when plans are made.
6) CCN: "When finished, there would be parking, traffic, ventilation shafts, and power."
We will strongly discourage private autos at the site for the air-quality reasons mentioned above. The only planned parking would be just inside the portal, for deliveries or emergencies. Thus we currently see no need for surface parking. The existing recreational parking area is in use, however, and we would not interfere with that future use.
After construction, our impact on existing traffic would be minimal, clearly much less than 1%. Again, we hope the County will work with us to implement a public transportation system to reduce all traffic in the valley, as cleaner air will help NUSEL.
There will be no ventilation shafts constructed for the laboratory or tunnels. Air is brought in through the tunnel portals. Because we recirculate and rescrub the air, replacing only 20% per circulation, and because no internal combustion engines are allowed underground, our ventilation requirements are unusually modest.
We have proposed undergrounding the 12 kV power line and fiber optics cable that will be brought to the portal. The motivations are greater reliability and aesthetics. At the time this power is put underground, others along the road may have an opportunity to move their overhead lines underground, at modest additional cost. We think the aesthetics will motivate many to do so.
Although there are underground phone lines already at the portal area - we identified a phone utility box nearby - our communications will be via fiber optics bundled with the underground power line
7) CCN: "Some toxic materials would be used in these labs, but with double containment."
There will be no materials in NUSEL that are not common in every university physics lab in the nation. Federally funded science projects have extremely strict and extremely public safety regulations, including standards like double containment. The University of Washington and any laboratory operator would have safety/environmental oversight committees with public representation. In the 40 years US scientists have worked deep underground with large detectors, we are aware of no spills. Internationally we are aware of one spill - 11 gallons of scintillator, a substance similar to gasoline. This spill occurred in Italy, a country that (prior to this spill) did not require double containment.
Most of the scientific activity would be confined to the science campus we would build near Leavenworth, on land appropriately zoned. Most observatories in the underground laboratory, once constructed, can be operated remotely.
8) CCN: "The lab would be under the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, which raises questions about the compliance with the Wilderness Act, and the precedent of allowing a mining operation within the boundaries."
Our surface activity is confined to the portal area, which is on USFS matrix lands. 87% of the tunnel path is outside the wilderness boundary. The last 13% protrudes under the wilderness -- unfortunately this 13% is crucial to obtaining the required depth.
Virtually everyone we have talked with understands that the tunnel and lab will be undetectable from the wilderness. Two kilometers of bedrock will separate the laboratory from the surface. Furthermore, the existence of a tunnel does not preclude future wilderness extensions. There are many examples of water tunnels that were incorporated into wilderness: one nearby example is the 3-meter-diameter, 0.5 mile tunnel in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness that is used to draw down Upper Snow Lake.
However, given current national environmental protection issues, we understand the Trojan Horse worry. We intend to work with the environmental community to make sure no precedent is set. The Wilderness Act recognizes science and education, along with recreation and scenic beauty, as motivations for Wilderness. It very clearly distinguishes public use - the National Science Foundation and the University of Washington are public entities - from extractive claims and other commercial uses.
9) NUSEL proposal has two main goals: to help us learn more about the universe in which we live, and to encourage greater public understanding of science. We believe the achievement of these goals is not incompatible with the preservation of the Alpine Lakes and the Icicle Creek Valley for the enjoyment of generations to come.
Public education activities include not only graduate and undergraduate research by students from colleges throughout the Northwest and the US, but also extensive outreach to K-12 students, their teachers, and the general public. We hope to model the project's Visitor Experience Center in Leavenworth after the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, which has done so much for public literacy in science. The basic research at NUSEL includes not only physics, but earth science, ecology, microelectronics, and materials properties.
Many of the 300+ Leavenworth citizens who came to our public meeting eloquently expressed why such a project could uplift the community.
We decided to come to the people closest to the Icicle Creek Valley - the environmental community, the valley's residents, and the recreational users - first, as soon as we recognized Cashmere Mountain's unique scientific potential. Our goal is to learn about the community's concerns, and to address as many of the concerns as possible by world-class engineering, prior to writing a proposal. Those we cannot avoid, we will try to mitigate directly and indirectly, including positive contributions to the solution of other regional environmental problems. In turn, we hope the environmental community will recognize that the new knowledge NUSEL will generate is important to society. NUSEL's goals range from identifying the dark matter and energy that shaped our universe, but so far remain hidden from us, to understanding the diversity of microbial life deep within the earth.
We have promised to meet with the Sierra Club and other groups in January, to describe the steps we have taken since our last meeting.
We are grateful to the Sierra Club for its willingness to express its concerns, while allowing us future opportunities to respond to those concerns. We hope others will also be willing to hear us out before reaching a decision.
Wick Haxton, Project Director
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