The following is a statement issued today by the NUSEL-Homestake Executive Committee, which represents a group of 100 international scientists that proposed and defended the NUSEL-Homestake proposal over the past two years.

On Friday, May 30, a distinguished international panel of expert engineers concluded that the Homestake Mine was, by far, the most favorable of the three sites proposed for a National Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. This milestone was reached only after nearly three years of continuous effort on the part of our group, beginning with the NSAC Neutrino Town Meeting of September, 2000, when Homestake was first proposed and endorsed.

In its report the panel stated:

"Important reasons to continue pumping include the maintenance of mine stability, avoidance of equipment replacement or damage, consistency with existing operating approvals, and preservation of the rock mass environment."

On Monday, June 2, Barrick Gold, of Toronto, Canada, stated that it would turn off the pumps during the week of June 9.

Homestake is a unique American asset, the deepest mine in the US and the most suitable for basic research in physics and earth science. Indeed, members of our community worked side by side with Homestake miners for nearly forty years, earning a Nobel Prize in the process. We have deep attachments to Homestake and to South Dakota as the birthplace of neutrino astronomy. Furthermore NUSEL is crucial to the welfare of our nation. Some of the most urgent science is driven by Homeland Security challenges: the technologies of choice for imaging cargo containers and for remote detection of clandestine nuclear weapons development come from underground science.

If the pumps are turned off, flooding will continue to at least FY06, the earliest date by which NUSEL could be funded. To dewater then requires re-establishing access from the surface to the level to which the mine has flooded and the construction of complex portable pumping infrastructure. If the dewatering is feasible -- Barrick has offered no engineering plans, nor has a mine of this depth been flooded and dewatered previously -- two to four years is a reasonable estimate for the completion of dewatering to the 8000 ft level.

At the completion of dewatering, all Homestake levels below 4850 ft will have either been flooded or unventilated under extreme temperature and humidity conditions for at least five years. Any part of the mine used for science or needed for the reconstruction of infrastructure would then have to be inspected and repaired, as the existing ground support cannot be guaranteed under these conditions. It is also likely that the entire flooded region of the mine would require inspection and new ground support to ensure that large volumes of water have not been trapped in the old workings. The geomicrobiologists believe their program will not survive flooding, as the build up of water pressure will lead to recharging. In fact, most of the earth science would be jeopardized, as the desired 3D access of Homestake Mine could be lost due to the destabilization of the ground and the backfill materials in the old workings.

Every engineer outside of Barrick that we have consulted has confirmed what the distinguished NSF panel stated unanimously: continued pumping is the only rational course.

Congress and the President approved $10M for preserving the mine. Barrick has refused to accept this funding. The consequence is that we scientists may soon be faced with seeking much larger sums of taxpayer money and investing five more years to return the mine to a condition less favorable than that of today. Furthermore our capacity to dewater the mine still depends on Barrick's willingness to donate the mine: after 1.5 years of negotiation, Barrick has not publically stated the conditions that would enable such a transfer.

Many of Homestake's most important attributes -- the possibility of establishing now the suitability of the rock by coring, the speed with which NUSEL could be developed, the breadth of the science program -- will be compromised by flooding. Worse, we do not feel we can make a reasoned argument for tens of millions of additional funding for dewatering, when the condition of the mine after dewatering and even access to the site are currently matters of speculation.

Barrick has stated that the reason for the flooding is its concern that mine maintenance over the next few years will be costly. However, Homestake has an excellent safety record, and was inspected by MSHA only last week. We would happily agree to any operations plan that would require us to maintain the mine to MSHA standards, with periodic MSHA inspections, and to cover the associated costs.

If the mine is flooded next week, we will submit our current Reference Design Project Book, the engineering plan for NUSEL-Homestake, to NSF, explaining that our group plans no further work on this project. The Project Book shows, for the first time, that a world-leading facility could have been built. With great regret we will then turn our attention and energy to developing the plans for an alternative site. Our commitment to the science demands that we do so.

We stress that Governor Rounds, Senators Daschle and Johnson, Representative Janklow, and Lead Mayor Tom Nelson have worked and continue to work to preserve the Homestake site. We hope they succeed in stopping the flooding. We also want to express our deep regrets to the people of South Dakota for having to take this stand. This project has come this far because of the support of the state, including South Dakota scientists and engineers such as Jerry Aberle, Sherry Farwell, Gary Kuhl and his colleagues at Skyline Engineering, John Marks, and many others. We would like to build NUSEL with them, and hope that this is still possible.