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To: long-gone who wrote (84047)	4/1/2002 7:15:00 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 116766

Homestake Bill Criticized; Prospects Unsure By CHRISTOPHER THORNE Associated Press Writer yankton.net WASHINGTON -- Questions about costs and liability are stirring opposition to a bill that is key to turning the massive Homestake gold mine in western South Dakota into a national underground laboratory. The bill is intended to transfer ownership of the century-old mine to the state of South Dakota. It would also release Homestake, the company that owns the mine, from litigation or costs related to environmental damage stemming from a century of mining. Instead, the bill would make the United States responsible for lawsuits and most remediating costs -- a point that has raised the eyebrows of some Republican House members and the ire of at least one government watchdog group. ''This is outrageous,'' said Jill Lancelot, legislative director of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington group that monitors government spending. It has begun lobbying House members to oppose the bill. ''This is a 100-year-old mine. It's huge. No one has any idea of what this could really cost the federal taxpayer,'' Lancelot said. What is key now to the bill's survival is whether Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., can shepherd it through the House of Representatives. After the Senate approved the bill last month at the urging of its author, Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Thune introduced the bill to the House. But it has remained in the Resources Committee. Last Friday, Daschle attached the Homestake legislation as an amendment to the defense appropriations bill, considered a ''must pass'' bill now in negotiations between the House and the Senate. Key House members have signaled they may not support the bill, in part because it would force the National Science Foundation to be the primary source of money in a state-administered trust fund to be used to pay for environmental cleanup at the mine. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee, wrote a letter asking the National Science Foundation -- a $4 billion-a-year federal agency -- how it intended to cover those costs. ''This bill has serious implications for the National Science Foundation,'' Boehlert wrote. ''We want to work together with you, starting immediately, to limit any problems this measure may cause.'' The South Dakota delegation wants Congress to adopt the conveyance bill quickly. Homestake has said that if it does not have an assurance by the end of the year that it would be protected from liability for future uses of the mine, it will flood the 500-plus miles of underground tunnels with water. Both Thune and aides to Daschle say they are working with the Justice Department to fine tune the legislation and limit the federal government's liability. For example, one amendment to the bill shields the United States from responsibility for any dump sites, which are among the most toxic parts of a mine. ''We want to make sure that we do it in the right way, and don't raise other problems down the road,'' Thune said. ''That's why this bill is getting greater scrutiny in the House than it apparently did in the Senate.'' However, some protection to Homestake from future liability was a ''must have'' part of the bill, a Daschle aide said, because the company had agreed in return to not take steps it would normally take -- in this case, flooding the mine -- to prevent future litigation. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., said it would be a mistake to give up the mine as an underground lab site based on the suggestion that the federal government could be sued later for environmental problems. ''To lose this project over speculative circumstances in the future would have been tragic,'' Johnson said. Scientists have described the mine as a unique place in North America for an underground physics lab, where researchers could conduct experiments such as detecting neutrinos, a process that requires deep shielding from cosmic rays. It will be months, if not a year, before the NSF makes a decision on whether to fund the $281 million underground lab proposal. Enviro Briefs : a Service of Barefoot Connections Subscription information at:http://nativenewsonline.org/natnews.htm 207.126.116.12