31 States Seek Super Collider and, With It, Economic Shot

Rarely have the arcane workings of high-energy physics captured the fancy of so many people as they have this spring, as quarks, leptons and other esoterica have joined highway projects and school budgets on political agendas in statehouses from Sacramento to Albany and from Olympia to Tallahassee.

This is what the federal government has wrought with its proposal to spend $4.4-billion to build the latest, biggest and most powerful atom smasher ever--the superconducting super collider.

No fewer than 31 states are studying at least 52 possible sites for the new megaproject, which promises to generate billions of dollars of new business activity, hundreds of millions of dollars in added tax revenue, thousands of high-paying jobs, plus the prospects of the spinoff of related local industries.

Would Set Records

Considered the world’s largest and costliest scientific instrument, the huge machine, an oval-shaped atom smasher that would measure 53 miles in circumference, would more than earn the double superlatives in its name. For one thing, it would include 10,000 exotic superconducting magnets buried in a tunnel long enough to encircle Manhattan and San Francisco side-by-side.

For another, it would be 20 times more powerful than the most powerful such collider working today. And, proponents assert, if authorized by Congress this year as expected, it could be opening new vistas in science by 1996.

“The super collider holds the potential for a . . . revolution in science, education, technology and commerce,” Energy Secretary John S. Herrington said when he announced the federal government’s decision to build the machine. “It will have spinoffs, discoveries and innovations that will profoundly touch every human being.”

Teams of engineers and physicists are busy finishing up preliminary designs for the machine in California, which also happens to be one of the top two or three contenders in the competition to host the project.

The state, along with all other competitors, is busy conducting soil tests, preparing a list of assets for federal decision-makers to consider, and trying to stir up public support. In some states, this job is handled out of the governor’s office or state economic development agency. California has established a special super-conductor executive steering committee headed by University of California Vice President William B. Baker.

Winning the super collider, Baker contends with the fervor displayed by many of the competitors, will make a tremendous difference--in terms of economics, education and prestige--for whatever state is chosen.

“You can’t be economically strong if you aren’t technologically strong,” said Baker, who usually manages budget matters for the nine-campus university system. “The SSC (superconducting super collider) . . . is a remarkable economic base from which to grow and prosper.”

With so much at stake, selecting a site for the collider could have posed a tough political problem for the federal Deparment of Energy, which administers federal physics research programs. The solution was a competition open to everyone, even large private landholders who would agree to donate at least the 16,000 acres of land the machine requires.

The project has been discussed since 1983, but the competition formally opened in February, after President Reagan approved the project. States must file their complex applications by August, and a panel of independent scientists will select a set of finalists by the end of the year. A site will be chosen in 1988.

State officials consider the competition a shrewd way to select the winner, because it gives every state a chance to be chosen, and thus gives every state an incentive to support federal financing of the project, which still is pending in Congress.

At the same time, the competition encourages states to add to their offers additional cost-sharing proposals, or “sweeteners”--subsidized electricity in California, subsidized tunneling in Illinois, and subsidized financing in New York have been mentioned, for example.

Small states squawk that this provision favors wealthier and more populous states, and some have mobilized their senior congressional representatives to try to skew the selection process back in their favor.

“While it is in one sense in the best budgetary interests of the United States government to seek bids which reduce federal budget costs,” Kansas Lt. Gov. Jack Walker recently told a congressional committee, “such a provision would be shortsighted if it acted as a bar to states which have technically superb sites, but lack the resources to outbid more affluent neighbors.”

Nonsense, argue congressmen faced with cutting the federal deficit. Major cost-sharing by states may be the only way to shoehorn this project into the already overburdened budget.

Other states have sought to change deadlines or rewrite technical criteria, calling them unfair. Some states also have tried to form regional coalitions to support a single candidate--but no one can agree which state to support.

Meanwhile, elected officials from California to the Carolinas scramble to prepare the exhaustive eight-volume bids required by federal officials. Most states will spend at least $1 million on this process, which can involve the preparation of dozens of expensive drill-core samples used to map the geology of the site being considered. California has allotted $2.5 million to prepare bids for two sites. Illinois has budgeted $4.5 million for one.

Two California Sites

California, which Baker said already soaks up one-quarter of the country’s entire research-and-development spending, is preparing to nominate two sites--one encircling the western Sacramento suburb of Davis and another just east of Stockton. Both should be leading contenders for the collider, competing states acknowledge.

But California also was a top contender in the last atom-smasher sweepstakes 20 years ago--until Illinois was awarded what is now Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Illinois is now effectively employing that facility 30 miles west of Chicago to keep itself among the front-runners in the race for the superconducting super collider.

Texas and New York also are cited by competing states as potentially strong competitors, partly because of their large congressional delegations and their ability to subsidize the project. Colorado also was named for its site east of Denver, as well as sites in Arizona and Ohio.

This sort of handicapping dismisses many states, but elected officials find it difficult to pass up the opportunity to enter.

“Put yourself in the position of a governor up for reelection in 1988,” said Don Etchison, director of the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources, “and your opponent says, ‘Gee, our governor is so lackadaisical, he didn’t even try to get this super scientific project worth billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.’ It has become a political requirement to put in a bid whether you think you have a real chance or not.”

Besides, even people in the leading states acknowledge that virtually any bid can win when judged by the wide variety of factors being used by federal officials and their blue-ribbon panel of engineering and science advisers.

Offsetting Features

The cultural advantages of suburban Chicago, for example, could be balanced by reduced construction costs in Utah. The weather and intellectual climate of California could be offset by solid geology in North Carolina. Financial skill demonstrated by New York or Texas might be matched by lower operating costs in Wyoming or Florida.

“It’s important to emphasize that a number of factors are being considered here,” said Alan Harger, who is preparing Washington’s entry, a site about 60 miles west of Spokane. “It is not all riding on just one thing or another.”

Most bidders categorize the federal criteria as “hard” and “soft.” Hard criteria, competitors believe, will help scientists choose a “short list” of perhaps four to eight finalists. Soft criteria, along with some old-fashioned horse-trading politics, will winnow out the winner, competitors agree.

Hard criteria include such geotechnical considerations as topography, ease of tunneling, water tables, seismic danger, environmental problems, vibration potential and the availability of water, power, sewers and road access.

Soft criteria include proximity to a major airport, to companies capable of providing technical support, to universities and colleges, and to urban areas able to accommodate as many as 10,000 added residents--3,000 scientists and technicians and their families.

In addition, the Department of Energy said it will consider the quality of local schools, the quantity of social and cultural events and the type of job opportunities for scientists’ families. Such factors will help to attract the highly skilled personnel needed to operate the collider, the agency said.

Such soft criteria have unnerved officials in several states, particularly those considering sites in relatively remote locations, such as New Mexico or Montana.

Ranking of Factors

Rep. Joe Barton (D-Tex.), for one, notes that Department of Energy guidelines rank cultural resources higher than the availability of utilities. “Should a community with plentiful, low-cost electricity and water give up if it doesn’t have a ballet company?” he asked.

Fermilab Director Leon M. Lederman defended the decision to include culture as a siting criterion. “It is not really to coddle the scientists,” he said, “but a clear, frank admission that some scientists won’t go to a place that’s too hard. And if the place does not get the very best, the government’s money will not be well-spent. It’s a simple as that.”

Most states contacted in a survey by The Times are satisfied with the rules and prefer to move the process ahead.

“If there’s any dilly-dally, this thing could die aborning,” said George Ormiston, a staff coordinator of the Nevada Committee on Economic Development. “You can read into the selection criteria certain things that would meet any site in the United States.”

Certainly no state is taking the process lightly. Even the consensus front-runners concede they have weaknesses that could cut into their strengths.

California, for example, has many advantages, including its long history of involvement in high-energy physics (the first cyclotron atom smasher was built in Berkeley in 1930), a well-educated work force and high-tech industrial base that could build and maintain the collider.

But it also is bothered by political resistance among some people living at its two sites and a reputation for earthquake problems, although officials say they have found two seismically inactive sites. The state also is criticized for absorbing a disproportionate share of the nation’s research funds. Indeed, the collider itself is being designed by an independent group of scientists and engineers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

Illinois already has Fermilab, home of Tevatron, the world’s most powerful accelerator. State officials said they plan to recommend that this be used as a kind of pre-accelerator for the super collider, which could obviate the need for a new booster system and save millions of dollars--if it is feasible.

Extra-Deep Tunnel

However, the Illinois proposal calls for an extremely deep tunnel--at 400 feet, it is eight times as deep as that proposed by most other sites. This could greatly boost costs and would make it difficult to use the surface-level Tevatron as a superconducting super collider injector.

Texas has the land and the desire to attract the collider, but is swamped with 11 proposed sites that sometimes threaten to split the state politically. To sweeten its bid, the legislature is considering whether to authorize $500 million in bonds, but a state economy weakened by the oil glut could be problematic.

New York is experienced in both high technology and high finance, and its sites offer amenities ranging from the glamour of Broadway to the promise of inexpensive hydroelectric power from Canada. But the state got off to a late start in preparing bids, and its best site is very remote.

Although, as Harger noted, “everyone acknowledges that the final decision will be highly political,” even these politically powerful states are unsure how much to rely on their political clout.

California, for example, not only has a big congressional delegation, but is the home of three key decision-makers--President Reagan, Energy Secretary Herrington and Edward Frieman, director of Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego and chairman of the government’s scientific advisory panel on the collider.

However, Baker said this could work against the state. In their zeal to be fair, they might hold their home state to a higher standard.

Other Political Powers

Besides, he added, competing states do not lack powerful political leaders: House Speaker Jim Wright in Texas and Senate Minority Leader Robert Michel in Illinois, for example.

“We all talk about that stuff, sure,” said Ormiston, the Nevada official. “But really, we’re all fumbling around in this dark gray room. None of us can make out . . . how this process is going to advance.”

Several states acknowledge active scouting campaigns to learn details about competing bids. As a result, many officials are cordial but close-mouthed.

“I’m not sure that from a strategy standpoint you start telling the world what your incentive package is going to look like,” said Galen Reser of the Washington office of Illinois Gov. James Thompson. “That just gives your competition a chance to outbid you (with) a more attractive package.”

However, a number of people preparing bids, including Baker in California, have mentioned $500 million as a competitive sweetener package. This would be used to mitigate any problems with a chosen site--such as potential problems with tunneling--as well as build a new college-type campus to give the site an advantage over competitors.

“One way to look at it is, ‘What is the net increase in (tax) revenues?’ ” Baker said. “Well, (a UCLA report shows) it is $500 million for the first 12 years and something like $30 million a year after that--new tax revenue into the state--just because the thing’s here. You can argue that you can at least offer that. If you don’t get it, you don’t spend it.”

The real puzzle, he said, is whether states can afford to offer outright cash contributions toward the collider’s construction--a contribution in addition to the sweetener package.

Rep. Vic Fazio, a California Democrat who sits on the commission that is trying to bring the project to California, believes this may be California’s biggest advantage.

“We know we’re the sixth state in the nation in terms of per-capita income. We have the biggest economy. And we’re certainly the most resourceful in terms of the state budget,” he said. “If we can’t afford it, who can?”