Texas Picked for Super Collider : Losing States Charge Politics Influenced Selection

Energy Secretary John S. Herrington today announced the selection of Texas as the state for the highly prized $4.4-billion super collider atom smasher site--if the giant research installation is ever built.

Seven states had vied for the project because of the economic benefits expected from the construction of the collider, a 53-mile underground ring of 10,000 magnets capable of whipping proton beams together with 20 times the force of the world’s most powerful existing particle accelerator.

Herrington said the Texas site--16,000 farm acres in Ellis County south of Dallas--was “superior” to the others.

Variety of Factors

The decision, he said, was based in part on site geology, regional resources and environmental criteria.

“The Texas proposal clearly received the highest overall technical evaluation ratings of any proposal and exhibited no significant overall weaknesses,” Herrington said.

The six other finalists were Illinois, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina and Tennessee. They were chosen from a field of 25 bidding states, including California, by an independent panel appointed by the Energy Department.

Officials of some of the losing states, however, linked Texas’ selection to Tuesday’s election of George Bush, who lives in Texas, as President.

Different Viewpoint

“The Department of Energy made a decision . . . based on politics rather than on merit and the good of the American taxpayer,” said Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Ill.). “I do not believe that the timing of this decision and its proximity to the election is a coincidence.”

Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.) said the decision “has a strong smell of White House politics. That was our major concern all along. . . . We and the other five finalist states got a raw deal.”

But Herrington told reporters that the selection was made purely on technical merits and added, “I have to tell you there are no politics in this.”

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), the unsuccessful Democratic vice presidential candidate, said that today’s announcement made this “a wonderful day for our country and our state.”

He pledged as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to do “everything in my power to guarantee the funds for construction are appropriated on time. . . . I am happy to have had a hand in bringing it about.”

Environment Report Needed

The Energy Department must now prepare a full-fledged environmental statement. Assuming that nothing in the statement disqualifies the Texas site, Herrington will make its selection final in January.

Congress has not appropriated money to build the collider, but did provide $100 million in the current fiscal year for engineering design and certain research and development items. In all, Congress has appropriated only $205 million for the collider.

Herrington said the facility, if it is built, will be named the Ronald Reagan Center for High Energy Physics because Reagan “is the President who had the vision to move forward with the outstanding scientific project of this century.”

The project is viewed as a plum for its host state because of the economic benefits it will provide--thousands of construction jobs, permanent employment for as many as 3,000 people and an annual budget of $270 million.