Biosphere 2 Isn’t Sealed From Controversy : Science: Eight people finish first year of living in self-sustaining capsule in desert, but operators admit project has fudged on its operating guidelines.

In its first year, operators of the Biosphere 2 experiment admitted fudging on promises of a sealed, self-sustaining environment where eight people would grow their food and recycle air, water and wastes.

But the billionaire backer of Biosphere 2 remains optimistic about the scientific, commercial and educational potential of the $150-million project in the desert north of Tucson.

Edward Perry Bass, the reclusive financier from Ft. Worth, talked about the project at a celebration of the first anniversary of the sealing of the glass-and-steel dome.

Four men and four women were to live for two years in the complex the size of three football fields. The goal is to replicate Earth’s ecological processes to better understand life on this planet, and prepare for living on other planets.

Given the “cutting-edge position the project’s in, there will certainly be a lot more failures as well as successes, unexpected things happening,” Bass said. “After all, all of us involved in the project are only people.”

But Bass, 47, is no ordinary person. He is one of four brothers who with their father’s help and shrewd investing parlayed trust funds established by their oil-wildcatting great-uncle, Sid Richardson, into a multibillion-dollar fortune.

In 1988, Fortune magazine said the Basses were the nation’s fourth-richest family. Media accounts have detailed a breakup of Bass Bros. Enterprises Inc., with each following his own pursuits. Ed Bass said he retains business ties with all three brothers and his father.

Bass is a philanthropic entrepreneur and ecologist--a self-described “ecopreneur” and “philecologist”--who has thrown himself with soft-spoken fervor into environmental projects around the world.

He is a director of the World Wildlife Fund, the New York Botanical Garden and the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research. He gave Yale University $20 million last year to launch an Institute of Biospheric Studies.

Bass said he was pleased at Biosphere 2’s one-year mark: “No catastrophic problems, substantially all the systems are functioning, as evidenced by the fact that we still have eight biospherians living there.”

The project got mired in controversy over issues of scientific credibility and secretiveness, and allegations of deception.

The system had been hyped as self-sustaining, but the organizers eventually acknowledged using a machine to scrub carbon dioxide from the air, storing food reserves, pumping in outside air and bringing in supplies after a crew member’s emergency exit and return.

Biosphere, which opened Sept. 26, 1991, drew 154,000 paying visitors last year, and operators predict 250,000 will see it this year.