U.S. South Pole Station Threatened by Budget Ax

Despite a wealth of good intentions, the United States is becoming the slumlord of the South Pole, government officials and scientists lament.

The world’s most remote human outpost--in the cleanest and coldest environment on Earth--has grown into an overcrowded, overburdened warren of huts, dormitories and laboratories surrounded by almost 80 acres of machinery, spare parts and construction materials stacked on pallets.

Four times as many people live there now as designers intended--145 at the height of this year’s research season. For some, toilets are sheltered holes in the ice.

Rising above the clutter is the once-elegant blue geodesic dome of the U.S South Pole station, for 20 years the symbol of America’s commanding presence on the world’s last open continent. But today, even the dome is dilapidated--so much so that the National Science Foundation wants to replace it with a sleek, energy-efficient, $220-million complex that could take 80 construction workers a decade or more to build.

And that proposal, in turn, has set off an open-ended debate about America’s role on the continent well into the next century.

In the current political climate, Congress is no longer certain the United States can afford such a prominent presence on the world’s last frontier.

Beset by ailing economies and changing national priorities, many other countries are scaling back their efforts in Antarctica. So some U.S. officials are wondering whether they should follow suit.

“All Antarctic programs are out on a limb,” said South African Antarctic scientist Denzil Miller.

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The South Pole station is not the only thing in Antarctica that has been overtaken by time.

After 40 years on the remote continent, the entire U.S. Antarctic program is in the grip of a midlife crisis.

With three year-round stations, two research vessels and the world’s only squadron of ski-equipped cargo planes, the $195-million National Science Foundation operation is the largest and most prolific program in Antarctica.

“It is at a historic high,” says Cornelius W. Sullivan, head of the foundation’s Office of Polar Programs. About 650 scientists are involved in about 130 Antarctic research projects.

The science foundation recently finished a $35-million laboratory in McMurdo, its main base in Antarctica, chartered a new $86-million, 300-foot ice breaker, and poured $20 million into new observatories at the South Pole. It also has been spending $35 million to clean up decades of toxic waste, trash and pollutants left in Antarctica by the U.S. research program. The clutter that remains at the Pole was not covered by that cleanup effort.

Now, at the insistence of Congress, the White House and all the federal agencies that conduct research are reconsidering whether the United States has any place at all in Antarctica.

At the same time, the Navy, which has been a mainstay of the Antarctic program since it opened the continent to U.S. researchers 40 years ago, is struggling to absorb its own budget cuts and base closings. It is withdrawing from Antarctica as quickly as it can.

The Navy has about 780 people involved in supporting the science foundation’s Antarctica program--about the same number it takes for the crew of a single Aegis-class cruiser. Forced to choose, the Navy would rather staff a cruiser, defense department officials say.

“The Navy withdrawal is looming,” said Capt. H.C. Smith, who commands the Naval Support Force in Antarctica.

“That got Congress’ attention,” he said, “and they started asking: Do we need the South Pole?”

The Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees the science foundation budget said in its formal budget bill that Congress “is very concerned about the ability for NSF to continue to fund a permanent presence on the continent given the severe budget constraints. . . . This situation is exacerbated by the need to replace its aging facilities.”

At the Senate’s request, the National Science and Technology Council, composed of the 20 federal agencies and departments with a special interest in science, is formally reviewing all of America’s efforts throughout Antarctica. Can research be conducted more cheaply? Should the South Pole be abandoned? Could it become an international project like the space station?

They are expected to report their conclusions to the Senate at the end of March.

“We have no particular ax to grind,” said one Senate staff aide involved in the review. “There is no question that Antarctica represents a unique resource in terms of research that cannot be conducted anywhere else.

“The question is whether, given the budget constraints, we should continue to allocate this much money.”

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The U.S commitment to an extensive Antarctic research program was originally conceived, in part, as a national security measure to deter Soviet expansion on the frozen continent.

At the height of superpower hostilities, the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed that Antarctica should be used only for peaceful research and, despite many other countries’ conflicting claims, that it should never become any nation’s territory. Twenty-six countries signed the resulting Antarctic Treaty.

The result has been a land without borders, passports, military outposts or the international frictions that plague much of the world. The diplomacy of science has served as a curb on national appetites for land and mineral resources.

Throughout the Cold War, the international treaty alliance that governs Antarctica was knit together by U.S. largess and its all-encompassing air power. Today, U.S. officials are not alone in their second thoughts about Antarctica.

“How you justify Antarctic science in the face of dire economic and social distress is a difficult problem,” Miller said.

South Africa has cut its Antarctic research budget by a third. The British Antarctic Survey has closed two of its four bases. Italy, Germany and France also are cutting staffs and shifting resources.

Russia closed several of its Antarctic research stations and is unable to resupply its most important year-round research station on the polar plateau. Vostok, as the station is called, was relieved by a U.S. flight from McMurdo this season when the annual Russian resupply train stalled on the ice. To raise money, the Russian Antarctic program even tried to rent some of its facilities to tourists.

“I would not be surprised if Russia or America simply canceled their Antarctic programs.” said Vladimir O. Papitashvili, a Russian physicist at the University of Michigan who has worked in both countries’ Antarctic programs.

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As the policy experts begin their debate over Antarctica in Washington, the South Pole Station is nearing the end of its six-month-long Antarctic “work day.”

Darkness is settling over the frozen desert of the polar plateau and for the first time since September, the stars are coming out. The station staff has dwindled to a skeleton crew of 26 people who will spend the next six months of winter night isolated by millions of square miles of ice in what one senior science foundation official called a “firetrap.”

“The buildings are 20 years old and they have had a harsh life under difficult conditions,” said Frank Brier, engineering projects manager for the foundation’s Polar Programs Office. “There are a lot of health and safety issues.”

Parts of the complex, buried under 22 feet of drifted snow, have become safety hazards, with hundreds of U.S. construction code violations, frequent power brown-outs, fuel leaks, sewage spills and perennial utility line disruptions, station engineers and managers say.

“The systems are no longer reliable from a safety standpoint,” says Jerry Marty, the foundation’s construction and operations manager at the South Pole. “There is a clear and present danger in the working areas.”

The South Pole station, known formally as the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, was designed to house no more than 35 people when it opened. At the height of the current research season, the South Pole station was home to 145 scientists, support staff and construction people. They generated 40 planeloads of garbage, which eventually will make its way back to the United States for disposal.

The 50-meter dome shelters a cluster of insulated bunkers, with thick refrigerator doors that look like meat lockers stacked on top of each other. They house living quarters, offices, a galley, a sick bay and a library.

Outside, the temperatures can plunge to 110 degrees below zero. Even inside the dome, the temperature rarely rises above 35 degrees below zero. Icicles rime the interior support struts.

Crates of frozen turkey breasts, fish fillets, pizza dough, vegetables and other foodstuffs crowd the spaces between the bunkers and the inside wall of the dome.

“This is probably the only place in the world where you have to bring the ice cream in and put it in a freezer so it will warm up enough that you can eat it,” said James W. Gardner, who manages the South Pole station for the science foundation.

Under the weight of drifting snow, roof panels are starting to pop and the frame of the dome is crushing the buildings it shields from the harsh cold. The station’s rubber storage tanks constantly weep fuel--more than 20,000 gallons into the hard-packed snow floor in the past few years.

Most important, the utility lines--electric cables, sewer pipes and water mains--that keep the station and its dozens of inhabitants alive have cracked, leaked, frozen and been repaired repeatedly. Overcrowding also means that power brown-outs are common. There is even a problem with lead in the drinking water.

Earlier this winter, Gardner led a visitor down an access ladder into the utility tunnel that runs 10 feet below the surface of the ice.

The ambient temperature hovers at a constant 60 degrees below zero and the floor is slick with frozen sewage. In several locations, the aging copper pipes have been etched away, cracking regularly in 10-foot lengths. The ice on which the station sits is melting from the heat of the dome’s living quarters, and as a consequence, the utility corridor has warped, dropping about 20 feet deeper into the ice and pulling apart the electrical conduits.

“Probably the biggest threat we face here is portions of this corridor filling up with waste or sewage and freezing,” Gardner said. “That would shut the station down.”

To restore operations after one break last winter, station crew members had to chip away 1,500 gallons of frozen sewage in the cramped corridor.

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To ferry construction materials for the proposed new station--which would entail the largest construction project in the history of Antarctica--science foundation officials are surveying routes for an overland supply operation that dwarfs any expedition previously attempted in the exploration of the continent.

Science foundation planners envision annual caravans of a dozen 40-ton bulldozers, each hauling two sledges laden with up to 17 tons of construction materials.

Bulling through the snowfields at a steady 8 mph, the supply trains would have to cross the crevasse fields of the Ross Ice Shelf, drive up the steep slope of the glaciers that pave the gaps in the Trans Antarctic Mountains, and then traverse the icy plateau to the Pole.

In all, they would have to haul 86,000 tons of material to the proposed construction site. The only alternative would be to bring the supplies in by airlift, as is the practice now.

Foundation officials estimate that it would take 850 cargo flights to ferry all the material to the South Pole--10 times more than it took to build the original South Pole station.

After conducting 40 engineering studies and drafting detailed architectural blueprints, science foundation officials were on the verge of seeking from Congress the down payment on a new South Pole station this year. Now, they are weighing whether it is even worth the risk at a time when Congress and the White House are so deadlocked over plans to cut the federal budget.

Indeed, National Science Foundation officials have become so cost-conscious that this week they canceled an annual airdrop of supplies and mail to its isolated Antarctic outposts, in order to save the foundation about $1 million.

For those in Antarctica who must trust their lives to the aging equipment, the budget debates that have paralyzed the federal government recently are themselves examples of excessive government spending.

“For what it cost to shut down the government for one week in December--$607 million--you could run the Antarctic program for two years and build a new South Pole station,” said Brian Stone, manager of air operations at McMurdo.

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Rebuilding the South Pole

The National Science Foundation is proposing the largest construction project in the history of Antarctica to replace the U.S. South Pole station with an energy-efficient $220-million complex. It could take a decade to complete.

To ferry the construction materials across the polar plateau, engineers are planning an overland supply operation that dwarfs any previous expedition in the exploration of the remote continent.

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POLAR STATION

* Central communications tower

* Passages would help prevent spread of fires.

* Modules containing dormitories, kitchens, hydroponic gardens and labs.

* Stilts would allow snow to blow through and could be raised as they sink into ice.