Letter to Director Lew, Office of Management and Budget

Letter

U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today reiterated the importance of the underground lab in Lead, now called the Sanford Underground Research Facility, to the Obama Administration as they begin work on the President's Fiscal Year 2013 budget request. Johnson, together with Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD), asked that all the necessary federal agencies put the funding in place to continue work on the lab.

"It's never too early to push the importance of the Homestake Lab. The Administration is in the process of developing its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2013, and I want to make sure they understand the importance of this project from the outset. These are tough budget times, but there must be coordinated effort across all the relevant agencies to continue this project," said Johnson.

In 2001, Johnson used his seat on the Appropriations Committee to secure a critical $10 million earmark for the State of South Dakota in the VA-HUD Appropriations bill that maintained the Homestake Mine while the site was being considered as a national, underground laboratory. The current ban on earmarks prevents Johnson from putting the specific funding in place to continue the project.

A copy of the letter is below:

September 13, 2011

Jack Lew
Director, Office of Management and Budget
Eisenhower Executive Office Building
1650 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20503

Dear Director Lew:

We write to you today about the future of the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), currently under development in South Dakota in partnership with the University of California Berkeley. In particular, we want to request your involvement in coordinating the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) on issues relating to this project in the future. As you know, this project is a significant example of a federal, state, and private partnership involving multiple states and federal funding agencies. In an era of fiscal austerity, we are optimistic that SURF will serve a successful example of how to leverage federal funding and coordination across these many entities due to the tremendous scientific opportunities that SURF will provide for a wide cross section of scientific disciplines.

As you may have heard, the project recently received significant positive support in the form of three reviews by independent committees with respect to cost, scientific merit, and design plans for the project. Each review highlighted the need for U.S. leadership in underground physics, the significance and paramount importance of the various science projects proposed for SURF, and the capability of the project team to complete such an endeavor. In addition, the project team is working to rebrand the image of the former Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) to highlight their flexibility in adjusting the scope of the project and its stewardship model. The project team now refers to the project as SURF, and you will likely hear this acronym from now on, instead of DUSEL.

Despite this support and flexibility, the project faces a number of near-term obstacles. The Department of Energy is poised to make a decision on the agency's planned support for the project in Fiscal Year 2013 and beyond. Given the reports we noted above, we are optimistic about the agency's next steps. However, in the current budget climate, where tough funding decisions must be made at all levels, we ask that you coordinate with DOE and the NSF on providing the needed funding and flexibility to create out-year funding profiles -- particularly as FY 2011 funding winds down. These complicated profiles must incorporate the many energy priorities as identified by the agency, NSF, the Administration, Congress, and the scientific community, identifying how best to leverage private and state money while creating jobs and elevating U.S. leadership in science on the global scale.

We believe this endeavor holds great promise and highlights the type of investment our nation must make if we expect to keep the United States at the frontier of scientific discovery, and we look forward to working with you in this endeavor.

Sincerely,

Tim Johnson John Thune Kristi Noem
U.S. Senate U.S. Senate U.S. House of Representatives

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