The state-owned Sanford Laboratory at the Homestake gold mine in Lead should be open in time for scientists to install a dark-matter detector by late 2008 or early 2009.

"If we're not open I'll be disappointed," lab director Jose Alonso says.

The Sanford Lab gets its name from benefactor T. Denny Sanford, who donated $70 million to the project.

The state of South Dakota rustled up another $45 million or so from various sources to help build the Sanford Lab, which will be 4,850 feet underground. State officials and scientists hope that lab will help jump start a national underground laboratory 7,400 feet underground at Homestake.

The National Science Foundation picked Homestake as the preferred site for the deep lab, but that proposal, even if approved by the White House and Congress, is years away from construction.

Not so the Sanford Lab.

Mining technicians are working their way down the 5,000-foot Ross Shaft refurbishing as they go.

Alonso, a physicist who was recently hired to direct the Sanford Lab, hopes to be down to the "4850 level" by April 21, when hundreds of physicists from around the world will gather in Lead for a week-long conference on underground science.

"That's the optimistic view," Alonso admitted.

But Alonso is confident he can open the 4850 level for scientists by summer or fall.

Homestake, which is 8,000 feet deep, has been slowly filling with water since the mine was sealed shut in 2003. The water already has reached the 5000 level, and Alonso said it likely will reach the 4850 by February.

To pump the mine out, engineers have devised a system of 15 huge electric pumps. Three 700-horsepower pumps will lift water from the 3650 level to the surface.

Those pumps are available at Homestake. Below that level, Alonso plans to install a dozen 100-horsepower pumps - at $25,000 each.

The pumps will work together, lifting water from level to level at a maximum rate of 1,500 gallons per minute.

Water is infiltrating Homestake at 700 gallons a minute, Alonso said, so it's important to get down to the 4850 level soon.

The dark-matter scientists appreciate the fast entry into Homestake made possible by support from inside South Dakota.

"To see this level of local commitment is absolutely wonderful," physicist Richard Gaitskell of Brown University said.

He's the lead scientist for the dark matter experiment, and he's been doing research in the field for almost 20 years.

Gaitskell has worked at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, which branches off from a tunnel for cars. He also has worked on a dark matter experiment at the Soudan Laboratory in northern Minnesota. The Soudan mine has closed, but tourists can descend in the summer.

Homestake, he says, will be different.

"To be in a public laboratory this deep and this large - it's going to be quite a phenomenal experience."

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com