What is DUSEL?Deep Underground Science and Engineering LaboratoryA huge project has been proposed for the Leavenworth area. It is called D.U.S.E.L. - Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. It has been proposed by a nuclear physicist at the University of Washington to study neutrinos and "research in physics and astrophysics, earth science and geomicrobiology, and applied science." This research is currently being done elsewhere in the United States at sites such as the Homestake Mine in South Dakota. There is no necessity to locate DUSEL here. Other sites would welcome the project. The DUSEL project proposed here would create 2 tunnels - each 20-feet in diameter and 3 miles in length - under Mt. Cashmere. The tunnel portals would be located on the west side of Icicle Creek, just upstream from Bridge Creek campground (approximately 9 miles up Icicle Road - see map and photos section). At the end of the 3-mile tunnels, deep under Mt. Cashmere and the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, a large laboratory facility would be excavated and built. A multi-acre staging area would be developed at the portal entrance. Associated with the underground facilities would be an above ground research center the size of a Costco store and a visitor center about half the size of that - both located somewhere in the Leavenworth area. Construction would take years: Icicle Canyon road would be rebuilt to handle heavy truck traffic, all of the rock excavated from the mountain would be hauled away down Icicle Road (resulting in high volumes of dumptruck and other truck traffic). After tunnel excavation is complete, the lab construction would begin. Experiment equipment and hazardous chemicals would be brought in. The lab would be used for decades. So to be even more brief...This proposal is to establish a major industrial and engineering complex in Icicle Canyon. Icicle Canyon is the City of Leavenworth's water supply, one of the most popular recreation areas in the Pacific Northwest (camping, hiking, rock climbing), and is surrounded by the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area (the lab itself would be directly under the Wilderness). It just doesn't fit here. There are far better locations for DUSEL in the United States (see Underground Labs Around the World section). You don't have to know any more than that to realize the insanity and grave danger of this proposal. Locating this project in such a beautiful and special place as Icicle Canyon is horrific, to say the least. Read "Top Ten Reasons" and "Community Concerns" for more reasons. Read the "Response to DUSEL CASCADES Pre-Proposal" [PDF: 92kb] View a 17-page slide show [PDF:1.7mb] from UW scientists showing DUSEL location, tunnel diagrams, etc.An official "Pre-Proposal" document of the project is available on the University of Washington website HEREGood luck downloading and printing it. Wick Haxton and company made it an extremely large and inaccessible document that takes hours to print. Making such important information so extremely time-consuming to access is inexcusable, and could be viewed as deliberately making closer review and scrutiny as difficult as possible. But we urge you to review it carefully and realize the true scope of this project; the admitted danger to our water supply from the hydro-geologic unknowns during construction and lab use, and stated chemicals to be used, a hundred or more construction / cement / dumptrucks a day going through this valley for years (with inevitable vehicle accident causing a chemical spill into Icicle Creek), and on and on. The 350+ page "pre-proposal" should actually convince everyone that this project is better suited to an area that has previously been mined or industrialized. Not in a pristine place like Icicle Canyon. The document is also available at local libraries and city offices. But if you don't have time to download and read the 300+ pages of the Pre-Proposal, just read the 18 pages of the "Response to DUSEL CASCADES Pre-Proposal" [PDF: 92kb] National Security OperationsRead a 3-page excerpt [PDF:69kb] buried in the appendices of the proposal which refutes a lot the comments by proponents which gloss over the National Security Operations which would occur at DUSEL. For more information on how the University of Washington scientists are portraying the project proposal, go to their main website: See our Underground Labs Around the World section and read about the environmental disaster in Italy and also why there are far better locations in the United States for DUSEL. |
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