Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 22, 1993 TAG: 9310220122
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The $640 million sought by the Clinton administration to continue construction this year will be used instead to shut down the project under an agreement reached Thursday by House and Senate negotiators.
"The SSC has been lynched and we have to bury the body," said Sen. Bennett Johnston, D-La., the collider's key Senate backer.
The $11 billion atom smasher's death was all but sealed Tuesday when the House rejected further spending. It marked the third time in 16 months and second time since June that the House had snubbed the physics project, which critics had branded as luxury science that was too costly in an era of huge budget deficits.
Johnston and other senators who twice previously had revived the funding legislation decided that a third attempt was futile.
"I really sort of still can't believe it that the country won't fund it," said physicist Roy Schwitters, who has headed the project since 1988.
"This kind of event and decision is a major negative impact on world science, in my view," he said.
In Ellis County, Texas, where the collider was being built, owners of condemned houses and others who have invested in businesses and land were wondering what would fill the vacuum left by tunneling for the atom smasher.
"Right now, it's a billion-dollar hole in the ground. And they're arguing about whether to fill it back up," said Allan Oakley, a Waxahachie police officer and co-owner of the Kountry Cafe in nearby Maypearl. "People here have a hard time understanding how we could spend so much money and not follow through."
by CNB