If the giant superconducting supercollider is built in Illinois, it would cut as deeply as 400 feet underground in some places and rest on the surface in others, state officials said Tuesday in announcing the route they favor for the project.
The 53-mile-long oval tunnel, which would house the magnetized rings of the supercollider, would start on the east at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, according to the state proposal. The route then arcs north to a point south of Elgin, west to Kaneville Township in western Kane County, south into Kendall County near Oswego, and back east into Du Page County, running between Aurora and Naperville.
The collider would be on the surface on the eastern and western sides, a map furnished by the state shows. At other points, it would be 200 to 400 feet underground, like the existing Tevatron collider at Fermilab.
Although the state`s proposed location for the supercollider generally has been known for about a year, state officials disclosed the exact path at a meeting of politicians in Batavia because of growing interest in the project, said Nancy Ebbert, speaking for the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources.
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Later Tuesday, the officials unveiled the map to area residents at the first of five public meetings to be held at locations along the proposed circumference of the supercollider. Tuesday`s meeting was in the civic center in the unincorporated community of Kaneville, in extreme west Kane County just south of the East-West Tollway. About 130 residents attended the meeting and studied a large topographical map of the ring, Ebbert said.
The public hearings have been scheduled in advance of a February meeting called by U.S. Department of Energy officials. The federal officials want to meet with local citizens, according to Kristin Dean, executive director of SSC for Illinois, a state-funded group that has drawn up a list of economic incentives offered by private business to lure the project to the state.
Dean said state officials wanted to present as much information as possible about the proposed route before that meeting to obviate complaints that the state has kept residents in the dark. Community acceptance is expected to figure in the federal government`s final choice of a site, she said.
Ebbert said: ”It is almost certain that some people will have to be moved. Because we don`t know the exact parcels yet, we don`t know who will be affected.”
The state officials handed out brochures during their Tuesday meetings describing the acquisition process and pointing out the ”advantage of selling your property to the state.”
The brochure says the state will pay fair market value for property and that it will give displaced homeowners an additional $22,500 above the purchase price if replacement housing is costlier than the home. The property owner must have lived in the house at least 180 days.
The state will pay up to $5,250 to displaced tenants and homeowners who have been in their houses fewer than 180 days but more than 90, the brochure says.
Other meetings have been set for Jan. 21 in St. Charles, Jan. 25 in Aurora, Jan. 25 in Oswego, and Jan. 27 in West Chicago.
Illinois is believed to be a leading contender for the $6 billion high-energy project, which will crash speeding subatomic particles into each other to study the basic building blocks of nature. State officials have claimed that by tying the supercollider into the existing particle accelerator at Fermilab, the cost of the project could be lowered by $350 million.
The possibility that Illinois will land the project received a boost last month when the National Academy of Sciences included the state on a short list of qualified states.
The U.S. Department of Energy will release its list of qualifying states next week, Ebbert said, and the Reagan administration is expected to announce the winning site in July.
Don Etchison, state energy and natural resources director, said the route was determined by extensive geological testing at 33 sites over the last year. Etchison estimated that land acquisition for the project would cost $140 million, but because the path of the collider crosses numerous property lines, the state is still researching the ownership of the land along the route.
Sandra Tristano, a lawyer for the Department of Energy and Natural Resources, said that once all the owners have been identified, the state will contact them, probably by letter. Tristano estimated the letters would be sent by the end of January.
Until Tuesday night`s meeting in the Kaneville Civic Center, residents could only guess where the state might plant the ring.
”We know it`s going to be real close, if it does come,” said Floyd W. Kaus Jr., 53, who owns a 120-acre farm off Main Street Road near the proposed site.
Kaus said the project might be a boon to some farmers` flagging fortunes. ”A lot of farmers say they wish it would go right through the middle of their farm, the way farming`s been going,” he said.
Larry Suggett Jr., 65, who lives on Main Street Road in Kaneville, said he was taking ”an open mind” toward the meeting, but he questioned the cost of the project.
”Why don`t they put it out in the desert land in New Mexico or Arizona, where they won`t bother anything” and where land is cheaper? asked Suggett, a retired woodworker who has lived in Kaneville 33 years. ”We`re in a high real-estate area out here, even with the way the farm economy has been.”
Although Congress approved $25 million for preliminary studies last year, the supercollider could still be shelved because of its high cost and criticism that it might not produce immediate practical knowledge for defense or business.
But advocates say that the machine is vital for the U.S. to maintain its lead in the study of high-energy physics. The Soviet Union and a European consortium are building or already operating particle accelerators that compete with Fermilab.