I usually wander around in a state of niceties and fun when I am writing. Nothing too deep or disturbing for me. And I like it that way. But this neutrino detector installation, supposedly very near my home on Ely Island, in Lake Vermilion, has come to light, or half-light, with supposition, guesses, and rumors. So, SPLASH! I’m jumping, with both feet and up to my neck, into the fray. Until there are a lot more satisfactorily answered questions, I’ll be on board to keep that thing out of my lake and its accompanying detritus, off my island.
And therein lies a huge part of the problem. Why the big secret? Our old friends at Fermilab, along with DARPA and maybe others, have made a very successful sneak attempt to just schluck that thing into the water and be on their way.
Here’s what I know or, as rumor may have it, may not know:
I have talked to the DNR folks who have indeed issued a temporary permit for the water installation part of this project. Per the DNR officials, temporary means no more than a year and as such, requires no public comment on their part. The collector is 22 feet long and 10 feet high and buoyant. It’s due to be deployed sometime after Labor Day, into a crevice, north of Ely Island they estimate to be 160 feet deep. Are you locals shaking your heads yet? There is no part of Lake Vermilion that is that deep. Not even close. We top out at about 90 feet, give or take, near Spider Island. They claim the crevice is filled with sludge and stuff that’s been there since the ice age. Hmmm. So, do they dig? Can anyone say, “Environmental Disaster”?
What agencies should be involved with that, or are they? Does this come as a surprise to the folks in the DNR who issued the permit? If the exact conditions set forth in the current plan change, would a new permit need to be issued? And should this accommodate time for public comment? Temporary or not? Does the permit address the issue of the removal of this thing from the lake within the given “temporary” permitted time? Certainly, the Environmental Protection Agency and Pollution Control should know about this, right? Do they? How much input has been solicited from Bois Forte? They certainly have a horse in this race, too.
Apparently, they have obtained permission from an Ely Island landowner to build the necessary accompanying buildings on their land. What? At any rate there seems to be no permit issued for this part of the project. Stop the barges and lumber drops! Ely Island is zoned residential and any commercial use of the land requires a conditional use permit, I believe. Hey, St Louis County Planning and Zoning, isn’t that your baby?
Do the Fermilab people know, and have they made provisions for the upcoming freeze of Lake Vermilion? They’ll plunk this thing in and won’t be able to monitor it anyway. How high is the success rate on these kinds of experiments and how much taxpayer money has been dumped into this one?
This next part, for me, is where it gets very murky. I’m no scientist and I’ll admit I truly don’t understand the science. An accelerator, based in Chicago, and due to be decommissioned, I have been told, is supposed to lob neutrinos at this detector and see if it can catch some. In a jar? Like a firefly?  These are very, very teensy particles, I understand. Come on, Fermilab and friends. Dumb this down for me so I do understand. Let me know when the next public informational meeting is and sign me up for a chair.
I’m not a public activist, and I apologize for any misunderstanding on my part, if this is truly on the up ‘n up. But this is right in my back door, and I do feel that at the very least, my neighbors and I should be better informed.  Labor Day, and the proposed deployment of the collector, is fast approaching. Please, please, some real and factual information and quickly. So, I can sleep at night.
April Wamhoff
Lake Vermilion