WASHINGTON—States competing for the Superconducting Supercollider have been given 30 more days to submit their proposals to the Department of Energy.
The department’s original deadline of August 3 for proposals, announced last winter, produced howls of outrage from states that had waited to mount their campaigns until President Reagan threw his support behind the multibillion-dollar project. They complained they could never catch up to the handful of states that had already spent millions of dollars developing their proposals, and bidded for a later deadline.
An amendment to an otherwise unrelated money bill, voted July 1 by Congress, gave DOE officials an excuse to push the deadline back to September 2. The amendment deletes as a consideration in the review process a provision that states can tempt the government with financial incentives.
The official reason for the delay is “to provide potential proposers adequate time to make changes to comply with...