BIG Ego Duckling Vows

   The New York Times, September 17, 1995
   Week in Review, p. 2.


   Forget the Channel Tunnel. Dream BIG

   By John Darnton


   London. Does going from London to New York by railroad
   sound like a pipe dream? Add that the route would go
   through the plains of Poland, Moscow, Siberia, Alaska,
   Canada, the Pacific Northwest and Chicago, and it might be
   asked how potent was the stuff being smoked in that pipe.

   But that's the vision, or dream, of a consortium of
   financiers, engineers, entrepreneurs and others who have
   assembled into the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel &
   Railroad Group. The group, incorporated in November 1991,
   wants to build an intercontinental railway to bridge the
   United States and Russia by tunneling under the Bering
   Strait.

   Just when it seemed such dreamers might be having second
   thoughts -- the English Channel tunnel came close to going
   broke last week -- comes a new push for this undertaking.

   It would be, its brochure boasts, "the biggest project in
   history." It would cost something in the neighborhood of
   $40 billion. To raise that kind of money, it may take more
   than an international conference to spread the word and
   drum up investors. (Such a conference was to have been held
   at the Savoy Hotel in London next week but was postponed
   until February -- because of the interest it created, so
   say the organizers.)

   To be fair, the idea is not just to please the railroad
   buff who wants to go from St. Pancras station to Penn
   Station without stepping down. The object is to open up the
   vast hinterlands of Siberia, eastern Russia and northern
   Alaska, tapping their natural resources for development.
   But given the paucity of modern services in that part of
   the world, that too seems dicey.

   The project centers on an idea that is not new: tunneling
   between the hemispheres and across the international
   dateline (what would happen to workers' overtime as they
   walked back and forth?). It would require a 50-mile tunnel
   under the seabed between the Seward Peninsula of Alaska and
   the Chukchi Peninsula of Russia, plus an assorted 5,000 or
   so miles of track to meet railheads on either end.

   Possible? George Koumal, a 53-year-old, Czech-born
   naturalized American mining engineer, thinks so. Mr.
   Koumal, president of a firm called Engineering Technology
   International, which is based in Tucson, Ariz., thought up
   the idea in the spring of 1986. "It was after the drop in
   North Slope oil prices. I looked at a map and I started to
   think: 'My God, this is a link between East and West if
   there ever was one.' "

   "For a while, I thought I was an original thinker," he
   noted. What disillusioned him was a clipping from The New
   York Times of Oct. 25, 1906, reporting that a New Jersey
   company had incorporated and had raised $6 million to build
   just such a link. The previous March, the paper commented
   that engineers thought it was "what is vulgarly known as a
   cinch," and the paper ventured a prediction: "It is
   possibly fair to assume that by the time the connection
   across Bering Strait is completed, the Channel tunnel
   between England and France will be in full operation."

   Better late than never. The Channel tunnel became
   operational last year. And even though it is drowning in
   debt, who is to say that Mr. Koumal's vision will not
   become reality? "Within my lifetime," predicted the 53-
   year-old engineer. "And I smoke."

   "The people in 1905 were a brazen bunch," he said. "They
   thought it would be a cinch. We don't think that. But I'm
   convinced it's technically feasible. I visited the site. I
   stood on the beach with the president of the Nome Chamber
   of Commerce and the mayor of Wales, a little Eskimo village
   of about 150 souls. You can see Russia. You can almost
   touch the Asian mainland with your hand."

   Should the tunnel ever materialize, it would be the longest
   in the world running between 60 and 80 miles, of which 52
   miles wouid be under the sea bed. Mr. Koumal says the
   tunnel "is the least of the problems." More complicated,
   and expensive, is the railway construction needed. Though
   in theory the line could carry passengers, the object is to
   haul freight. For the whole intent is to open up nearly
   four million square miles for development, including vast
   Alaskan coal deposits and uncalculated gas, oil and mineral
   riches in Siberia.

   So far the project has only drawn polite acknowledgement
   from the American Government and some stirrings of interest
   in Russia. "We would be pleased if it happened," said
   Sergei Nikolayevich, vice president of the Russian
   Tunneling Association. Environmentalists have yet to be
   heard from.

   A Small Matter of Money

   Then, too, there's the small matter of the $40 billion. The
   Channel tunnel's problems do not augur well. On Thursday
   the company operating it suspended interest payments on its
   $12 billion in debt and asked the British and French
   Governments for help.

   In fact, the fates of the Bering Strait project and the
   Channel tunnel have long seemed curiously parallel. The
   first project appears to have died in 1907 when the Czar
   said no. A report of his refusal, in the New York Times of
   Sept. 27,1907, said it "was based on military reasons, just
   as the French Government had discouraged an English Channel
   tunnel."

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