And now:"Save Ward Valley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
from todays LA times:
http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/SCIENCE/ENVIRON/t000029661.html
Saturday, April 3, 1999
Ruling Apparently Kills Ward Valley Nuclear Dump Plan
Environment: Judge says that U.S. doesn't need to turn over 1,000 acres
for the desert facility, which has been the subject of a 10-year battle.
A federal judge in Washington has dealt an apparently
lethal blow to the bitterly contested, 10-year-old plan to
build a dump for radioactive waste in Ward Valley in the
eastern Mojave Desert barely 20 miles from the Colorado River.
"I think [the] Ward Valley [dump] is dead," said Joe Nagel,
president of U.S. Ecology, the company that was going to build
and operate the dump. "This was really the basic case that was
going to decide whether or not there was going to be a Ward
Valley [dump]."
U.S District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled Wednesday that
the Clinton administration does not have to turn over the
1,000-acre parcel of federal land near Needles where the state
had hoped to bury about 10,000 cubic feet of radioactive waste a
year. The waste would have come from nuclear power plants,
laboratories and hospitals. U.S. Ecology and former Gov. Pete
Wilson had filed the suit because of the Clinton administration's
refusal to turn over the site over a six-year period.
Nagel said that U.S. Ecology would not appeal this week's
ruling. "The important issue for California, along with other
states, is to see to it that the waste produced is then taken care
of," Nagel added.
The judge's decision would appear to bring down the
curtain on one of the longest and most acrimonious
environmental battles in recent state history.
The fight pitted the Wilson administration and California's
utility industry against a coalition of conservationists,
anti-nuclear activists and Needles-area Indian tribes. Opponents
cited concerns such as the possible contamination of the
Colorado River, which provides drinking water for millions of
people, and the effects on Native American sacred sites in the
desert and fragile creatures such as the California desert
tortoise.
"Future generations will rejoice at this decision to put an
end to such a misguided project," said Dan Hirsch, who heads the
anti-nuclear organization Bridge the Gap and who guided the
campaign against the Ward Valley dump.
But the ruling does not exempt California from its duty
under federal law to find a place to dispose of its nuclear refuse.
For the time being, much of California's waste is being shipped
to disposal facilities in Utah and South Carolina, while some
waste is being stored by the firms and institutions that produce
it.
On the drawing board for a decade, the dump has been the
subject of endless political and scientific debate, with
environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists arguing that Ward
Valley's porous, shifting sands would not be a safe place to put
deadly waste, some of which would remain highly toxic for at
least 25,000 years.
The ultimate nightmare--poisonous particles making their
way through underground fissures to the Colorado--struck most
scientists as highly unlikely but not impossible. A greater
possibility was the migration of water-borne radionuclides from
the dump's unlined trenches into an aquifer several hundred feet
below the desert floor. That ground water is a potential source
of drinking water.
Over the last few years, there was mounting evidence
from the site of another desert dump in nearby Beatty, Nev., that
radioactive tritium waste did not stay put.
Responsive to those concerns, the Clinton administration
repeatedly called for more tests and resisted transferring the
site to the state.
Exasperated by the delays, former Gov. Wilson and U.S.
Ecology, a subsidiary of American Ecology, which has operated
several other nuclear waste disposal facilities around the
country, sued the U.S. Interior Department to compel transfer of
the federal land for the facility.
The suit contended that the federal government was
obligated to honor a decision to transfer the land made by
Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan during the last days of the Bush
administration.
But Judge Sullivan agreed with the Clinton administration
that an earlier federal court ruling barred the transfer by Lujan.
That ruling by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel in San Francisco
in effect blocked the transfer until the federal government
determined the impact of the dump on the desert tortoise, which
is protected under the Endangered Species Act.
A spokesman for the Department of the Interior said
Friday that Sullivan's ruling frees federal and state officials to
pursue alternatives to the Ward Valley dump.
Three weeks ago, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt wrote
Gov. Gray Davis calling for all interested parties to "explore
alternatives to the proposed [Ward Valley] land transfer."
Davis had not responded as of Friday, according to the
Interior spokesman. However, Davis has long been skeptical of
the Ward Valley site and, as lieutenant governor, opposed the
Bush administration's efforts to transfer the land.
Through a spokesman, Davis declined to comment Friday.
Deputy press secretary Hilary McLean said the case was being
reviewed by the governor's legal counsel. She said the governor
was vacationing Friday and could not be reached. She declined to
say where he was staying.
The idea for a desert dump was an outgrowth of 1980
legislation obligating each state to take responsibility for all
"low-level" commercial radioactive waste that it generates. A
rather misleading term, "low-level" waste includes virtually all
types and strengths of radioactive garbage except spent reactor
fuel.
The states formed low-level waste compacts to deal with
the issue. California is part of a four-state compact with
Arizona, North Dakota and South Dakota. The Ward Valley dump
would have taken waste from all four states.
Another lawsuit remains to be resolved in which the
Wilson administration and U.S. Ecology are also suing the federal
government for $80 million in damages, the amount they said had
been invested in attempts to open the Ward Valley site. The case
is pending in a federal court in Washington.
