Press Release: Feds stop planned Ward Valley waste dump testing

[Mike Grissom <mikeg@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

Radsafers,

Another article on the continuing Ward Valley, California, USA
controversy, this from the February 27, 1998 issue of the San
Mateo County Times, byline Vince Beiser, Staff Writer:

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      Feds stop planned Ward Valley waste dump testing

 "We're not looking for any violence, and they seem intent
                     on staying put."
	Tim Adhern, spokesman for the Interior Department

In a victory for environmental and Native-American protesters,
the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has indefinitely postponed
controversial testing at a proposed radioactive waste dump in
Southern California.

Bureau officials declared Wednesday that test drilling in Ward
Valley has been put on hold while negotiations continue with
the some 100 demonstrators encamped on the proposed dump site.
The 10 Bureau of Land Management agents who had been monitoring
the camp withdrew late Wednesday night [2/25/98].

"We're not looking for any violence, and they seem intent on
staying put," said Tim Adhern, a spokesman for the Interior
Department, which oversees the land bureau.  "We're trying to
figure out the next steps."

"This shows that the occupation is forcing the government to
take the concerns of native people seriously," said San
Francisco resident Bradley Angel, one of the protest camp
leaders.  "Now we need them to cancel the dump completely."

Scores of environmentalists, including many from the [San
Francisco] Bay Area, and members of five Indian nations
arrived earlier this month to reinforce the two-year-old
protest camp after government officials announced it would
be evicted in advance of the testing.

Construction of the long-proposed dump in the Mojave Desert
has been held up because of concerns that radioactive waste
might seep into underground aquifers feeding the Colorado
River, a drinking water source for millions of Californians.
Ward Valley is also a habitat for the threatened desert
tortoise and is considered sacred by local Indians.

The dump would take low-level radioactive wastes from nuclear
power plants, hospitals and biotech firms.  It is to be built
by a private company, US Ecology, which proposes to store the
waste in shallow, unlined trenches.  The Interior Department
is to transfer 1,000 acres of land to California to build
it on.

But the transfer has been held up by Interior's insistence on
further tests, prompted in part by recent revelations that
radioactive waste has been leaking from a similar US Ecology
dump in Nevada.

Dump proponents, including Gov. Pete Wilson [Governor of
California], reacted angrily to the latest delay.

"The Interior Department has made a hash of things," said
Alan Pasternak, technical director of the California
Radioactive Materials Management Forum [CALRAD], an industry
group including the University of California [Educational]
and Emeryville's Chiron Corp. [Biotech].

"Stalling Ward Valley is counter to environmental interests.
It would be far safer to have one well-regulated facility to
dispose of radioactive wastes, rather than having to continue
to store them on-site," Pasternak said.

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