Utah Resisting Tribe's Nuclear Dump

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Utah Resisting Tribe's Nuclear Dump On a Reservation Ringed by 
Hazards, Indians See Jobs, Money in Radioactive Rods  

Washington Post Tuesday, March 2, 1999; Page A03  

SKULL VALLEY, Utah—For years the 119 members of the Skull 
Valley Band of Goshute Indians dreamed of economic development 
that would bring money and jobs to their desolate desert 
reservation and keep their young people from leaving, as so many 
already have. A casino was out because gambling is illegal in 
Utah. They considered tire recycling, a fiberglass plant and even 
desert tourist attractions.  

But the Goshutes' reservation is surrounded by the detritus of 
weapons of mass destruction and other hazardous materials. On 
one side lies the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds and its chemical 
and biological warfare laboratories; nearby are three hazardous 
waste dumps, including one that handles low-level radioactive 
material. To the north stands an Army-contracted incinerator for 
burning nerve gas materials, and not far from that is the Tooele 
Army Depot, which stores 43 percent of the nation's nerve gas 
agents.  

Unable to attract investors to their 118,000 acres, at least partly 
because of its proximity to such odious facilities, the Goshutes' 
tribal leaders adopted the adage, "When in Rome do as the 
Romans do." They signed a contract last year with a consortium of 
eight utility companies to build a temporary storage facility for 
spent radioactive nuclear fuel rods, which could bring the tribe tens 
of millions of dollars.  

However, the Goshutes had not reckoned with the formidable 
opposition they would encounter from Gov. Mike Leavitt (R). He 
vowed to swap state lands for the federal property that surrounds 
the reservation and create what he called a jurisdictional "moat" 
around the Goshutes' "island." Driving home his point, Leavitt also 
said a state-operated "drawbridge" would be figuratively raised to 
stop trucks or trains from bringing in the heavy steel casks 
containing spent nuclear fuel rods.  

This barren corner of Utah has thus become a crucible for several 
issues being debated across the country, with Indian sovereignty 
clashing with concern for the environment and economic 
development bumping up against fear of the nuclear and chemical 
wastes produced by modern technology and welcome nowhere.  

In his annual state-of-the-state address, Leavitt said the battle is 
not between Utah's government and a small, impoverished Indian 
tribe. It is "one state slugging it out with major utility companies 
eager to spend billions of dollars of ratepayer money to move high-
level nuclear waste out of their yards into ours, where it would 
remain lethally hot from now until the year 11999."  

Strong words, some said. But radioactivity is not just an abstract 
concept for Leavitt. He grew up in southwestern Utah among 
"downwinders," who believe they suffered sometimes fatal effects of 
radioactive fallout from above-ground atomic bomb testing in the 
early 1950s in the nearby Nevada desert.  

"I've seen pink clouds of radiation float over my grandmother's 
house," Leavitt said in an interview in his capitol office in Salt Lake 
City. "I had childhood friends who died of leukemia and cancer and 
neighbors who lost entire sheep herds overnight from radioactive 
fallout."  

The Goshutes' tribal chairman, Leon D. Bear, called Leavitt's moat 
proposal "blatantly racist." Bear characterized it as an attempt not 
only to shut off the reservation's opportunities for business 
development but also to undermine Native American sovereign 
rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.  

"Our land is our only resource, and if this land is useful for nothing 
but storing hazardous waste, then that's what we will do," Bear 
said as he looked over the bleak landscape here, 40 miles 
southwest of Salt Lake City, and pointed to the proposed dump 
site.  

Bear said the spent nuclear fuel would be safely stored in 122-ton 
welded steel casks only for 10 years or so, until a permanent 
underground repository being constructed by the federal 
government at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is completed. Then, he said, 
the fuel would be transported to the permanent dump and the 
facility here would be dismantled.  

Nonetheless, Leavitt is leaving nothing to chance in his campaign 
to prevent Private Fuel Storage LLC, the LaCrosse, Wis., firm 
representing the nuclear power companies, from completing an 
environmental impact review and obtaining a license from the U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  

He has had the state assume control of a county road here so it 
can block one access route to the proposed 840-acre storage site. 
He also has secured an agreement from Rep. James V. Hansen (R-
Utah) to introduce legislation that would exchange state and U.S. 
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands to form his "moat" 
around the Goshute reservation and prevent Private Fuel Storage 
from building a proposed 32-mile rail spur to the site.  

In addition, Leavitt is seeking wilderness designations for BLM land 
on the west side of the Goshute reservation, which also could be 
used to block the proposed rail line to the storage site if he is 
unable to swap state land for federal land.  

The wilderness proposal, which could affect millions of acres of 
federal land, put Leavitt in an unlikely alliance with 
environmentalists and wilderness advocates with whom he has 
feuded for years. The governor, who long has advocated a limited, 
piecemeal approach to federally protected wilderness, now finds 
himself backing a much larger designation, which happens to 
include land needed by the nuclear power consortium for rail 
access to the proposed waste storage facility.  

"We are not going to grant them the right to cross our roads or 
build a rail line to transport this stuff," Leavitt said. "They [the 
power companies] don't want it in their back yards but they want to 
move it into ours. That should tell you something."  

Diane Nielson, director of Utah's Department of Environmental 
Quality, said that because of the uncertainties involved in Nevada's 
Yucca Mountain repository and its certification as environmentally 
sound, the proposed Skull Valley dump cannot be viewed as a 
temporary facility.  

Moreover, Nielson said, studies have shown a "high potential" for 
seismic activity in the Skull Valley area, which could damage 
storage casks and lead to radioactive emissions. She said also 
that the storage site is on the flight path of F-16 warplanes that 
regularly use a nearby bombing range, posing further risk of an 
accidental spill in the event of a crash.  

Scott Northard, project manager for Private Fuel Storage, said each 
of Nielson's concerns could be applied to the hazardous waste 
facilities that already ring the Skull Valley Goshutes' reservation. 
Northard said the state government had a hand in licensing all of 
them and it continues to accept taxes and operating fees from 
them. "Only when the tribe wants to do it they suddenly have 
endless objections," Northard said.  

Calling the storage proposal "provably safe," Northard said the fuel 
rods, after being transported here in 100 to 200 shipments a year in 
containers with 8-inch-thick walls, will be inserted in 16-foot-tall 
concrete and steel casks and stored on a concrete pad designed 
to withstand even the worst earthquake.  

Bear said that apart from a rocket motor testing site that the tribe 
licensed to an aerospace company, the Skull Valley Goshutes 
have been unable to generate any substantial income on their 
bleak reservation, which is home to only five of the band's families, 
the rest having moved closer to jobs in surrounding towns.  

Income from a nuclear fuel storage facility would provide 40 
permanent jobs in addition to 500 temporary construction jobs. It 
also would provide the tribe with enough revenue to build a police 
station, fire station, health clinic and better water and electrical 
services, Bear said. All of these would help attract Skull Valley 
Goshutes back to the reservation, he said.  

Bear said he is offended by assertions that his tribe is in conflict 
with Native Americans' traditional reverence of the earth, 
particularly since it was the state government that allowed much 
more dangerous nerve gas storage depots and other hazardous 
waste dumps into the region without asking for the Goshutes' 
approval.  

"Just because we are Indians, why are they stereotyping us with 
the environmental thing?" Bear asked. "We don't have any wildlife 
here that is anywhere near being endangered, much less becoming 
extinct. . . . I told them, there is nothing out there to save."

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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