[IPSM] Native Americans, Allies Resist Expansion of Utah Nuke Wasteland

[Dru Oja Jay]

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?items=1872&printmode=true

* Native Americans, Allies Resist Expansion of Utah Nuke Wasteland *

by Megan Tady, the New Standard

A small but resilient band of Indians surrounded by toxic waste sites, 
have drawn a line in the sand of the Utah desert; joined by politicians 
and activists, the Goshutes hope to fend off yet another waste dump in 
their backyard.

Jun 1 - In a photograph of Margene Bullcreek, she stands next to a 
weathered sign that reads, "No Trespassing." She looks formidable, chin 
held high, proud and protective of the land laid out behind her.

She also looks tired. The warning sign and her watchful eye, have 
fallen short of warding off predators from her tribe's reservation.

The reservation was carved out of the Utah desert in 1917 for the Skull 
Valley Band of Goshutes. The 124 surviving tribal members have 
scattered, leaving only Bullcreek and 24 other members to defend their 
homestead. In some respects, the reservation is a gated community. An 
invisible fence rings their 18,000 acres, a ring of toxic landmarks.

East of the reservation sits a storage facility for nerve gas. South of 
Skull Valley is the coal-burning Intermountain Power Project. To the 
northwest sits a low-level radioactive waste disposal site called 
"Envirocare." North of the valley chugs the Magnesium Corporation 
Plant, deemed the country's worst polluting plant of its kind by the 
Environmental Protection Agency for the chlorine gas and hydrochloric 
acid it spouts into the air.

But that is not all. In 1968, the Dugway Proving Grounds tested VX 
nerve gas on traditional Goshute hunting grounds, causing the death of 
6,000 sheep grazing in Skull Valley. Over 7,000 fighter jets based in 
the nearby Hill Air Force Base fly over the reservation every year to 
drop bombs for target practice on the Wendover Bombing Range.

With little outside economic opportunity and land already poisoned, the 
Skull Valley Band of Goshutes became an easy target for another project 
that would help the United States with its biggest hot potato: 
high-level radioactive waste. In 1996, Private Fuel Storage, a 
conglomeration of eight nuclear powerhouses, began courting the tribe 
to shelter 44,000 tons of irradiated nuclear reactor fuel on their 
land. Touted as an interim storage site for waste on its way to 
permanent storage at Yucca Mountain, a yet-to-be-built and highly 
contested storage facility in Nevada, the reservation would play host 
to 80 percent of the country's nuclear waste for 40 years.

That same year, Leon Bear, the Washington's federally recognized 
chairman of the Goshutes, signed a lease with PFS for an undisclosed 
but lucrative amount, and an eight-year licensing process has ensued. 
Many of the Goshutes claim the lease is illegitimate, given that Bear's 
leadership is consistently disputed by tribal members. Bear has been 
indicted on federal charges for tax evasion and embezzlement of tribal 
funds.

Bear did not respond to interview inquiries for this article. But in a 
2001 interview with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service 
(NIRS), a networking center for citizens concerned about nuclear power 
and radioactive waste, he said: "We can't do anything here that's green 
or environmental. Would you buy a tomato from us if you knew what's out 
here? Of course not. In order to attract any kind of development, we 
have to be consistent with what's around us."

Now in the final stages of approval, the waste dump is edging closer to 
reality as activists opposing the site launch last-ditch efforts to 
thwart the project. Resistance to the waste dump has been fierce and 
divisive. Some members of the tribe contest the site, while a minority 
of the tribe has sided with Bear to welcome the dump, which has 
promised enough jobs to allow some members to come back to the 
reservation.

Skull Valley is 45 miles from Salt Lake City, and Utah lawmakers have 
been vociferous in their resistance to the dump. Joined by local and 
national public interest groups, the opposition is citing environmental 
racism, ecological and health hazards, risks to national security and 
the possibility that the temporary site will become a de facto 
permanent dump as reasons to reject the project. PFS, however, claims 
the dump would provide a revenue stream for the tribe, as well as 
infrastructure, health care and local jobs.

Over 420 organizations have signed a letter urging the U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (NRC), the body that will make the final decision 
regarding placement of the dump, to reject PFS's license application.

"We are the caretakers of this land," said Sammy Blackbear, an 
outspoken leader for tribal opposition to the dump, and a resident of 
the Skull Valley reservation. "Our ancestors took care of it, and we 
have an obligation not to ruin it."

In April Utah filed for a motion of reconsideration with the Atomic 
Safety Licensing Board (ASLB), the judiciary arm of the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (NRC), based on one of the last standing 
contentions against the site: the possibility of an aircraft crash or 
stray missile into the nuclear canisters from the F-16 flights made 
from the air force base.

As most, experts have deemed the chances for a crash or strike to 4 in 
1 million. The ASLB ruled in favor of PFS on May 24, sending the final 
decision, and the fate of the Skull Valley Goshutes, to the NRC. As 
though personally on trial, Bullcreek, Blackbear and others await their 
sentencing, which could be handed down any day: life with or without a 
radioactive backyard.

Small Pox of the Nuclear Age

The Skull Valley dump is not the first time Native Americans have been 
approached to house the United States' nuclear waste, but marks a trend 
by the government and the industry to target the population. In 1987, 
Congress created the Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator, which 
subsequently contacted federally recognized tribes attempting to 
convince them to host the dump.

"The government has no place to put their waste, so they're turning to 
indigenous lands as the last place they can go," Bullcreek asserted.

When the government-funded project failed, the commercial nuclear power 
industry stepped in, again with the intent of finding what anti-nuclear 
activists call "nuclear sacrifice zones."

Currently, nuclear waste is stored on site at the 66 nuclear power 
facilities pock-marking the country. The nuclear power industry has 
strong motivations to find somewhere else to store the waste as the 
country looks for alternatives to coal- and gas-fired energy.

"Yucca Mountain was plan A and PFS was plan B," Kamps said. "They've 
put PFS on the fast track because plan B is now plan A. The nuclear 
industry needs to have the illusion of a waste solution to sell the 
public. They want to build new nuclear reactors and keep using the old 
ones. But they have a big PR problem of needing a place to put the 
waste."

The government also has an incentive to find a home for the nuclear 
waste, as it is legally bound to provide a permanent depository for 
radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel for nuclear energy companies.

When the opposition to the Skull Valley dump cited environmental racism 
as a major argument against PFS, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
refused to hear their arguments, on the grounds that the tribe was 
being fairly compensated with a profitable contract from PFS.

"Native Americans are the most politically and economically vulnerable 
population in the country, which is part of why this is so shameful," 
Kamps says. "We call this the small pox of the nuclear age, only it's 
more sophisticated. It's dumping the most hazardous poison ever created 
by humans on a population of color that didn't benefit from its 
creation."

Native American reservations are also attractive to companies like PFS 
because their sovereignty exempts them from state environmental 
regulations.

"They target reservations because they don't have to go through the red 
tape they do when they're dealing with white people," Blackbear said. 
"This wouldn't be happening in Salt Lake City."

Blackbear, who has often been asked why he doesn't just take his share 
of the money from PFS and leave the reservation, is defiant. "Why 
should we move?" Blackbear said. "What does that say? We're not the 
type of people to just pack up and move away."

Both Blackbear and Bullcreek said the waste dump threatened to further 
erode their culture and traditions.

"As Native Americans, we need to stick up for what we believe is 
right," Bullcreek said. "From the beginning, they've tried to take away 
our land, our language and our identity, but there were many people 
that wouldn't let them do it. That's the reason why we are saying no to 
the nuclear waste dump."
Living in the Shadow of the Valley

Health risks from accidents and daily exposure to radioactive waste are 
severe. Irradiated fuel emits gamma rays that pass through human tissue 
and can cause cancer, reproductive failure and genetic deformities. In 
the event of an accident, a radioactive cloud is often invisible, 
odorless and tasteless, and fallout can contaminate water and food that 
will remain deadly for centuries.

Both Bullcreek and Blackbear's houses would be less than two miles from 
the proposed waste dump.

"If there was an accident, gamma materials would float downwind and 
deposit on the ground," said Marvin Resnikoff, senior associate at 
Radioactive Waste Management Associates, an independent consulting firm 
that advises on the technical aspects of radiation exposure and 
radioactive waste. "It would be like having an x-ray machine on the 
ground that you can't turn off. You would be exposed to high levels of 
radiation as long as you stayed there, causing a strong likelihood of 
getting cancer."

Resnikoff developed the petition against the waste dump for the state 
of Utah.

Along with the environmental and health risks posed by the dump, 
opponents are also worried about the threat to national security.

Opponents of the PFS project predict that the radiological risks for 
the Goshutes could last longer than 40 years. While the Skull Valley 
dump is billed as an interim storage facility for waste en route to 
Yucca Mountain, the fate of that proposed repository, also slated for 
construction on Native American land, is uncertain.

Substantiating the claim that PFS would turn into a permanent site is 
the recently passed House Energy and Water Appropriations Bill. The 
bill provides $10 million to the DOE to begin focusing on federal 
interim storage facilities, signaling a shift away from the Bush 
Administration's dedication to Yucca Mountain.

Even more problematic for the Goshutes is language in the nonbinding 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission report that says, "Should these or other 
[Department of Energy] sites prove impractical, the Department should 
investigate other alternatives for centralized interim storage, 
including other federally owned sites, closed military bases and 
non-federal storage facilities." PFS is the only non-federal storage 
facility in the licensing process.

"This has PFS written all over it," Kamps said.

Despite the complications surrounding Yucca Mountain, PFS is adamant 
that the Skull Valley site will be temporary.

"I understand their concern because Yucca is so iffy," Sue Martin, 
public affairs consultant for PFS, said in an interview with The 
NewStandard. "But there are several reasons why their concerns aren't 
really valid. The facility isn't designed to be permanent. Everyone 
agrees that a permanent facility should be deep underground."

Martin also said the lease signed with the Goshutes was only for 25 
years, with a possible extension for another 25 years, and that 
financial incentives would drive private utility companies to close the 
facility as quickly as possible. Martin said the utility companies 
would be footing the bill for PFS, whereas if it is stored on a federal 
site, the government will pick up the tab.

"The utility company that stored the fuel will continue to own it," 
Martin said. "They have an obligation to be responsible for it until 
they turn it over to the federal government. They are liable under the 
licensing contract."

'Nothing But Garbage Cans'

The Goshutes and the state of Utah aren't the only ones at risk from 
the waste dump. PFS plans to transport 4,000 nuclear waste loads to 
Skull Valley via train routes that traipse through cities and towns all 
over the country.

"Why are they interested in putting communities at risk?" Kemp asked. 
"Who does this really benefit? This is really a case of industry 
running amok over people's interests and safety."

Comparisons have been drawn between the risk of nuclear waste cargo on 
trains and the train accident that occurred in the Howard Street Tunnel 
in Baltimore in 2001. The train caught on fire in the tunnel after an 
axel broke and punctured a container of hazardous materials. The 
wreckage burned for five days and caused the evacuation of parts of the 
city.

Shortly after that accident, Resnikoff, with co-worker Matthew Lamb, 
wrote a report on the subject of nuclear fuel shipments. They estimated 
that had the Baltimore train been carrying nuclear waste, 390,388 
residents in the area would have faced exposure to radiation. An 
estimated 4,972 to 31,824 of them would have died from cancer over the 
next five decades. The report projected the cleanup costs would have 
totaled $13.7 billion.

The nuclear industry has tried to calm fears about transporting waste, 
saying that the Holtec casks are designed specifically to protect 
radioactive materials. But according to Oscar Shirani, a 23-year 
nuclear industry vet, the casks are "nothing but garbage cans."

Shirani, who was the lead auditor for Exelon, Exelon, the largest 
nuclear energy corporation in the United States, blew the whistle on 
Holtec following a quality assurance review of their casks. In his 
audit, conducted in 2000, Shirani cited nine major quality assurance 
failures in a 199-page report explaining the deficiencies.

"Every cask I touched had a problem," Shirani told TNS.

The NRC had previously reviewed and accepted the casks.

When Holtec did not recognize Shirani's report, he threatened to issue 
a "stop work order" on the casks. Before he could, Exelon removed 
Shirani from his department and subsequently fired him.

Shirani is suing Exelon and continues to fear the consequences of the 
Holtec casks.

"The public should know they are sitting around time bombs," Shirani 
says. "The dry casks are in our backyards. If one of them leaks or 
bursts… we don't even need a terrorist attack or a 747 to crash. The 
structural integrity of the casks is unknown. There are a lot of 
unknown answers."

Thirty-three nuclear energy companies are currently using the Holtec 
casks to store their waste on-site at plants around the country.

PFS nevertheless claims to be certain of the project's safety. "We 
filed an application for this site back in 1997, and the licensing 
process has been going on for almost 8 years," Martin said. "That tells 
you that this is a very rigorous process. All the arguments against the 
site have failed and we've been issued a favorable environmental impact 
statement. When all is said and done, the public should feel confident 
in how safe this will be."

Alternatives

As the NRC moves closer to making a final decision to approve the PFS 
waste dump, groups working to halt the process are offering 
alternatives to the Skull Valley site and finding creative ways to stop 
the dump altogether.

"We're concerned about the safety and security of all nuclear waste 
storage sites," Kemp said. "But we should keep them where they are and 
work on increasing safety and security instead of dispersing these 
toxins throughout the country. We need to keep transportation to a 
minimum, and if we move it, we should move it only once."

Kamps believes the best solution is to phase out nuclear power and stop 
producing nuclear waste.

"If we don't, we are just going to double or triple the waste we have," 
Kamps says. "For the waste that exists now, even if PFS opens in 2007 
and Yucca in 2010, it will take many years to transport. There are also 
limits to how much each site can hold. So it needs to be protected 
where it's at right now."

Members of the tribe and other concerned citizens of Utah plan to 
contest the NRC's prior ruling against the environmental racism 
argument. Blackbear and twenty other co-plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit 
against the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, alleging that it violated its 
trust responsibility by approving the lease after only three days of 
consideration.

Utah's congressional delegation is also pushing legislation that would 
create a federally recognized wilderness area 50 miles west of Skull 
Valley, effectively cutting off PFS' rail route to the waste dump.

According to Connie Nakahara, an attorney working on the case for the 
state, Utah has filed a petition of review to present to the NRC. 
Nakahara also said Utah is prepared to pursue other legal avenues if 
the dump is approved, including an appeal with a federal appellate 
court.

Resnikoff, however, is not as optimistic. "The die has been cast," he 
remarked. "It's very difficult to stop a facility once the decision 
goes to the NRC board."

© 2005 The NewStandard.



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