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WASHINGTON (AP) - A huge pile of uranium processing waste leaking into the Colorado River in Utah would be moved to a safer area under a plan signed into law by President Clinton (news - web sites).

Local, state and federal officials have been squabbling for years over what to do about the 10.5 million tons of radioactive dirt, the legacy of a closed uranium processing plant near Moab, Utah.

The waste pile is only 750 feet from the Colorado River and is leaking radioactivity and other toxins into the river, killing fish and other water creatures. The river serves as the drinking water source for parts of Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, though that water is drawn far downstream, where the concentration of pollutants is much lower.

Cleaning up the former Atlas Corp. uranium mill waste is expected to take about a decade, said Bill Hedden of the Grand Canyon Trust, an expert on the issue. Officials have estimated the cost at about $300 million.

"It's a mess that took about 45 years to be created, so it's going to take a little while to clean it up," Hedden said.

The plan to clean up the waste, contained in a military authorization bill Clinton signed Monday night, does not include federal money for the cleanup. Congress will have to approve that later.

But there is a funding mechanism that could pay at least part of the cost.

The measure returns 84,000 acres of federal land in Utah to the Ute Indian tribe. In return, the tribe agrees to pay the Energy Department about 8 percent of the proceeds from oil or natural gas development to help pay for cleaning up the uranium waste. The tribe's contribution is estimated to be about $80 million to $100 million.

"It serves multiple purposes. The environment is just one of those. Safe water down the river is another," said Ute tribal chairman O. Roland McCook. "The land will also help us out in whatever way we deem necessary. We're glad to be a part of that."

The Ute tribe, whose 1.2 million-acre reservation is the second-largest in the United States, needs the jobs that drilling would provide, McCook said.

The Atlas uranium mill was one of many in the Four Corners area of the Southwest that processed uranium ore from mines in the area. Most of the uranium handled by the plant during its operations from 1956 to 1984 went into nuclear weapons.

Denver-based Atlas posted a $6.5 million cleanup bond for the site but went bankrupt before it could be forced to pay any more.

The new law gives the Energy Department a year to study the best way to move the waste and the best place to put it. Local officials have suggested a site on a plateau 18 miles away.

WASHINGTON - Funding to close and upgrade high threat dump sites on reservations is a start, but hundreds of millions more is needed to finish the job.

At an Aug. 11 ceremony, representatives of five federal agencies finalized an agreement of cooperation to provide $4.1 million to assist 18 tribes with either bringing solid waste disposal into compliance or closing them altogether.

A multi-agency tribal solid waste task force established in 1999 is charged with distributing the funds. What is needed to bring more than 1,100 dumpsites on Indian lands, identified by the Indian Health Service, into compliance or closure was estimated to be $126 million. Of that number, 142 are in need of immediate attention. That is what the $4.1 million will begin to address.

"The Federal Tribal Solid Waste Interagency Workgroup partnership will lay the foundation for even greater strides in eliminating health disparities for American Indians and Alaska Natives as healthier environments are established," said Michael Trujillo, IHS director.

It was a historic moment when the five agency representatives signed a memorandum of agreement setting in motion funding to upgrade or close the dump sites. The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Interior, U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service, Department of Defense, Indian Health Service, and Housing and Urban Development are the cooperative agencies involved.

The agreement establishes short- and long-term goals to assist the tribes with the waste management program. Part of the memorandum links the agencies in a cooperative effort that will utilize technical and managerial aspects that each of the agencies can provide.

The cooperation of the agencies to pool resources that will culminate in a safe and effective plan to improve the health conditions on reservations that lack behind in these services is historic.

"This Open Dump Cleanup Project is a fine example of what we can achieve when we work together. Open dumps can present significant environmental problems and if left uncontrolled could cause health problems to people living near these pollution sources," said Timothy Fields Jr., assistant administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.

For years the tribes asked for help in closing or upgrading waste dumps, with some success, yet tribal officials continue to look for the funds to meet federal requirements for upgrading waste facilities.

Federal agency cooperative efforts will first identify facilities, then work together to bring together the necessary funding for training to tribal governments, technical assistance, planning, implementation, closure and post-closure activities.

"I am proud of the federal agencies that have provided resources to improve waste management in Indian country. I thank the tribal governments for their persistence and cooperation in clarifying the need to address the problems associated with open dumps in their communities," said Lynn G. Cutler, senior advisor to the White House chief of staff for Indian affairs.

"This interagency effort is a wonderful example of what can be achieved when agencies work with tribes, and leverage authorities and appropriations for a common purpose. In addition to assisting 18 tribes with the closure or upgrade of high threat open dumps, the project is a significant step toward helping tribes to complete and implement integrated waste management plans, develop realistic solid waste management alternatives, and develop post-closure programs," she said.

The long-range goals of the Tribal Solid Waste Interagency Workgroup provide for quarterly meetings to adjust the plans of an individual tribe to bring the solid waste site into compliance. The workgroup also will continue to assist in the cleanup of open dumps while providing training to the tribes who are in the process of upgrading of closing waste facilities for as long as the recourses last.

The workgroup is lead by the EPA. In case of emergency clean-ups or other emergency work, the EPA will delegate the work to the appropriate participating agency.

Assistance from the workgroup goes beyond the simple closure or upgrading of the waste sites. The agencies involved agreed to make resources available to help tribes with developing and implementing integrated waste management plans for upgrades, alternatives or closure of facilities.

The open dump cleanup project is open to applicants from all federally recognized tribes and Alaskan Native villages.

The workgroup selected 18 tribes to participate in the program and receive funding from the $4.1 million appropriation. The tribes include the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Tohono O'odham Nation, Blackfeet Nation, White Earth Reservation, Navajo Nation, Melakatla Indian Community, Spokane Tribe, Taos Pueblo, Hoopa Valley Tribe, Mississippi Band of Choctaw, Native Village of Elim, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Igiugig Village Council, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Native Village of Deering, Quileute Tribal Council, Havasupai Tribe and Asa'Carsarmiut Tribal Council.

The education of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson began at the knee of uranium widows, telling the former congressman in the lilting Navajo tongue of miners who died.

Two weeks ago, Richardson's schooling in the Navajo lands played out as the U.S. government broke decades of denial to report evidence that radiation and dangerous substances boosted the risk of illness among 600,000 nuclear-weapons workers.

It was an admission Richardson put in motion months ago, through hirings, behind-the-scenes lobbying at the White House and a new worker-health survey that, all told, have set the nation on a path to compensate ailing cold warriors.

"The entrenched bureaucracy said we won't acknowledge the problem," Richardson said in an interview last week. "I say we won the Cold War, and we shouldn't turn our back on those workers who helped us win it."

"It's time," he said last July, "to stop spending money litigating against these workers and focus our efforts on getting them the help they need."

The government's move to shoulder potentially tens of millions of dollars in health costs from nuclear weapons production marks a turning point for the Atomic Age, engineered by a politician elected from its birthplace.

"He's driven about this, he's very passionate about it. He wants to get something done before he leaves office," said Richard Miller, a Washington, D.C.-based policy analyst for the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Union.

Richardson's move, Miller is convinced, "is not based on optics" -- D.C. beltway-speak for political acts richer in image enhancement than substance. "He's sincere. This particular crusade was not poll-tested and focus-grouped."

Physicians warned U.S. weapons executives from the late 1940s that workers were being exposed to health-threatening doses of radiation, toxic metals and chemicals. The Atomic Energy Commission sealed those warnings in classified documents. Later, its successor agencies relied on the inherent uncertainties of epidemiology to reject evidence that some weapons workers were dying early because of exposures on the job.

"The government had a policy that basically said no one's been hurt and therefore we have no reason to look for the evidence," said Robert Alvarez, a former senior policy adviser in the Energy Department.

Rejecting clues to work-related disease was in some ways easy: Many health studies found U.S. weapons workers were often much healthier than the rest of the United States, despite daily work exposure to radiation and a host of toxins.

One of the largest such studies came out of Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1994. Lab epidemiologist Laurie Wiggs and colleagues tracked 15,727 white males who had worked at the lab since the start of the Manhattan Project in 1943. Roughly a fifth had died by the end of 1990. No fatal disease or other cause of death was higher for those workers than for white males in the overall U.S. population, the study found. In fact, LANL's workers showed a pronounced "mortality deficit."

But here's the rub: LANL employees tend to be better paid, more educated and better insured, with greater access to health care -- plus, they're working. The larger U.S. white male population includes the ailing, the elderly and unemployed. The two populations are so different as to make comparisons valuable only for detecting the most obvious spikes in fatal disease.

"The lab always likes to cite the fact that, in their work force, no cause of death is higher than in the general population," said Ken Silver, a public-health researcher and Los Alamos worker-compensation advocate. "Well, of course ... But comparison to white males in the general population really isn't of interest."

Yet Wiggs and colleagues also found something else in their study -- a statistical tie between rising radiation exposures and rising death rates for five types of cancer: chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Hodgkin's disease and cancers of the kidney, brain and esophagus. An earlier unpublished study of LANL subcontract workers found three cases of a rare bone cancer that can be associated with radiation.

Radiation has not been implicated as a cause of chronic lymphocytic leukemia or Hodgkin's disease, Wiggs said, and its linkage to the other three cancers is not well proven. However, radiation exposure is widely accepted as increasing human risk for brain cancer.

Even so, Wiggs said, "there's by no means a clear link to causality." In epidemiology, she said, "it's very difficult to establish clearcut causality. At the very best, you're talking about a probability."

That would take a more finely tuned study that the U.S. Department of Energy never did. The National Institutes of Health took over studies of DOE weapons workers in the early 1990s.

That switch was fueled in part by "Dead Reckoning: A Critical Review of the Department of Energy's Epidemiologic Research," a study published in 1992 by Physicians for Social Responsibility, a national nuclear-disarmament and environmental group.

The authors charged the DOE with a massive conflict of interest and indicted its health studies as "full of attempts to deny and manipulate," said study co-author H. Jack Geiger, a professor of community health at the City University of New York.

"There was such a consistent pattern of an unusual way of looking at things that you have to ask the question: What was there to hide? Why would somebody do it this way?" Geiger said. "You could infer that these studies were done in this way with deniability in mind."

A leading contributor to "Dead Reckoning" was David Michaels, an epidemiologist and Geiger colleague at CUNY. He took a leave of absence a year ago to become Richardson's assistant secretary for environment, safety and health.

The stage was set for a culture change, political and technical, inside the Energy Department. Dozens of health studies would be scrutinized with an eye to detecting health risks, rather than dismissing them.

"I think his work is outstanding," Richardson said of Michaels last week.

"I said, 'David, I want to be sure we can prove this.' And he went after this like a gorilla."

Richardson himself had pushed legislation to compensate uranium miners in 1990 after hearing Navajos describe illness and death among their miners.

"I found that there probably was a causal link," he said. "I felt if I could ever do something about radiation exposure I would."

By early 1999, Richardson had toured DOE's weapons sites and everywhere run into small, largely unorganized groups of workers who believed their jobs had made them ill. Newspaper stories about their illnesses cropped up in Tennessee, Colorado, Washington and, most notably, Paducah, Ky., where the Washington Post found that weapons executives intentionally hid from Paducah's workers the fact that they were handling plutonium-contaminated uranium. And the DOE acknowledged conclusive evidence that hundreds of its workers had contracted an incurable lung disease from exposure to beryllium, a gray, light metal used in nuclear weapons.

As the White House and Congress agreed on legislation to compensate beryllium workers, Richardson persuaded President Clinton to order a sweeping study of job-related illness in the weapons complex and possible ways to compensate other ailing workers.

The study is due out in March. Early drafts report that workers are at increased risk of illness from radiation and chemical exposures at work. Congress may demand harder evidence, but Richardson already is convinced.

"I expect this process will show that our (liability) should go beyond beryllium and go to radiation-based cancer," Richardson said. "I was persuaded just by my experiences with the Navajos and by people at our sites who said all they wanted was their day in court."

• October 16, 2001
  

  Ousted Goshute Tribal Leader
  Fails to Regain Control of Tribe
  Fate of Nuclear Waste Dump Unclear

  Contact: Environmental Justice Foundation
  Anne Sward Hansen 801-763-0551 or cell 755-4950
  

   

  Skull Valley, Utah - Ousted Goshute Tribal Chairman Leon Bear's most recent attempt to regain control of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes failed. Bear could not get support from the majority of the tribe to reinstate the illegitimate Bear regime at a meeting called by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Leon Bear on Saturday October 13th.

  After Bear was ousted, a September 22nd Tribal Election for the Bears' replacements was conducted resulting in Marlinda Moon as Chairman, Sammy Blackbear, Vice Chairman and Miranda Wash, Secretary. The BIA and Leon Bear had refused to acknowledge that September 22nd election, instead stating they would heed the will of the Goshute People only after Bear and the BIA had an opportunity to hold their own meeting on October 13th. The BIA and Bear meeting failed to reach a tribal quorum. Both the BIA and Bear have refused any comment since that October 13th meeting.

  The newly elected leadership says they will aggressively demand that Bear immediately surrender all tribal assets, records and documents to them or will take appropriate action if he refuses. The new leadership has declared, "The will of the Goshute People was made clear on September 22nd and the decision of leadership has been made. We will not tolerate any further interference in our inherent, sovereign right to tribal self-governance from the BIA or anyone else."

  On September 22nd, Leon Bear was removed from his "strangle hold" control of the Tribe and its money, amidst allegations of fraud, embezzlement, bribery and corruption. According to Rex Allen, the former Tribal Secretary, who resigned on September 22nd, federal criminal grand jury subpoenas have been issued and served on the Leon Bear Regime and on Private Fuel Storage with whom Bear signed an agreement to take 40,000 tons of the nations high-level nuclear waste. The FBI, the U.S. Inspector General, Goshute Tribal leadership and the State of Utah are all conducting their own investigations into these allegations. It is unclear what investigation, if any, the BIA is conducting. Allen stated he is cooperating fully with all investigators, including the new tribal leadership, and is willing to serve in whatever capacity needed.

  When asked about the future of the proposed private Fuel Storage (PFS) nuclear waste dump on their reservation, the new Tribal leaders explained that under federal law, all leases of Skull Valley Tribal lands must be approved by the Goshute Tribal General Council. The new leadership stated that most Tribal General Council members have never even seen the purported PFS lease agreement or other important documents. Likewise, they have never been given an opportunity to evaluate the economics or safety of such a facility and are not in a position to decide what to do until they have more information. These new leaders are in the process of gathering all available information so a decision can be reached by the General Council as soon as possible. They emphasize that they and the tribe are neutral about the project and that the Tribe as a whole will make the decision, when they, have the information they need, not before.

  Background:

  Since 1993, there have been numerous attempts to free the Tribe of Leon Bear's corrupt control. Most recently, on August 25th, Leon Bear and cousin Lori Bear Skiby were confronted with Tribal resolutions and petitions calling for their ouster at a Tribal meeting they themselves had called. Three days later, on August 28th Bear sent out a letter stating that if the majority of the Tribe voted to replace him, he would surrender all Tribal assets and leave peaceably. But, Bear and his supporters boycotted the September 22nd election, hoping that without them the required majority of the General Council could not be assembled.

  When Bear was informed of the September 22nd quorum and election results, he said he would honor the voice of the people if he could see the Tribal documents that proved a majority had met and voted for his replacement. When he was served last week with the official tribal documents he had requested, Bear refused to abide by his promise.

  Bear's attorneys have attempted to block the new Tribal officers from gaining access to the Tribal checking accounts containing almost half a million dollars discovered thus far. The new Tribal leaders stated that massive amounts of Tribal money are apparently missing from those Tribal accounts.

  Prior to Bear's October 13th meeting, all Tribal General Council members had been mailed a formal notice that the October 13th meeting was unnecessary and had been canceled because Rex Allen had resigned and his successor had been elected on September 22nd. Bear and other General Council members were also notified that a Certification of Tribal Election had been issued certifying that the September 22nd election meeting was attended by a majority of Tribal General Council members, that the election was held in accordance with the Tribe's traditional rules of governance, and that Chairman Marlinda Moon, Vice-Chairman Sammy Blackbear, Sr. and Secretary Miranda Wash had been duly elected. Bear was given a copy of the certification.

  Despite these notices, the lack of a quorum, and the unofficial nature of the October 13th meeting, Bear decided he would hold an election to replace Rex Allen as the Tribal Secretary. When he was reminded of Rex Allen's September 22nd resignation and that Allen's replacement had already been elected, Bear continued with his own "election". Bear's "election" ignored additional Tribal customs and traditions as well. Instead of having nominations and secret ballots, Bear simply announced his nomination, asked for a verbal vote of confidence, and then announced a unanimous vote.

  BIA Superintendent David Allison was present at the October 13th Leon Bear meeting, but refused to comment on the irregularities. Superintendent Allison, who did not attend the September 22nd election, has also refused to publicly announce any BIA position on the election or on the new Goshute leadership.

  Goshute Tribal members have alleged that Bear has for years bribed General Council members to sign bogus "Tribal resolutions" supporting the Bear regime and PFS project. They say Bear has publicly admitted that he pays Tribal General Council members for their votes on the PFS project. Bear says he does not consider his payments bribes. BIA Superintendent Allison has notified Bear that he cannot pay his supporters more PFS money than he pays his opposition. At his October 13th meeting Bear asked his supporters to sign more of his "Tribal Resolutions" but refused to allow any of the new Tribal leaders present to read them.

  Throughout the October 13th meeting, Moon, Blackbear and Wash and other observers heard repeated shouts of "Leon, as long as you keep bribing me, I'll support you and will sign whatever you want me to sign."

  Bear sought to regain control over the world's largest private high-level nuclear waste dump and the millions of dollars in PFS lease payments. PFS, a consortium of mostly eastern nuclear utility companies, is behind the nuclear waste dump just 45 miles from Salt Lake City. These companies are facing extreme pressure from their home states to get the toxic
  
  

• April 2001
  
  

  Environmental Racism, Tribal Sovereignty and Nuclear Waste
  High-Level Atomic Waste Dump

  Targeted at Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah
  "There is nothing moral about tempting a starving man with money."

  – Keith Lewis, of the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario, reflecting on his impoverished community’s 50 years of working in and living near uranium mines & mills, and the health and environmental catastrophe that has resulted.

  Nevadans and Utahans living downwind and downstream from nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining, and radioactive waste dumping have suffered immensely during the Nuclear Age. But even in the "nuclear sacrifice zones" of the desert Southwest, it is Native Americans--from Navajo uranium miners to tribal communities targeted with atomic waste dumps-- who have borne the brunt of both the front and back ends of the nuclear fuel cycle.

  The tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation in Utah is targeted for a very big nuclear waste dump. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a limited liability corporation representing eight powerful nuclear utilities, wants to "temporarily" store 40,000 tons of commercial high-level radioactive waste (nearly the total amount that presently exists in the U.S.) next to the two-dozen tribal members who live on the small reservation. The PFS proposal is the latest in a long tradition of targeting Native American communities for such dumps. But there is another tradition on the targeted reservations as well–fighting back against blatant environmental racism, and winning. Skull Valley Goshute tribal member Margene Bullcreek leads Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia (or OGD, Goshute for "Mountain Community"), a grassroots group of tribal members opposed to the dump. In addition to many other activities, OGD has filed an environmental justice contention before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB).

  Both the federal government and the commercial nuclear power industry have targeted Native American reservations for such dumps for many years. In 1987, the U.S. Congress created the Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator in an effort to open a federal "monitored retrievable storage site" for high-level nuclear waste. The Negotiator sent letters to every federally recognized tribe in the country, offering hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars to tribal council governments for first considering and then ultimately hosting the dump. Out of the hundreds of tribes approached, the Negotiator eventually courted about two dozen tribal councils in particular.

  Resistance from members within the targeted tribes, however, prevented the proposed dumps from opening. Grace Thorpe, founder of the National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans and an emeritus member of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service board of directors, rallied her fellow tribal members and defeated the dump targeted at her own Sauk and Fox reservation in Oklahoma. Tribal members on other targeted reservations turned to Thorpe, and to such Native-led groups as Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and Honor the Earth, to learn how to organize their community to resist the federal nuclear waste dump.

  The Negotiator eventually set his sights on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. But tribal member Rufina Marie Laws spearheaded her community’s resistance against her own tribal council and the Negotiator, thwarting the dump. After having failed to open the intended dump, Congress defunded and dissolved the Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator in 1994.

  The commercial nuclear power industry, however, picked up where the Negotiator had left off. Led by Northern States Power (now Xcel Energy), 8 nuclear utility companies formed a coalition that attempted to overcome the resistance at Mescalero. A tribal referendum, however, doomed the dump to eventual failure. The utility coalition regrouped as Private Fuel Storage, and then turned to the Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah, another community that had been on the Negotiator’s target list.

  At the same time, the nuclear power industry contributed large sums to Congressional and Presidential campaigns, and lobbied hard on Capitol Hill to establish a "temporary storage site" at the Nevada nuclear weapons test site, not far from the proposed federal permanent underground dump for high-level atomic waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Both these proposed "temporary" and permanent dump sites would be on Western Shoshone land, as affirmed by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. Yucca Mountain is sacred to the Western Shoshone, and their National Council has long campaigned to prevent nuclear dumping there.

  Several incarnations of the nuclear power industry-backed "Mobile Chernobyl" bill appeared between 1995 and 2000. They were so dubbed because, if enacted, they would have launched the beginning of tens of thousands of dangerous irradiated nuclear fuel shipments to Nevada. Grassroots efforts across the country, combined with Nevadan leadership in Congress and an unwavering veto pledge by President Clinton, has successfully stopped "Mobile Chernobyl" in its tracks on Capitol Hill for the past five years.

  Having lost its bid to "temporarily" store its deadly wastes on Western Shoshone land near Yucca Mountain, nuclear utilities have re-focused their hopes for "interim" relief on Nevada’s neighbor, Utah. PFS must have done its homework: it would be hard to find a community more economically and politically vulnerable than the Skull Valley Goshutes to the Faustian bargain of getting "big bucks" in exchange for hosting the nation’s deadliest poisons.

  Just 25 tribal members live on the tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation, an hour’s drive west and south from Salt Lake City in Tooele County, Utah. The remaining 100 Band members live in surrounding towns in Tooele County, in Salt Lake City, and elsewhere. The reservation is already surrounded by toxic industries. Magnesium Corporation is the nation’s worst air polluter, belching voluminous chlorine gas and hydrochloric acid clouds; hazardous waste landfills and incinerators dot the map; with a name straight out of Orwell’s 1984, Envirocare dumps "low level" nuclear waste in the next valley and is applying to accept atomic trash hundreds of times more radioactive than its present license allows. Dugway Proving Ground has tested VX nerve gas, leading in 1968 to the "accidental" killing of 6,400 sheep grazing in Skull Valley, whose toxic carcasses were then buried on the reservation without the tribe’s knowledge, let alone approval. The U.S. Army stores half its chemical weapon stockpile nearby, and is burning it in an incinerator prone to leaks; jets from Hill Air Force Base drop bombs on Wendover Bombing Range, and fighter crashes and misfired missiles have struck nearby. Tribal members’ health is undoubtedly adversely impacted by this alphabet soup of toxins. Now PFS wants to add high-level nuclear waste to the mix.

  This toxic trend in Tooele County has left the reservation with almost no alternative economy. Pro-dump tribal chairman Leon Bear summed up his feelings: "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 surrounds us."

  Targeting a tiny, impoverished Native American community, already so disproportionately overburdened with toxic exposures, to host the United States’ nuclear waste dump would seem a textbook violation of environmental justice. But the nuclear utilities did not let such considerations slow down their push for the PFS dump on the Skull Valley Reservation.

  Two days after Christmas in 1996, without the knowledge or approval of the Skull Valley Goshute General Council (the 60 adult members who govern the tribe), Tribal Chairman Leon Bear signed a lease agreement with PFS for an undisclosed amount of money. To this day, no tribal member outside the three member tribal executive committee knows how much money the tribe would receive for hosting the nation’s atomic waste dump. The NRC, which must issue a license in order for the dump to open, ruled in its June, 2000 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) that the dump does not violate environmental justice, because PFS will pay the tribe so handsomely. Estimates of the secretive pay-off to the tribal council range from 60 to 200 million dollars.

  PFS’s strategy is simple: use unlimited amounts of money to buy out any potential opposition to locate a dump on the reservation. In 1999, PFS entered into an undisclosed monetary agreement with resistant local cattle ranchers, and in May 2000 signed a deal with Tooele County in exchange for support of the dump. In an area of economic scarcity, money talks loudly. "It's pretty clear that utilities are willing to spend billions to move the spent fuel out of their back yard into ours," said Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, who adamantly opposes the PFS dump.

  "The real issue is not the money," Bullcreek, has said. "The real issue is who we are as Native Americans and what we believe in. If we accept these wastes, we're going to lose our tradition."

  Bullcreek, a tribal member who resides on the reservation with her children, disagrees with NRC’s ruling that the dump presents "no disproportionately high and adverse impacts on low income or minority populations." (DEIS, pg. LXX of the introduction).

  She first became concerned by the way in which Chairman Bear had gone about signing the lease (without first bringing it to the general council for a vote). As she looked into it, she learned about the dangers of high-level nuclear waste, about the ways the PFS dump would threaten her tribe’s health, culture, traditions and reservation community life. The NRC’s ruling assumes that, given enough money, tribal members such as Bullcreek and her family could simply move from the reservation if they didn’t like the sight of a nuclear waste dump out their kitchen window.

  Such false logic fails to recognize traditional tribal members’ inextricable spiritual attachment to the land they and their ancestors inhabit.

  "Cedar and Sage are sacred here," says Bullcreek. "I cut willow branches over there to cradle my babies like my mother did, and my grandmother did, and her mother and her mother. Their bones are on this land. If you think this is desolate then you don’t know the land. You don’t know how to be still and listen. There is peace here. I felt I had to be outspoken or lose everything that has been passed down from generations. The stories that tell why we became the people we are and how we should consider our animal life, our air, things that are sacred to us. Leon Bear is trying to convince himself that what he is doing is right, but this waste will destroy who we are."

  Bullcreek is fighting the dump because it would ruin that peace and her family’s ancient connection to the land. If the dump is built, she has said she would be forced to move away from the homeland she loves. Has NRC considered the fact that for Bullcreek-–a fluent speaker of her native tongue-–to move away from the community would be yet another severe blow to the endangered Goshute language? What about other similar adverse impacts to the traditional culture? NRC’s ruling that the dump is justified because of the large economic benefit for the tribe (DEIS, p. 6-28) also fails to recognize that Chairman Bear seems to have no intention of sharing proceeds from PFS with opponents to the dump. OGD’s contention before the Licensing Board challenges this NRC finding of no environmental justice (EJ) violation.

  Tribal opposition to the dump has taken a number of other, complementary paths as well. Tribal member Sammy Blackbear, who lives with his four children on the reservation, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, alleging that it violated its trust responsibility to the tribe by quickly approving an illegitimate lease agreement between Chairman Bear and PFS. Over twenty tribal members, including Bullcreek, have joined as co-plaintiffs. Blackbear is also working with his U.S. Congressman to investigate allegations that Chairman Bear has used PFS income to bribe some tribal members into supporting the lease agreement and dump proposal, while blocking other payments due tribal members who oppose the dump.

  Bullcreek and Blackbear are actively working with concerned citizens of Utah to develop an alternative economic plan for their reservation. An effort is underway to obtain solar panels and wind turbines for installation in the community as a clean, renewable source of electricity. Both are also working with allies in the political and grassroots arenas outside the reservation, to counter the vast resources of the powerful nuclear utilities and other corporations promoting PFS.

  OGD’s EJ contention before the ASLB could be key to stopping the dump. A successful EJ contention against Louisiana Energy Services (LES) was essential in defeating a proposed uranium enrichment plant targeted at an impoverished rural African-American community. The NRC Licensing Board overseeing the LES case quoted President Clinton’s Executive Order 12898 in its ruling: "[T]o the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law…each Federal agency shall make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States."

  OGD and its legal representatives must now navigate the complex legal and bureaucratic labyrinth of the NRC’s Atomic Safety & Licensing Board. The huge financial costs—difficult for a small group such as OGD to raise--required to effectively participate in NRC hearings poses the question, is the NRC ASLB process itself a violation of environmental justice? OGD’s contention hearing, originally scheduled for June, has now been delayed until December, 2001.

  If the NRC’s DEIS ruling--that the proposed dump is not an EJ violation because PFS will pay the tribe a relatively large sum of money–stands uncontested, it could serve as a precedent to "justify" federal regulatory agencies licensing toxic facilities that target impoverished minority communities, so long as the polluting corporation "compensates" the victims with "enough" money to "live with it" or relocate elsewhere. Offering reservation communities "enough" money to "put up with" or relocate away from proposed toxic facilities on their homeland nevertheless despoils or removes the land in which traditional culture and spirituality is rooted.

  Dangling big bucks in front of impoverished reservation communities, tempting them to do something they otherwise would not, enables corporations to "divide and conquer," by setting tribal councils against traditionals, and tribal members against each other. Even though no waste has been dumped yet, Bullcreek says PFS is already ripping her community apart.

  The outcome of the PFS fight may set important precedents for tribal sovereignty and environmental protection on reservations. The nuclear power industry is attempting to evade environmental regulations and State of Utah opposition by hiding behind the shield of tribal sovereignty. If successful, this could threaten to undermine tribal sovereignty itself.

  "Sovereignty isn’t selling your independence and your heritage to the highest bidder," Bullcreek says. "What choice will we have after they park all that radioactive waste on our land?"

  The lease agreement signed by Chairman Bear and PFS requires that the tribe "use its sovereign nation status to support and promote this Lease and Project," and that the tribe "not, at any time, pass any law, rule or regulation which could adversely affect or burden this Lease or the Project…" (Lease between Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians and PFS, May 20, 1997, p. 18). The lease also forbids the tribe from setting any environmental protection standards that are stronger than federal standards (p.24). The agreement, in effect, forfeits control of the reservation dumpsite to PFS, and regulation to the federal NRC.

  Calling on the State of Utah to take action by entering dialogue with the Goshutes about compensation, remediation and clean up of existing environmental devastation on and around Skull Valley, Indigenous Environmental Network director Tom Goldtooth said "We recognize the sovereignty of the Skull Valley Tribal Council to make decisions on behalf of their people, but the Tribe is in this situation to begin with because of unjust policies that have negatively impacted their inherent rights to maintain a healthy, economically viable community. The Tribe is not the enemy here, Private Fuel Storage is. The State needs to look at policies that threaten the Tribe’s health and well-being and work to rectify those first."

  "The nuclear industry is using Native land and Native people as a loophole to keep their reactors running," says Honor the Earth spokesperson Winona LaDuke. "The nuclear industry needs to be called to the table for seeking a political solution to the deadly environmental problem of nuclear waste they created by targeting isolated Native communities. It’s bad policy and it’s wrong."

  "Our reservation is sacred. This is the only land we have–the only thing the government left us after taking most of our country," Bullcreek said.

  Radioactivity, because of its disproportionate harmful impact on Native Americans over the past 60 years, has been called the "smallpox blanket of the Nuclear Age," referring to the practice of giving infested blankets to tribes to wipe them out and clear their lands for expropriation.

  "It is time to right the injustices of the past, and develop just and honorable relationships with Native peoples," said Winona LaDuke.

  Fighting against the PFS high-level nuclear waste dump targeted at the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes is the front line of that struggle for Native American environmental justice against corporate greed and environmental racism.

  Prepared February 15, 2001, by Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Specialist, Nuclear Information Resource Service, 1424 16^th Street, NW, Suite 404, Washington, D.C., 20036. 202.328.0002; f: 202.462.2183; kevin@nirs.org http://www.nirs.org

Radioactive Roads & Rails Action of the Month

Members of the 107th Congress: Do not approve Yucca Mountain nuclear repository!

* Background
This summer, the Secretary of Energy is scheduled to recommend Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for development as a nuclear dumpsite for high-level radioactive waste from commercial reactors and weapons facilities across the country. The issue will then return to Congress for a final vote.

In December, an internal Department of Energy (DOE) document surfaced which seriously undermines the process that the Department has used to assess the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site. A memo attached to the leaked document indicates that it was designed to help industry lobbyists win support for the repository proposal in Congress. The memo also states that the technical suitability of the Yucca Mountain site is of lesser concern to the Department than finding an economically and politically feasible way to relieve the nuclear industry of its waste problem.

The DOE, as a federal agency, is required to remain impartial as it evaluates the suitability of the repository proposal. This "smoking gun" evidence of pro-industry bias within the DOE, on the eve of the Secretary's anticipated site recommendation, calls into question the integrity of the Yucca Mountain site characterization process.

The Inspector General has agreed to investigate the matter. Members of Congress should not endorse a recommendation that arises from such a flawed process.

*Take Action!
Write to your Members of Congress to bring this issue to their attention. Help ensure that newly elected Members know the importance of this issue in the 107th Congress.

Sample letter and address below.

Find specific contact information for your Members of Congress online at www.house.gov and www.senate.gov, or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Also contact President-elect George W. Bush:
1800 G Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20270
Advice@BushCheneyTransition.com

- SAMPLE LETTER -

January 2001

The Honorable (your Representative/Senator)
U.S. House of Representatives/ U.S. Senate
Washington, DC, 20515/20510

Dear Representative/Senator X:

Congratulations on your election/re-election to the 107th Congress. I am writing to bring to your attention my serious concerns with the proposal to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The site, which is the only site being investigated and considered for permanent high-level waste storage, has not been shown to be geologically suitable and is only being investigated under pressure from the nuclear industry to find a politically expedient solution to their waste storage problem. In addition, the Yucca Mountain Project would launch an unprecedented nuclear transportation scheme, which will pose serious health and environmental risks in the 43 states through which the waste will have to travel.

The integrity of the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain site characterization process has recently been called into question by a leaked memo that surfaced last month, attached to an internal overview of the Site Recommendation Considerations Report. The memo indicates that the overview is to be used as a tool for nuclear industry lobbyists and DOE officials to convince Congress to support the Yucca Mountain Project. Although scientific investigation of the site has not yet been completed, this memo implies that the DOE has been working closely with the nuclear industry and intends to recommend Yucca Mountain as the site regardless of the results of current scientific research.

The issue of a Yucca Mountain repository is expected to return to Congress later this year, following the Site Recommendation Report by the Secretary of Energy. As my representative in the House/Senate, I urge you to vote against the repository proposal. Yucca Mountain is an unsuitable site for a project that has been characterized by manipulative political tactics rather than unbiased scientific research.

Sincerely,

Your name
Address

Cc: President-elect George W. Bush

• Dinè CARE Citizens Against Ruining our Environment
  
  Jan. 13, 2000
  Please post and distribute. This was forwarded by Dine' CARE, one of the founding organizations of IEN. They have been working with the Navajo RECA Reform Working Group on seeking adequate compensation for uranium mining and milling victims. Legislation around this issue has been an environmental justice issue that must have remedy that truely meets the needs of Navajo (Dine') and other Native and non-Native miners and millers that worked in the uranium mines during the past decades. If you have any questions, please contact either of the following: Melton Martinez at phone number listed below, or Lori Goodman at email address, kiyaani@frontier.net.
  
  From: Melton Martinez, Co-Chair Navajo RECA Reform Working Group
  Phone: (505) 287-3848
  
  Press Release

  Navajo Tribal Executive Branch Held Hostage By ex-RECA Lobbyists

  Haystack, NM - Navajo Nation, USA

  Local activists believe former lobbyists for the Navajo Nation are "holding the Executive Branch of the Navajo Nation hostage." Washington DC lawyers and lobbyists E. Cooper Brown and Wally Cummins, the activists charge, appear to be stalling the reform of the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) by arguing for measures that are sure to delay the reform process. "Somewhere somebody has got to see this for what it is," stated Melton Martinez, a community activist representing the Eastern Navajo Agency and co-chair of the Navajo RECA Reform Working Group. Martinez pointed out that by encouraging the Navajo Nation to support (HR 1516), a bill with little chance of passage. Cummins and Brown are attempting to stall reform and prolong their own contract with the Tribe.

  "This bill (HR 1516) has been around a long time with no new co-signers in months," said Martinez. "It's doubtful this bill will go anywhere, especially now that we're in an election year. Mr. Brown himself stated this a year ago in his strategy memo. He has to know that." HR 1516 was introduced in April, but has yet to make it through committee. Meanwhile, another bill, S.1515 introduced by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, has already been adopted in the Senate.

  "They (Cummins & Brown) are supporting the House bill because they know it is dead and will lead the Navajo people down a long dead end, but they'll still get their lobbying fees," Martinez argued. "At least the Senate bill will help our elders."

  Martinez and others have tried in vain to persuade the Navajo Nation Executive Branch to change its strategy of sticking with Cummins and Brown. Martinez expressed confusion and concern about the fact that the Navajo Nation Vice President Taylor McKenzie, charged with seeing to RECA reform, won't even share or discuss a resolution for supporting (HR 1516). That he tried unsuccessfully to present to the Navajo Health and Social Service committee on January 11. "We tried to get a copy of their resolution, so we can get on with the task of educating our people. We were puzzled that they wouldn't share this. Especially after all the rhetoric about working together in endless speeches made by Mr. McKenzie just last Thursday."

  Many activists blame this lack of local cooperation on the manipulation of outsiders. "Mr. Brown has been manipulating Leroy Esplain in the Office of Navajo Uranium Workers (ONUW) as well as Phil Harrison, for a long time now," said Ben Shelly, a Navajo Nation Council Delegate.

  Shelly sits on the Budget and Finance Committee. The Council committee requested an audit of the roughly $500,000 allocated by the Navajo Nation for Cummins and Brown and Phil Harrison, including approximately $30,000 intended as payment to Mr. Harrison, which he says he never received. At the January 11 Health and Social Services committee meeting, Martinez was denied the opportunity to share information on Cummins and Brown's activities. As Martinez was preparing to present documents to the committee, a member successfully filed a motion to table all RECA related discussions until February 7.

  Meanwhile, recent news articles on the audit of the lobbyists have generated responses from other radiation victims throughout the country. "We have learned that Cooper Brown has a history of taking advantage of minority communities," said Ben Shelly. "What is happening to the Navajo Nation isn't the first time his actions have been less than above board."

  Ms Doris Baker, of Cincinnati, Ohio, contacted the Navajo activists with a similar story after reading about their troubles with the DC lobbyists. Ms. Baker's mother, who is African American, was a victim of one of the United States Government's most harmful radiation experiments, and was part of a class action lawsuit for the victims. According to Ms. Baker, Mr. Brown became involved at a late stage of the legal process, "and wrecked the proposed settlement." Victims in Ohio now charge Mr. Brown with delay tactics and exploitation of disadvantaged victims. Mrs. Baker offers her support to the Navajos by saying, "Let us come together in this new Century and unite against those that prey on radiation victims."