Colorado River Native Nations Alliance
Fort Mojave • Chemehuevi • Quechan • Cocopah • Colorado River Indian Tribes


HELP STOP THE PROPOSED RADIOACTIVE WASTE DUMP!

Federal Court Gives Ward Valley Opponents Huge Victory Wilson-US Ecology Lawsuit to Force Transfer of Land, Open Nuclear Dump is Thrown Out

Proponents of the controversial Ward Valley, California, radioactive waste dump lost their lawsuit attempting to force the dump's opening, it was revealed today. The lawsuit, brought by then-California Governor Pete Wilson and US Ecology, the company that wanted to operate the nuclear dump 18 miles from the Colorado River, had asked that the federal government be ordered to transfer federal land for use as a radioactive waste disposal facility. U.S. District Court Emmet Sullivan, in a ruling dated Wednesday but received by the parties today, ruled against the dump proponents and in favor of the U.S. Interior Department and environmentalists who had joined the case, including Los Angeles-based Committee to Bridge the Gap and the Bay Area Nuclear Waste Coalition.

"This is extraordinary good news for the countless future generations who would be at risk if this dangerous nuclear project had gone forward," said Daniel Hirsch, President of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, that has fought the project for a decade. "The litigation was the last major hope of proponents of this misguided project."

Ward Valley was proposed to take radioactive waste, almost all from nuclear reactors, and dump it in unlined trenches. Very long-lived wastes like plutonium, strontium, and cesium would have been dumped there. The proposed operator had a troubled track record, with many of its past dumps having leaked and been closed; one is a Superfund site. Concern that the nearby Colorado River, source of water for much of the Southwestern United States, could be contaminated contributed to the widespread public opposition to the project.

Waste volumes have dropped 10-fold in recent years, while existing facilities elsewhere in the country take California's waste and charge a small fraction of what Ward Valley would have charged, raising serious questions about the economic viability of the project in addition to the environmental concerns. A number of radioactive waste generators have recently been distancing themselves from the project, noting they would prefer to keep shipping to the existing cheaper national dumps rather than forced to ship to the far more expensive Ward Valley site if built. The proposed facility was also heavily opposed by Native American tribes who consider the area sacred tribal land.

"This should be the deathknell for Ward Valley," said Hirsch.

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.

"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.

(04-03) 01:06 EST LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A controversial plan to build a dump for low-level nuclear waste in the California desert appeared dead after a judge ruled that U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt acted properly in rescinding transfer of the site to the state.

Friday's ruling in Washington, D.C., by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan only addressed Babbitt's reversal of an 11th-hour order by his predecessor, but both the company that was developing the dump and opponents said the plan was finished.

"There's no one left in the state as a political figure that is pushing this dump, and their only hope was that a court would force that land to be transferred," said Daniel Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a defendant with Babbitt in the lawsuit.

"It's over, it's absolutely over," said Ward Young, co-director of the Bay Area Nuclear Waste Coalition, which had also intervened in the lawsuit.

Gov. Gray Davis' office said the decision was being reviewed but had no comment.

Joe Nagel, president of American Ecology Corp., which has been seeking to develop the site through the subsidiary U.S. Ecology, said he will not appeal the decision.

"And we are not going to press Gov. Davis to appeal," Nagel said from Boise, Idaho. "I think Ward Valley is over, Ward Valley is dead. The real question is what is the state of California going to do next?"

The dump would receive low-level nuclear waste that would be placed in trenches in the Mojave Desert 18 miles from the Colorado River. Opponents argue that radioactive material could migrate to the river and that the dump is unnecessary.

The suit was filed in 1997 by the administration of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who was replaced this year by Davis, a Democrat who has opposed the plan.

The dispute arose when Babbitt came in with the Clinton administration and undid the work of predecessor Manuel Lujan Jr., who in the waning hours of the Republican Bush administration, ordered the direct sale of 1,000 acres of federal land in Ward Valley to the state of California on Jan. 19, 1993.

The Wilson administration and U.S. Ecology then sued Babbitt, claiming he had violated the Administrative Procedures Act and asking the court to compel him to transfer title to the land so it could be used as a nuclear dump.

Committee to Bridge the Gap joined Babbitt as a defendant in the suit, opposing the sale by alleging that the government has not complied with environmental statutes.

In his ruling, Sullivan noted that weeks before making the land-transfer decision, Lujan notified interested parties that the transfer could not be accomplished before the change in administrations.

"Then two weeks before the end of the Bush administration, and two days after receiving a request from then-Governor Pete Wilson of California to complete the land transfer, Secretary Lujan abruptly changed position, and took certain actions in an attempt to complete the transfer," the judge wrote.

The judge also noted that Lujan announced his decision hours after a federal judge in California had orally extended a temporary restraining order further enjoining Lujan from taking any action involving transfer of the land.

Attorney Howard Crystal, representing Committee to Bridge the Gap, said Sullivan focused on that rapid series of events in reaching his decision.

Sullivan granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment.

"He looked at all the facts and circumstances, everything that had happened in those last frantic weeks before the change of administrations and he said that given the circumstances it was entirely reasonable for Secretary Babbitt to do what he did, which was to return the status quo to what it had been before Lujan started trying to accelerate things," Crystal said.

Needles, CA -The Colorado River Native Nations Alliance (CRNNA) and Ward Valley Coalition celebrates yesterday's decision by the US District Court refusing to force a transfer of land to the state of California for a nuclear waste dump and US Ecology's announcement that they will not appeal the decision and, in fact, deem the project over.

In the wake of these announcements, the CRNNA and Ward Valley Coalition are calling upon Governor Gray Davis to act immediately to put a final end to this ill-fated project by withdrawing the state's application for the land at Ward Valley.

"This is a big victory for the Tribes and for all of the people who have worked so hard and for so many years to stop this project." said Nora Helton, chairwoman of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe. "It is now imperative that Governor Gray Davis do what he's promised to do, to live up to his words and withdraw the State's application for the land at Ward Valley. It is in his hands now to end this project once and for all!"

Although the court decision and US Ecology's announcement are potentially fatal blows to the project, until the land application is withdrawn Ward Valley will not be safe from a nuclear waste site. The CRNNA and Ward Valley Coalition oppose the placement of any type of nuclear waste facility at Ward Valley and call upon Governor Davis to ensure no such facility will ever be built.

"As part of the CRNNA, the Colorado River Indian Tribes urge Governor Davis to withdraw the land application and put a stop to the dump forever!", said Dave Harper, spokesperson for the Colorado River Indian Tribes.

The Colorado River Native Nations Alliance, consisting of the Fort Mojave, Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Quechan, and Colorado River Indian Tribes, have long opposed the siting of any type of radioactive waste facility on land they hold sacred. Together with environmentalists and activists from all over the world they have maintained a constant presence on the land at Ward Valley for 3= years and last year occupied the land for 113 days successfully halting further desecration of the sacred valley.

"Hand in hand, Native and non-Native people from all over the world have worked to win this important battle. This victory proves to us all that truth and justice do have a chance in this world today when the people work together." said Molly Johnson, office coordinator of the Save Ward Valley office in Needles, CA. "We ask Governor Davis to heed the word of the people, withdraw the land application and finally lay this project to rest."