Thursday, April 01, 1999
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Official hints at halting Ward Valley dump project
Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt thinks the time has come to consider alternatives to a nuclear waste dump in Ward Valley on the California-Arizona line.He said support was growing for dropping the project altogether.
In a March 12 letter to California Gov. Gray Davis, Babbitt concluded the project no longer might be economically or environmentally feasible, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. He also said the political landscape has changed.
Babbitt and Davis are both Democrats; former Gov. Pete Wilson and former Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan are Republicans.
"Much new information has come to light concerning the projected economic viability of the proposed facility," Babbitt said in the letter obtained by the Journal.
Babbitt also said the Clinton administration probably would not provide 1,000 acres of federal property in the Mojave Desert for the site, 117 miles south of Las Vegas.
Davis has yet to answer the letter, said spokesmen for both officials.
For seven years, Davis as state controller and lieutenant governor had criticized the state's nuclear-waste disposal policy.
Babbitt said more environmental testing would be needed to ensure radioactive tritium would not leak from buried waste into ground water and get into the Colorado River, the Journal reported.
Both Interior Department lawyers and Democratic leaders in the California Legislature have argued that Wilson's administration had no legal authority to enter into a 1993 purchase agreement with Lujan for the 1,000 federal acres.
Under the Wilson administration, California filed a lawsuit in 1997 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The state alleged the Interior Department improperly delayed a proposed transfer of land needed to build the dump in San Bernardino County.
The state was joined in the lawsuit by its Ward Valley contractor, American Ecology Corp. of Boise, Idaho.
The lawsuit seeks $73 million in alleged economic damages. The Interior Department denies the allegations.
American Ecology President Joe Nagel said his company would consider a settlement if it could recoup much of the $45 million it has spent on the project.
Davis aide Michael Bustamante said discussions were continuing on a resolution of the 16-year Ward Valley dispute before a judge ruled on the case.
Sentiment seems to be weighing against the dump site.
On March 23, San Bernardino County supervisors unanimously approved a resolution asking Gov. Davis "to promptly end both of the state's lawsuits ... against the federal government over Ward Valley" and to withdraw the bid to buy the land for use as a nuclear dump.