Earth Day 2005
The greatest minds in the nuclear establishment have been searching for an answer to the radioactive waste problem for fifty years, and they've finally got one: haul it down a dirt road and dump it on an Indian reservation.
– Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth
Radioactive Racism! Nuclear waste on Native lands!
Xcel Energy/NSP is the nuclear utility most pushing this racist high-level radioactive waste dump targeted at Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah.
– Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Information and Resource Center
Opening of this dump would initiate the transportation 4,000 high-level radioactive waste casks by train across the U.S., putting millions of people in jeopardy of a Mobile Chernobyl from an accident or terrorist attack. (click here to see how close such routes could pass by you) PFS would store 44,000 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel - nearly 80% of the commercial high-level radioactive waste that currently exists in the U.S. - on the tiny Goshute reservation.
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NUKE WASTE specialist Kevin Kamps dons a radiation suit as he walks past a replica of a nuclear waste cask.
– photo © lasvegassun.com |
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The Skull Valley Goshute community is already surrounded by toxic industrial and military facilities, such as U.S. Army nerve gas incinerators and storage, the Dugway Proving Ground for chemical, biological, radiological weaponry, and the Hill Air Force Base/Utah Test and Training Range (the largest bombing range in the country), the single biggest emitter of gaseous chlorine in the U.S. (Magnesium Corporation on the Great Salt Lake), a "low" level radioactive waste dump, hazardous waste dumps and incinerators, etc. Adding high-level radioactive waste to this toxic mix is blatant environmental racism. Margene Bullcreek, the leader of the opposition to the dump within the tribe, was quoted in the New York Times on Feb. 28 "We're concerned with health, but it's also the land we believe in. I think this could destroy whatever sacredness is there."
The Skull Vally Goshute community is already surrounded by toxic industrial and military facilities, such as U.S. Army nerve gas incinerators and storage, the Dugway Proving Ground for chemical/biological/radiological weaponry, and the Hill Air Force Base/Utah Test and Training Range (the largest bombing range in the country), the single biggest emitter of gaseous chlorine in the U.S. (Magnesium Corporation on the Great Salt Lake), a "low" level radioactive waste dump, hazardous waste dumps and incinerators, etc. Adding high-level radioactive waste to this toxic mix is blatant environmental racism. Margene Bullcreek, the leader of the opposition to the dump within the tribe, was quoted in the New York Times on Feb. 28 "We're concerned with health, but it's also the land we believe in. I think this could destroy whatever sacredness is there."
According to Chris Peters of the Seventh Generation Fund in Arcata, CA, this very same dump, pushed by the U.S. nuclear establishment in government and industry since 1987, has been targeted at scores of tribes. All of them--most often led by women tribal members (such as Grace Thorpe at Sauk and Fox Reservation in Oklahoma, and Rufina Marie Laws at Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico) -- have fended off the proposed dumps, until now. None has gone as far as PFS targeted at the Skull Valley Goshutes Reservation. But it too can and must be stopped. (click here for more background information.)
It is important to note that there is a deep split within the Skull Valley Goshute community over the proposed dump. Opposing tribal councils within the community, one pro-dump and one anti-dump, are vying for control of tribal governance. The pro-dump tribal chairman, Leon Bear, retains recognition by such U.S. federal agencies as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and NRC despite an intra-tribal dispute against his legitimacy dating back to 1994, and despite his pleading guilty recently to federal charges tax evasion. Anti-dump tribal members have recently filed a lawsuit against BIA and NRC to stop doing business with the disputed, pro-dump tribal chairman whose term of office, they allege, has expired. (click here for more information.) Anti-dump tribal members allege harassment and intimidation at the hands of the pro-dump tribal chairman. The wounds within the Skull Valley Goshute community run deep already, even before the first shipment of high-level radioactive waste has arrived, showing clearly that irradiated nuclear fuel is a social poison as much as it is radioactive and toxic.
How the NRC can justify granting a license to the largest "parking lot" dump for high-level radioactive waste on the planet (with all the attendant safety and security concerns), given the chaos in governance on the reservation, is difficult to understand. Suffice it to say that Skull Valley Goshute tribal opponents to the dump, along with other Native American environmental justice groups, are signed on at the very top of the group letter.
– Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Information & Resource Service, Washington, D.C.
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