Needles’ Welcome Cools for Nuclear Waste Dump : Environment: The once-popular proposal has drawn opponents worried about possible health risks.

Progress has yet to pay a call on this steamy little city overlooking the Colorado River. Sure, there’s a batch of spiffy new townhouses going up along the golf course, but economic development remains as rare as a cool breeze in August.

Born a railroad town in the late 1800s, Needles (pop. 5,777) is still struggling to figure out what it’s going to be when it grows up.

So it’s not surprising that locals got a bit excited several years back when a big-time corporation announced plans to carve California’s first low-level radioactive waste dump into the desert floor nearby.

In more prosperous communities, this news might have made the populace cringe with horror. Not in Needles. Here it meant jobs. Attention. New faces. Money.

Today, however, dump supporters are being challenged by a noisy bunch of skeptics who wonder whether turning their back yard into a tomb for radioactive waste is such a good idea. At stake is not only the future of Needles, but the location of the burial ground for radioactive waste.

Allied in a group that includes retirees, young mothers and tribal council members from the Ft. Mojave Indian Reservation, foes are raising questions about the threat of ground water contamination, accidents involving trucks hauling the waste and the dump’s impact on the imperiled desert tortoise.

Determined and well-organized, the opponents have the mayor in their corner. Roy Mills, a railroad conductor elected in April, believes that even if the dump was “100% safe,” it would not behoove Needles to be “that town where they put the radiation dump.”

With the state’s decision due later this year on a license for the dump, debate has peaked. Emotions are running as high as the scorching temperatures, and many old-timers say the issue has divided the normally tranquil town.

“I’ve never done anything like this in my life before,” said Gladys Ryther, 70, a lifelong Needles resident who spent the summer going door to door collecting 1,100 anti-dump signatures. “I’m not an anti-nuker. But we’re fighting for our lives. We’re fighting for our town. We’re fighting for future generations.”

The quest for a place to put California’s low-level radioactive waste dates from 1980, when Congress told states they must build a dump for the material or form a compact with another state that plans to open one.

Currently, all of the country’s mildly radioactive waste--including contaminated tools and clothing from nuclear power plants as well as filters, rags and medical research supplies--goes to three dumps in Nevada, Washington and South Carolina. Those states, however, have grown weary of being the nation’s receptacle, and they pressured Congress to come up with the more equitable solution.

In 1983, the California Legislature passed a law agreeing to construct a dump for the 100,000 cubic feet (enough to cover a football field three or four feet high) of low-level radioactive refuse generated in the state each year. Later, Arizona, North Dakota and South Dakota signed a contract to send their waste to California.

US Ecology--a subsidiary of Agoura Hills-based American Ecology Corp.--was chosen by the California Department of Health Services to build the $30-million dump, which would operate for three decades and then be covered and monitored by the state for another 100 years. After an exhaustive search for a site, the company settled on Ward Valley, 24 miles west of here.

Flanked by two rugged Mojave Desert mountain ranges, the gently sloping valley is carpeted with creosote, burrobush and the graceful pencil cholla. Divided by Interstate 40, the area is home to the desert tortoise, the kit fox and assorted snakes and lizards.

US Ecology officials contend that there is no better place in the nation to dispose of radioactive waste. Under their plan, refuse would arrive in steel drums and be buried in unlined, 60-foot-deep trenches stretching over 70 acres about one mile south of the highway. Most of the waste would cease to be radioactive after 100 years, although a portion would remain contaminated for 300 years.

Ward Valley’s major assets, US Ecology says, are its minimal rainfall--less than five inches annually--and a ground water level 700 feet below the surface. The area is rarely visited by earthquake activity, and the nearest residents live eight miles away.

As for the tortoise, which was declared a threatened species by the federal government earlier this year, US Ecology plans to relocate about 20 of the reptiles found on the dump site and take a host of other steps to compensate for the project’s consumption of prime tortoise habitat.

“The scientific evidence is really indisputable,” said Steve Romano, vice president of US Ecology. “(Ward Valley) is simply the best place to put this facility.”

In the beginning, the people of Needles seemed inclined to agree. In a city where anew burger joint is a major shot in the arm, the prospect of a nationally significant industry locating on the doorstep--even one that will create just 21 permanent jobs--was tantalizing.

“We’ve always been a railroad town, and my view is that the more economic diversity we get the better,” said City Councilman Robert Prochaska.

US Ecology, which runs similar facilities in Beatty, Nev., and Richland, Wash., worked hard to nurture the warm reception. For starters, the company opened an office in Needles and hired a popular former high school science teacher as its community liaison.

All-expenses-paid tours of the Beatty facility were offered to anyone interested, and the company began awarding an annual $2,500 scholarship to a graduating high school senior interested in science.

“They also bought us $3,000 worth of science books this past year,” said Needles Unified School District Supt. Dennis Murray. “That’s pretty unusual around here.”

Many locals are clearly impressed by US Ecology’s performance, praising both its scientific studies of Ward Valley and its effort to be a generous neighbor.

“They’ve really tried to involve the community in this from the start,” said Mary Stevens, who serves on a citizens’ advisory committee for the project. “These are knowledgeable people. They are not out to hurt anyone. They have degrees in geology and are not . . . trying to shove something dangerous down our throats.”

Such voices, however, are no longer the only ones heard here.

It is lunch hour at the Hungry Bear restaurant, a popular downtown eatery, and Mike Haver is finishing the last of his French fries in a booth by the window. He’s heard talk of Ward Valley; he doesn’t like the sound of it.

“I don’t think this sort of thing would be good for our town,” said Haver, owner of Needles Glass & Mirror Co. “They talk about it bringing jobs into the community, but how many? Twenty jobs? Is that worth the risks?”

“Nuclear waste, radioactivity--those words scare me,” added Haver’s lunch mate, Tim South. South, associate pastor at the Needles Assembly of God Church, concedes the waste “has to go somewhere. But it seems they’re emphasizing the positives of this thing, and not telling us anything about the negatives.”

On the other side of town, Charles Butler is cataloguing the negatives, listing them in the letters he’s writing to assemblymen, senators--anyone who might help block the dump.

Butler, a retired engineer, is the leader of PARD--People Against Radiation Dumps--and his house serves as command post for the growing army of dump opponents.

“I came out here to retire, but instead I’m spending every hour of the day on the phone,” said Butler. “We’re going to beat this thing, no matter what it takes.”

PARD members have attacked everything from US Ecology’s technical data to the company’s record at other facilities it owns. In Sheffield, Ill., for example, US Ecology was sued by the state after radioactivity leaked from a now-closed low-level site operated by the company.

US Ecology’s Romano does not deny the company’s sullied history. But he argued that regulations governing waste sites have been tightened dramatically since the Sheffield dump was built in the 1960s, and noted that the Illinois environment--with its heavy rainfall and shallow ground water table--”bears no resemblance whatsoever to the desert.”

Dump opponents also worry about accidents involving trucks that will carry waste to Ward Valley. A few months back, they note, a chemical spill closed the interstate for six hours.

Finally, PARD members criticize US Ecology’s junkets to Beatty and investment in local schools. Such gestures, they charge, all add up to a company trying to buy community support for an unsavory project.

“They came in and romanced this town,” said Demarious Carter, an artist who has lived in Needles for 46 years. “They packed up all the senior citizens, put ‘em up in a motel over there in Beatty, bought ‘em dinner . . . and they all came back brainwashed.”

Mayor Mills is not a member of PARD, but he too has reservations. Mills, who is outnumbered by city council members who support the dump, said “nine out of 10 people I talk to on the street don’t want this thing in Needles.”

Besides his fear that radioactive materials might somehow seep into the ground water and contaminate a potential drinking water supply, Mills believes Needles’ image would take a beating if the dump opens next door. A major housing developer, he said, has already called to warn him about the negative fallout.

In addition, the mayor worries that the state is relying too heavily on scientific data provided by consultants hired by US Ecology: “It’s like asking the guy who’s selling you the used car whether it runs all right,” Mills said. “Are you going to trust him?”

Jack McGurk, chief of the state’s environmental health division, said he has “confidence in the integrity” of US Ecology’s research. As for public nervousness about the company’s record, McGurk said a state inspector would be at the dump around the clock, “overseeing the operations as a sort of insurance that waste is disposed of properly.”

Romano, meanwhile, characterized opponents of the dump as “a small and vocal minority” who have “preyed on people’s fears.” Romano said one brochure circulating around town “depicts a mushroom cloud, suggesting an atomic explosion. There is virtually no possibility of an explosion with these materials. If that’s not a scare tactic, I don’t know what is.”

Councilman Prochaska believes it all comes down to a matter of trust. The retired entomologist is convinced the radioactive waste site “is less of a threat than being around people who smoke.” But others, he argued, could not be convinced in a million years.

“In order to support this, you have to trust government,” Prochaska said. “This (dump) is going to be a prototype, the first of its kind, and I don’t believe the state is going to let anything go wrong. That, to me, is assurance enough.”