Agency Seeks to Bypass Panel Blocking Dump : Environment: State health department hopes to acquire site for nuclear waste facility without land agency’s OK.

The state Health Services Department has ordered its attorneys to find a way to build a controversial low-level nuclear waste dump in the Mojave Desert if a key state commission carries out its intention to block the construction.

The fate of the proposed $40-million facility 24 miles west of Needles, in the Ward Valley, has been unresolved since June, when the State Lands Commission deliberately delayed action. The commission must approve the transfer of the federal land to the state of California before the dump can be built.

Two Democratic members of the commission, Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and state Controller Gray Davis, said they have major concerns about its safety and the potential financial liability of taxpayers in the event of a spill or other environmental accident at the site.

But on Tuesday, state health officials publicly confirmed for the first time that Health Service Department attorneys have been directed to find a way to acquire the land from the federal government that does not require the land commission’s approval.

“Should the lands commission decide they don’t want to participate in the transfer, we are looking at what other options are available,” Health and Welfare Agency spokeswoman Kassy Perry said in a telephone interview from Sacramento.

Word of the review came after Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), a longtime foe of the low-level dump, obtained a copy of a nuclear industry internal memo outlining a proposal to lobby Gov. Pete Wilson to approve the dump by executive action.

The memo, prepared by the Los Angeles political consulting firm of Winner/Wagner & Associates for the California Radioactive Materials Management Forum, also disclosed that the effort would be headed by Craig Fuller, President Bush’s former chief of staff.

The memo recommended that the lobbying effort directed at the Wilson Administration, federal agencies and California newspapers should be led by hospitals, universities and research institutions that generate low-level radioactive waste. The memo said they would make “a more impressive, credible and persuasive case” than the proposed dump’s operator, U.S. Ecology.

U.S. Ecology has been met with vociferous opposition, lawsuits and regulatory action in other states for allegedly violating environmental safety regulations at its other low-level nuclear waste sites.

The leaked memo drew cries of outrage from Hayden, who charged that the industry campaign was an end run by the nuclear industry to overcome determined opposition from the commission.

Hayden fired off a letter to Wilson on Tuesday, urging him to repudiate the tactic.

But Alan Pasternak, technical director of the industry trade group, said Tuesday that they only sought an alternative because the commission had already indicated that it wanted to wash its hands of the controversy.

Pasternak said that in a July 2 letter, commission Chairman Charles Warren strongly indicated that if the Health Services Department wanted to approve the dump, “it must decide how to acquire the property.”

“If there’s going to be a transfer of land, the State Lands Commission has said find another way. We’ve asked the governor to find another way,” Pasternak said.

McCarthy’s office reaffirmed Tuesday that it has grave concerns about safety and liability, and about whether other states could send radioactive materials to California.

But others--including Perry--said political concerns were behind the commission’s delay, which has led to the move to get the land by other means.

One staffer on the commission, who asked to remain anonymous, said McCarthy and Davis would welcome any opportunity to shift the decision to the Wilson Administration. “They (Davis and McCarthy) want to be out of the middle between their environmental constituents and waste generators, like UCLA,” the staffer said.