Wilson Urged to Act on Nuclear Dump : Environment: Democratic lawmakers ask the governor to intervene in controversy over liability if the proposed facility leaks. Law requires it to be operational by 1993.

Twenty members of California’s congressional delegation urged Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday to personally intervene in the ongoing controversy over a proposed low-level nuclear waste dump in the Mojave Desert.

In a letter to Wilson, the lawmakers--all of them Democrats--said it is still not clear whether taxpayers or the dump operator would be liable for cleaning up radioactive contamination if the facility leaks.

They also complained that the state Health and Welfare Agency has failed to establish adequate reserve funds to protect taxpayers from millions of dollars in potential cleanup costs should taxpayers be held liable.

In Sacramento, the governor’s office referred questions to the Health and Welfare Agency, saying it spoke for the governor on the matter.

“We . . . are not prepared at this point to license the facility until we address questions raised by the public and various elected officials,” agency spokeswoman Kassy Perry said. “Those questions include liability.”

Under federal law, the dump must be operational by January, 1993. The Health and Welfare Agency is in the process of licensing the $50-million facility, which would be built in the Ward Valley, 24 miles west of Needles. It would be operated by a private waste management company, U.S. Ecology, and would be the nation’s first low-level nuclear waste dump to open in a generation.

For the past six months, anti-nuclear activists, Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, state Controller Gray Davis and others have raised numerous concerns about the dump, including the liability issue.

Despite repeated assurances from U.S. Ecology that taxpayers would not be held liable, questions have persisted.

On Thursday, the 20 lawmakers led by Rep. George Miller of Martinez complained that the state Health and Welfare Agency has declined to order dump users to set up a reserve fund adequate to protect taxpayers from future cleanup costs. The lawmakers also said the agency has refused to add a provision to the proposed license explicitly stating that U.S. Ecology would be liable for any damages.

“We think it more than reasonable that the operator and the beneficiaries of the waste site, not the taxpayers of California, bear the liability burden,” the lawmakers wrote.

But Don J. Womeldorf, executive director of the four-state Southwestern Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission that would oversee the project, repeated Thursday that California taxpayers face little if any liability.

In a telephone interview from Sacramento, Womeldorf said U.S. Ecology would be required to carry a $10-million insurance policy against damage to individuals or property off the site. He added that the coverage could eventually be increased to $25 million.

As far as environmental damage, Womeldorf said that even in a worst-case scenario involving a fire or flood, damage probably would not exceed $6 million--a sum he said was “well within” the ability of the “responsible parties” to cover. Under the federal Superfund law, the responsible parties include U.S. Ecology, the generators of low-level nuclear waste, and California as the owner of the site.

But Womeldorf dismissed the prospect of major contamination problems. He noted that Ward Valley’s dry climate minimizes the possibility of water carrying radioactive material off site. No liquid wastes will be accepted. He also said the dump will be equipped with sophisticated monitoring devices to detect a problem before it becomes unmanageable.