Before Leaping, Take a Good Look : Plan for radioactive waste site merits scrutiny

A low-level radioactive waste dump is proposed for Ward Valley, not far from the Colorado River, a major source of Los Angeles-area drinking water. Last week US Ecology, a contractor that has applied to manage the dump, near Needles, filed suit to block a public hearing before an administrative law judge on the suitability of the site.

Last spring, the state Senate’s Rules Committee received a formal opinion from legislative counsel that such a hearing was required before the dump could be licensed.

Russell Gould, acting secretary of health and welfare, and Molly Coye, acting director of the Department of Health Services, declined to schedule the hearing. The Rules Committee declined to confirm them in their positions until they agreed to schedule it. They then agreed to do so and were confirmed. US Ecology alleges that the hearing was coerced and is therefore illegal.

Senate President Pro Tempore David Roberti, chairman of the Rules Committee, responded: “The willingness of gubernatorial appointees to act within the law is what the confirmation process is all about. . . . The brief filed by US Ecology is making the strange accusation that the Senate ‘coerced’ someone to act within the law.” Last Friday, the state Supreme Court in San Francisco declined to hear the case, which now goes to the appellate court.

When the decision to hold the hearing--technically called an adjudicatory hearing--was first announced in April, serious technical questions had already been raised about the possibility that the proposed dump could contaminate ground water below the site and thereby, over time, contaminate the Colorado River, just 20 miles away. Nothing that has happened since then has changed the need for the hearing.

The questions are of daunting complexity, especially since the recent seismic disturbance in the area. But this is just why an adjudicatory hearing makes sense. In such a hearing, an administrative law judge hears evidence on all sides of the question; and all contending parties have the right of discovery, the right to present evidence and the right to call and cross-examine witnesses.

The infighting is getting intense, but the stakes for California taxpayers are high. Last May, US Ecology won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit obligating Kentucky taxpayers to assume much of the cleanup cost at a now out-of-service US Ecology dump in that state. There are differences between the two situations, but there are also broad similarities: The state as site owner inescapably assumes a major liability. This state should look very hard before it leaps.