Attention, Interior Secretary Babbitt

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel last week extended a temporary restraining order that prevents the sale of federal land by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to California’s Department of Health Services for a low-level radioactive waste dump at Ward Valley in the Mojave Desert. One hopes that this decision on the land transfer will come to the immediate attention of incoming Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Babbitt should look into the matter and take appropriate action to stop the sale.

Opponents of this unwise land transfer fear that if outgoing Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. signed but did not file the sale documents, then, absent any countervailing action, the sale might go through automatically. The signed documents could be filed when the restraining order expires.

Opponents of the dump charge that selling the 1,000-acre parcel, situated 22 miles west of Needles, would violate the U.S. Endangered Species Act: The area is habitat for the endangered desert tortoise.

The even more serious objections to the dump raised in earlier California hearings focused on its threat to the Colorado River. Those objections are serious enough to warrant a formal adjudicatory hearing. The transfer of land directly from the Bureau of Land Management to the Department of Health Services, bypassing the California Lands Commission, might well have eliminated the possibility that hearing would be held. Judge Patel’s timely decision increases the chance that it will now be held after all.