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Radioactive Waste Site Licensed : Environment: State OKs plan for low-level dump in Mojave Desert, and Wilson agrees to call public hearing on the project. Final approval hinges on federal deeding of land to California.

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The construction of a low-level radioactive waste facility in the Mojave Desert moved closer to reality Thursday as state health officials issued licenses for the project and Gov. Pete Wilson agreed to a public hearing on the proposed site.

The state’s decision on the Ward Valley site came one day after a coalition of medical industry leaders met in San Diego with Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) to urge Wilson to license the project. The facility is designed primarily to dispose of medical waste, according to U.S. Ecology, the company that will operate the dump.

The governor said his decision to hold the hearing was made in response to a request from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who must decide if his agency will transfer 1,000 acres of federal land in Ward Valley to the state for the proposed site.

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Wilson said the hearing would be held near Ward Valley and would be presided over by an administrative law judge who is acceptable to state and federal officials.

Ron Joseph, chief deputy of operations for the Department of Health, said he expects that the hearing will be completed by the first of the year. If Babbitt decides shortly thereafter to approve the land transfer, Joseph predicted that construction on the facility could be finished within eight months and it could begin accepting waste by January, 1995.

In a letter to the interior secretary, Wilson said Thursday that he was confident Babbitt would find that “California has designed a facility which goes to great lengths to guarantee public and environmental safety.”

“There is an urgent need for safe, long-term disposal of low-level radioactive waste,” he wrote the secretary, “if we are to avoid the potential dangers of storage at hundreds of sites around the state, many in metropolitan areas.”

The governor’s decision was a setback for environmentalists. They contend that while they have repeatedly demanded public hearings, the forum suggested by Wilson would not be adequate to air all the safety concerns about the facility.

Daniel Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, an environmental group opposing the Ward Valley site, said that he was especially angered by the governor’s decision not to permit discovery--a legal procedure that he contends would have made public a series of secret documents relating to the facility.

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“The hearing that he proposes is a joke. The public will have no access to the embarrassing records the department has hidden,” he said.

Hirsch and state Controller Gray Davis, also an opponent of the project, said licensing of the facility was ill-timed and should not have been permitted until after the public hearing.

“The Wilson Administration has prejudged the project by issuing a license before holding the hearing,” Davis said. “This project is poorly designed and poorly located. . . . I fear the very limited Wilson hearing proposal will not adequately provide a full public review of all the critical issues.”

Joseph, however, said state officials believe the licensing and the hearing are separate issues. He said officials have been examining the project for nearly eight years and have found no evidence that it is either unsafe or environmentally unsound. “We believe it is an absolutely appropriate site,” he said.

Federal officials said earlier in the day that Wilson had called Babbitt in San Jose, where he was attempting to round up support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, to notify him of his decision.

In one of his last actions before leaving office, former Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. agreed to transfer the federally owned Ward Valley land to California so the dump could be built. But Babbitt rescinded that order upon taking office.

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Babbitt asked Wilson last month to hold hearings to examine the suitability of the Ward Valley site, even though a state court ruled this year that it was not legally necessary.

In an interview Wednesday, Babbitt said it is vital to build a dump soon in California because hospitals and other businesses are stockpiling dangerous materials until a decision is made. The options for places to locate such a disposal site, he said, are slim, but he still wants hearings held to satisfy his environmental concerns.

About 200 businesses in California produce low-level radioactive waste, mostly electric utilities, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and universities. Southern California Edison and General Electric Co. produce the largest volumes.

The companies are either storing their waste or hauling it at great expense to the only facility that will take such waste from California--a dump in South Carolina.

Cone reported from Los Angeles and Ellis from Sacramento.

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