Quick OK Urged for Nuclear Waste Dump : Environment: Powerful Louisiana senator asks Babbitt to speed approval of the Mojave Desert site.

Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), one of the most influential members of Congress on environmental issues, has urged the Clinton Administration to move more rapidly to approve California’s first nuclear waste dump, the proposed Ward Valley disposal site in the eastern Mojave Desert.

In a letter written last week to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Johnston complained that Babbitt is taking too long to transfer the federal land needed for the Ward Valley site and that further delay will cause economic hardship for universities, hospitals and industries that now must bear the costs and risks of storing nuclear waste.

Aides said that Johnston wasn’t trying to pick a fight with California Sen. Barbara Boxer. But his letter follows on the heels of an impassioned statement by Boxer excoriating Babbitt for moving too fast to approve the Ward Valley site. Boxer also accused the Interior Department of muzzling government experts who had expressed concerns about the safety of the site.

A member of Johnston’s staff who did not want to be identified said that the letter was not intended as a response to Boxer. “I don’t think Sen. Johnston had Sen. Boxer’s concerns in mind when he wrote the letter,” the aide said.

But Johnston made it clear in his letter that he disagreed with Boxer’s assertion that significant safety issues remain unresolved.

“The suitability of the Ward Valley site for the Southwestern low-level radioactive waste repository has been examined thoroughly over the past four years by both federal and state officials,” the Louisiana Democrat wrote.

And while Boxer argued that a pending hearing on Ward Valley safety issues will be a “sham” if it is conducted in the limited manner Babbitt and Wilson have in mind, Johnston wrote that the hearing wasn’t even necessary.

“In light of the close scrutiny that the project has already received, I doubt that another public hearing will prove useful,” Johnston wrote.

Johnston pointed out that he did not object to the hearing when Babbitt called for it last August because, he said, “I thought that the limitations you placed on the scope of the hearing and the schedule you outlined ensured that the hearing would, in your words, ‘start promptly and move expeditiously to a conclusion.’

“Such has not been the case,” Johnston continued. “The schedule you set out in August has already slipped by a month. Gov. Wilson and you still have not agreed on who should preside at the hearing, and there is no end in sight.”

Members of Boxer’s staff said she was traveling and could not be reached for a comment on Johnston’s letter.

Johnston is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has life-and-death jurisdiction over the Interior Department’s environmental agenda. Much of that agenda, relating to land use, water and timber policy, and offshore oil drilling directly affects California.

Johnston is a longtime proponent of nuclear power, and his decision to weigh into the Ward Valley controversy underscores the importance of the California project to a planned nationwide network of state-run nuclear waste dumps. Ward Valley would be the first of a new generation of such sites, and it would provide relief for several states that soon may have nowhere to take low-level radioactive waste that is generated by nuclear power plants, electrical utilities, hospitals and a growing biotechnology industry.

In his letter, Johnston pointed out that Babbitt, when he was governor of Arizona, had played a leading role in fashioning the legislation that transferred jurisdiction over dumps, like Ward Valley, from the federal government to the states.

The Ward Valley site is south of Needles and about 20 miles from the Colorado River. The proximity of the river is a major source of concern for opponents of the dump. The opponents take issue with government reassurances that any leakage of radioactive material from the dump would not make its way to the Colorado.

Last month, Babbitt released an environmental assessment of the project that discounted many of the risks raised by its opponents. About the same time, the California Department of Health Services issued operating licenses for the dump.

Boxer entered the debate after learning of a memorandum by three geologists employed by the U.S. Geological Survey, a branch of the Interior Department, which argued that official environmental reviews had not dealt with evidence they had of drainage links between the site and the Colorado River.

“No one at the department ever even tried to find out if the geologists’ concerns were justified,” Boxer said at an Oct. 11 news conference.

Interior Department Solicitor John Leshy acknowledged late last week that the hearing had been delayed because Wilson and Babbitt, so far, have not been able to find a mutually acceptable presiding officer.

“That’s been a major hang-up,” Leshy said.

Leshy defended Babbitt’s decision to limit the scope of the hearing, in particular Babbitt’s decision not to allow pretrial discovery--a legal tool that Ward Valley opponents say they need to unearth documents that would support their case that the dump site is not safe.

Leshy also said that opponents would not be allowed to examine the past operating record of U.S. Ecology, the company licensed to build and run the dump. Opponents contend that the company has a dismal record of running waste disposal sites elsewhere.

Leshy said it was up to state officials to look into those issues, and he said that the Interior Department was bending over backward in the interests of safety by agreeing to hold even a limited hearing before approving a land transfer.

“No one in the department can think of an instance in which a hearing like this has been called for. What we are going through is unprecedented and really quite extraordinary.”