Did the State Tell Us Everything?

Did the California Department of Health Services deliberately falsify--or shield--information in its licensing of a low-level radioactive waste dump at Ward Valley?

This is the question raised by the department’s delivery of 144 pages of documentation “inadvertently omitted” from a copy of the administrative record released in connection with a legal challenge to the licensing.

The characterization of the mix of radioactive waste anticipated at the dump is dramatically different in the newly released pages from what was seen in the official environmental reports on the basis of which U.S. Ecology, a private firm, was licensed to operate the dump.

There is, in particular, a vast discrepancy concerning the amount of radioactivity expected to come in the form of tritium, a relatively short-lived radioactive isotope used in medical research, and the amount expected to come in the form of longer-lived isotopes from nuclear power plants. The official reports appear to understate the amount of one extremely hazardous isotope, plutonium-239, by a remarkable factor of 7,000.

The Department of Health Services contends that it cannot be said to have mischaracterized the waste stream if the full record is taken into account. But the new information is undeniably disturbing, and Sen. Barbara Boxer has called on Gov. Pete Wilson to cancel the license in light of it.

The Sierra Club has gone a large step further, calling on Wilson to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate possible criminal activity; specifically, whether the Department of Health Services withheld or misrepresented information at the request of U.S. Ecology.

These are serious allegations. Without joining either Boxer or the Sierra Club in their specific recommendations, The Times endorses the interim action of California Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer in postponing, until this disquieting matter can be resolved, the confirmation of Russell Gould as state budget director. Gould headed the Department of Health Services during the key closing period of the Ward Valley licensing.

“(This) is a serious charge and ought to be resolved before we act on Gould’s confirmation,” Lockyer said. Gould may well prove to be an excellent budget director, but the people need answers to this mystery.