Ward Valley: Worthy Fight for Feinstein

Nothing is more important to the economic health of California than the state’s infrastructure. And no component of that infrastructure is more important than a safe water supply. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) has mounted a sudden, back-door threat to an indispensable California water source, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein has got to join Sen. Barbara Boxer in stopping him.

The water source in question is the Colorado River. The threat to it is a low-level radioactive waste dump proposed for Ward Valley, 20 miles from the river and connected to it by ground water. Could radioactivity migrate from the dump to the river?

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien is worried that it could. On June 16 he ordered the state to “suspend all approvals or activities relating to this project that could result in any change or alteration to the physical environment” until the state had addressed--not pro forma but in a serious “pre-approval setting”--his key concern: “Will the Colorado River be contaminated?” Because of “the extraordinary importance of what is at stake here, i.e., radioactive waste and drinking water,” the judge argued, “any doubt must be resolved in the form of caution.”

Johnston, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has introduced legislation that would sweep O’Brien’s well-grounded caution aside and force the Clinton Administration to transfer the federally owned Ward Valley site to the state without waiting for the environmental review O’Brien ordered. If the Louisianan succeeds, the President will be forced to break his repeated promise to California that he would wait for court review to conclude before proceeding with his own evidentiary hearing under Interior Department auspices.

A National Academy of Sciences review, commissioned by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, is now in progress. But the results of this review, along with those of the review O’Brien has called for, are not an alternative to the Interior Department’s own evidentiary hearing. On the contrary, those results are parts of the evidence that Interior must be given time to consider.

Many related issues remain unresolved, but don’t expect Johnston to consider them. His hearing (beginning today) on legislation probably--in the Senate’s patented backdoor manner--to be introduced as an amendment to an appropriations bill is by invitation only and will not consider any of the topics that are of such concern to Californians.

As listed in a letter from Boxer to Johnston, these topics include, besides the contamination threat: the fear that US Ecology, with its abysmal track record, cannot be trusted to operate the facility; the fear that California taxpayers will face crushing liability if pollution occurs; the fear that the state does not accurately understand the nature and volume of the wastes destined for the site, and the fear that if pollution occurs remediation will be impossible.

Sen. Feinstein, are you listening? This is not Sen. Boxer’s issue. This is a California issue. And this is not just an environmental issue but also an utterly crucial economic issue. Both senators should rally their colleagues against this sneak attack on California’s water supply.