Supervisors Vote to Block Nuclear Dump : Environment: San Bernardino County board members say the decision reflects public concerns about the Ward Valley site. State agency’s attorney says the county has no jurisdiction.

Setting up a legal battle with Gov. Pete Wilson, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to block the proposed siting of a low-level nuclear waste dump in Ward Valley in the county’s northeastern corner.

The supervisors said the 5-0 vote mirrors broad public concern that radioactive waste from the dump could leak into adjacent drinking water sources, particularly the Colorado River about 20 miles away. The proposed location is an uninhabited stretch of the Mojave Desert along Interstate 40 near the town of Needles.

“The unanimous vote today reflects opposition that cuts across all strata of local society, age, income, race and party affiliation,” Supervisor John Michaels said.

The county ordinance is the latest reaction to a controversial project that has been ensnarled in litigation for the past decade. A group of protesters have been camped at the site for about six weeks.

Elisabeth Brandt, chief counsel for the state agency that has licensed the waste dump, said Tuesday that the San Bernardino ordinance is legally meaningless because the county has no jurisdiction over the land in question.

The site is owned by the federal government and must be transferred to the state before the dump can be opened.

“It is unfortunate that the county has passed something that people will think has significance when it has none,” Brandt said.

Asked how the state would respond to the ordinance, Brandt said: “One option is to purposely ignore it.”

But Roger Carrick, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe and other opponents of the dump, said the county had the same right to prohibit the facility that it has to regulate any activity that poses a danger to local residents.

“Suppose someone wanted to put on a fireworks display on state land next to a heavily wooded neighborhood,” Carrick said. “You don’t think the county fire marshal’s office could stop it? Of course it could.”

Carrick also pointed to a provision of California’s health and safety code that says state law shall not supersede local ordinances relating to radioactive materials.

The vote in San Bernardino came just days after Congress authorized the transfer of the land for the dump as part of the budget bill awaiting action by President Clinton. Congress acted after the Clinton Administration held up the transfer, demanding the state conduct additional tests.

The latest safety concerns were triggered by recently disclosed research findings at another desert dump in Beatty, Nev. Tests there indicated that high levels of radioactive pollutants had leaked 357 feet down, almost to the water table.

Experts say the terrain at Ward Valley is similar to Beatty. Like the Beatty dump, the Ward Valley repository would consist of several unlined trenches that would receive low-level radioactive debris from nuclear power plants, hospitals, laboratories and industry.

Scientists at California’s Department of Health Services have argued for years that Ward Valley waste would decompose in the desert sands. Despite the Beatty findings, they continue to maintain that there is no danger of precipitation transporting waste particles down to the water table.

The state’s experts blame the problems at Beatty on illegal dumping of liquid waste, which would be banned at Ward Valley. Although the same company responsible for the dumping at Beatty has been licensed to run the Ward Valley facility, California officials insist that tighter regulation of Ward Valley will ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated.

“I believe that people do what the regulators want them to do, and we will make sure they do the right thing,” Brandt said Tuesday.

The San Bernardino ordinance bans radioactive waste dumps within 10 miles of “significant water resources.” But the law allows the dumps at other locations in the county providing the facilities consist of waterproof vaults made of steel reinforced concrete with lead liners.

Supervisor Michaels would not rule out an exception to the ordinance at Ward Valley if it were built with vaults and liners.

Brandt said, however, that the state long ago rejected the idea of burying nuclear garbage in lead-lined vaults, believing that desert sands would do a far better job of entombing the waste.

“There aren’t going to be any liners,” Brandt said.