State Sues U.S. to Get Site for Desert Dump

Saying that his patience was spent, Gov. Pete Wilson said Friday that the state is suing the federal government in an effort to obtain 1,000 acres of the Mojave Desert for a low-level nuclear waste dump.

“We are going to court as a last resort because it appears to be our only option for getting the property from the Clinton administration,” said state Health Director Kim Belshe.

California has already licensed Idaho-based U.S. Ecology to build the dump 18 miles from the Colorado River near Needles. But safety concerns, and the fact that another of the company’s dumps in Nevada is already leaking, prompted U.S. Interior Department officials last year to order additional soil and water testing at Ward Valley.

“My patience with these tactics of delay is now exhausted,” Wilson said in a letter to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. “I no longer believe your department intends to complete this transfer under any circumstances, regardless what risks this refusal presents to public health and safety.”

However, Dan Hirsch of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, which opposes the dump, accused the Wilson administration of suing to try to block environmental testing.

“It sends a very loud signal that the governor knows the nuclear project is unsafe and will leak like all of this company’s other dumps,” Hirsch said.

“It is cowardly and shameful,” he said of the suit. “I think this is the last gasp of the Ward Valley project.”

The state’s suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, asks the court to compel the Interior Department to turn over the land.

A move in January 1993 by President George Bush’s administration to transfer the land to the state was blocked by a federal judge in San Francisco.

“The Clinton administration has been addressing unresolved questions surrounding the transfer ever since,” said Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi.

“While we have not seen the complaint the state has filed, we are confident that our careful approach to addressing the unresolved questions, including issues of public health and safety, will be vindicated,” Garamendi said.

The Wilson administration says that radioactive waste now being stored at private generators is a health hazard.

The state also contends that cancer and biomedical research relying on radio nuclides has been threatened by not having a local dump, and that such uses generate much of the radioactive waste bound for Ward Valley.