Wilson Rejects Joint Testing on Dump Site

Gov. Pete Wilson has rejected a request from the federal government to participate in joint testing of the proposed Ward Valley radioactive waste dump and instead has called for a congressional investigation of what he calls political game-playing by the Clinton administration on the issue.

Wilson cites a year-old internal Department of Energy memorandum that he says supports his claim that federal officials are more interested in delaying construction of the dump than they are in meeting the critical need for a disposal site for hazardous nuclear waste in the state.

The dispute over the waste facility boils down to the question of who will control safety testing--the state or the federal government--at the proposed Mojave Desert site about 20 miles west of Needles and the Colorado River.

The U.S. Interior Department, which controls the federally owned dump site, called for additional testing after analysis of a similar facility, located on the same kind of desert terrain in Beatty, Nev., indicated that radioactive tritium waste had leaked out of the site and into the ground water several hundred feet beneath the dump.

The Wilson administration initially balked at the call for more tests, arguing that 10 years of analysis by the state Department of Health Services had found the California site to be safe.

In January, the Wilson administration filed a lawsuit in federal court to compel the Interior Department to transfer the site of the proposed dump to the state.

At the time, Wilson also stated his intent to move ahead with the testing before the transfer. However, he insisted that the tests be conducted by the state.

The Interior Department rejected the counteroffer and proposed that the testing be jointly run.

Now, Wilson has turned that offer down and pointed to the Department of Energy memo as evidence of the Clinton administration’s bad faith.

Obtained by the governor through the Freedom of Information Act, the unsigned memo not only takes issue with the Department of Interior’s safety concerns but warns that the Department of Energy could open itself up to a lawsuit by the state of California if it assists in the testing.

“This position paper confirms California’s stance on Ward Valley--that the Clinton administration’s so-called ‘concerns’ over environmental safety are a sham, and that they have been delaying the land transfer . . . for their own political ends, putting the health and safety of millions of Californians at risk,” Wilson said at a news conference in Washington.

The memo, from within the department’s National Low-Level Waste Program, does question the need for the kind of testing sought by the Department of Interior. But it does not say, as claimed by Wilson, that the Clinton administration’s requests for testing “are based solely on politics.”

An Energy Department spokesperson said Friday that the memo was the opinion of a single staff member and not the view of the agency. The department endorses further testing of the Ward Valley site, according to a May 2, 1996, letter signed by the department’s acting undersecretary, Thomas P. Grumbly.

“This was one person putting together his thoughts,” the spokesperson said of the internal memo. “There were other opinions and technical information supplied. This was one staff person out of how many--thousands?”

A Wilson aide dismissed the department’s response as just more politics.

“There appears to be very damning material coming from a credible federal worker, and now we have a response from a political document by a political appointee of the Clinton administration,” said Wilson aide Sean Walsh.

However, critics of the project say the office that generated the memorandum has played a partisan role in Ward Valley politics.

“This office has been lobbying for the Ward Valley facility for several years, including funding a booklet used to promote the Ward Valley project which was circulated among key members of Congress,” said Dan Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit environmental organization that has spearheaded the fight against the dump.

Fiore reported from Washington and Clifford from Los Angeles.