Ward Valley Plan: Waste Indeed

With the apparent end of the fight over the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump, the questions raised when this facility was first proposed 10 years ago are still unanswered.

Would the low-level radioactive material have stayed in unlined trenches in the Mojave and not trickled down into underground water supplies? Was U.S. Ecology, the firm tapped by the Wilson administration to operate this dump, fiscally sound and environmentally competent? Did the state really need the Ward Valley facility, given that waste dumps in Utah and South Carolina have excess capacity and have been accepting waste shipments from California?

A federal judge rendered further study of these questions largely moot last week by ruling that the Clinton administration does not have to turn over the 1,000 federal acres on which the state hoped to build the dump. Californians can be grateful that the ruling also shuts down the polemic on both sides. But a last piece of business remains.

Then-Gov. Pete Wilson had brought a lawsuit to compel reluctant federal officials to hand over the site, which was to be used to store nuclear waste from hospitals, research laboratories and nuclear power plants. At about the same time, Wilson and U.S. Ecology filed another suit against the federal government, claiming $80 million in damages, the amount they said they had invested in efforts to open the Ward Valley site. That case is still pending, and only when Gov. Gray Davis acts to dismiss the claim--quickly, we hope--will this long, expensive saga truly end.

The demise of Ward Valley is due in no small measure to changes unanticipated 10 years ago. With no growth in the nuclear power industry, the predicted high volumes of waste material didn’t materialize. Because of new storage techniques, waste levels even dropped, undercutting the need for a dump capable of receiving 10,000 cubic feet of radioactive waste a year. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law ordering states that generate nuclear waste to build their own disposal facilities, allowing California to transport its waste out of state.

But Wilson’s dogged pursuit of this project, in the face of nagging uncertainty about the site’s safety and fading legal and political imperatives, will remain as an expensive mistake. “Waste” is a sadly appropriate word.