Nota: un esempio di civiltà da imitare.

Leavitt Creates an Office to Fight N-Waste Deal
December 8, 2000
http://www.sltrib.com/12082000/nation_w/51672.htm
BY JUDY FAHYS
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Anti-nuclear rabble-rousing has become an official state-government function with the new Office of High-Level Nuclear Opposition.  O-HelL-NO, the inevitable acronym, was pointed out by Gov. Mike Leavitt on Thursday as he announced the agency's creation.  "That was not by intention," he said, smiling, "but by lucky coincidence."

 The sole function of the office is to fight plans by an eight-company consortium, Private Fuel Storage (PFS), to store spent nuclear fuel rods on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley. PFS has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for permission to store 40,000 tons of lethal radioactive waste in concrete-and-steel casks about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The $3.1 billion project is seen as an economic boon to Tooele County, which plans to capture as much as $270 million, and the 125-member Skull Valley tribe.

 The state, meanwhile, is frustrated by its lack of influence over the plans because they involve the sovereign lands of an Indian nation and because the NRC has sole authority over nuclear materials.  And yet, if the storage proposal is approved, Utah would hold within its borders all of the high-level radioactive waste generated in this country over the 30-year history of nuclear power.  While the state's voice has been in the chorus objecting to the plans for years, its new coordinating office amounts to the throwing down of a political and legal gauntlet.

 Leavitt said he will ask the Legislature for $1.6 million next month to underwrite the office's work, which will involve the filing of lawsuits, tracking the NRC application, lobbying Congress and mobilizing the public. The governor, who has created the office by executive order, is also appropriating $50,000 to get it started.

 "The public needs not to just feel opposition, but to express its opposition," said the governor. The announcement was the first of a series of budget proposals Leavitt is expected to make over the next week. And he acknowledged it will be a challenge to secure the funding. "It will have to compete with all of the other [budget] demands that are there," he said.

 Sue Martin, spokeswoman for PFS, noted that the state has already had an attorney dedicated to the project for three years.  "The big difference is they [the opponents in state government] are going to ask taxpayers to put a great deal more money behind it," she said. Still, Leavitt is not alone in pushing the anti-nuclear effort.  He was joined Thursday by a large and diverse group of fellow opponents -- an example of how politics makes strange bedfellows. GOP rainmaker Frank Suitter worked alongside Dan Berman, a one-time Democratic candidate for Congress, on a strategy for the opposition. Democratic activist Jim McConkie and Republican Sen. Terry Spencer are part of the legal team.

 Meanwhile, Jeff Wright, a GOP insider and venture capitalist, has been brainstorming economic development alternatives for the tiny Goshute tribe with a longtime anti-nuclear activist who calls herself Cynthia of the Desert.

 Attorney General-elect Mark Shurtleff said fighting the Goshute waste site is a matter of using "might for right."  "That's what we're talking about here -- justice, the rule of law," said Shurtleff, a Republican. "I believe we can stop this."  Margene Bullcreek, a Skull Valley Goshute who opposes the plans, described PFS as "a big corporation" bent on dividing the people in her community and separating them from their traditions. She welcomed the state's growing interest. "Hopefully, it will prevent . . . the waste from coming to the reservation," she said.

 So did Jason Groenewold, a storage-site opponent representing the watchdog group Families Against Incinerator Risk. "It's going to take an attack on all fronts to defeat this," he said.