Proposed Ward Valley study sham, Wilson says

     Associated Press
      SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gov. Pete Wilson says he has evidence a U.S. Interior Department proposal for a joint federal-state investigation of the risk of the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump is a sham aimed at delaying the site for political purposes.
      In letters to federal officials Friday, Wilson said he had obtained though a Freedom of Information Act request a copy of a Department of Energy position paper that Wilson said "treats as laughable" the Interior Department contentions there is a need for additional study of the site's risk.
      California already has licensed Idaho-based U.S. Ecology to build the dump on 1,000 acres of Mojave Desert land in Ward Valley, about 117 miles from Las Vegas. The dump would accept low-level nuclear waste from California, Arizona, South Dakota and North Dakota for several decades.
      Among other things, the year-old Energy Department position paper said that "Interior's concern that the facility lack(s) an environmental monitoring system has no basis in fact," Wilson said.
      "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 and manipulating land use permitting authority for their own political ends," Wilson wrote.
      Wilson added in a letter addressed to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt that Babbitt's agency "has proved itself utterly incapable" of conducting the kind of study suggested last month by Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi, who has been Wilson's chief adversary in the Ward Valley dispute.
      "We have received the governor's letter this afternoon," Jana Prewitt, spokeswoman for Garamendi, said in a statement Friday. "The Department of Interior is prepared to meet with the governor's staff to determine the best way to carry out joint tritium testing," referring to a test of radioactive materials that Garamendi has proposed.
      In January, the Wilson administration filed a lawsuit to force the federal government to turn over the 1,000-acre Ward Valley site, saying the testing and additional environmental reviews were taking too long.
      Garamendi responded with the proposal that the state and federal governments collaborate in a study of whether radioactive materials could seep from the dump and contaminate the Colorado River.
      Those are just the latest in a long battle over the Ward Valley site, which Wilson says is necessary to protect the health of Californians, but which environmentalists, Indian groups and other opponents contend would damage the desert ecosystem.