America's nuclear power industry, anxious to rid itself of the long-lived and highly-dangerous radioactive wastes at their power plant sites, have launched a political campaign to open a national dump site at Ward Valley. The industry has directed Governor Pete Wilson to pursue plans to bury radioactive wastes in shallow, unlined trenches above an aquifer, 18 miles from the Colorado River and in an area considered sacred to the five lower Colorado River Indian tribes.

The industry has been engaged in a well-financed public relations campaign to present the dump as a safe and remote repository for short-lived medical wastes. However, according to Department of Energy statistics, 85 percent of the waste slated for Ward Valley would come from nuclear reactors. A very small portion of the waste, less than 15 percent by volume and less than 1 percent by radioactivity, would come from medical sources. Most of this kind of waste is short-lived and can be safely and economically stored where it is generated.

Scientists with the United States Geological Survey have identified five subsurface pathways by which nuclear wastes leaking from the Ward Valley site would reach the Colorado River -- source of water for 22 million people in the Southwest and Mexico.

For the last ten years, a diverse coalition of environmental and social justice organizations, Native American tribes and indigenous environmental networks, city and county governments and citizen's groups have been battling the dump in the courts, in the media and on the ground. Environmental groups and Indian Tribes have notified the federal government that any attempt at a land transfer would trigger a lawsuit asserting the protections of the Endangered Species Act. Similar litigation in 1993 stopped a federal land transfer and led to the designation of 6.4 million acres of critical habitat for the desert tortoise.

The greatest threat to Ward Valley comes from Congress. Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK) and Representative Don Young (R-AK) have introduced legislation which would force a federal land transfer at Ward Valley and exempt the dump from all existing environmental regulations. The maneuver would preclude the public's right to challenge the dump in the courts.

The legislation would circumvent Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, a potent part of the law which defines the protections afforded critical habitat, paving the way for a dump in a healthy ecosystem considered essential for the recovery and conservation of an endangered species. Other laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act would be cast aside for political expediency. Attempts to place a Ward Valley rider onto the Budget Bill failed last year as activists launched a national outreach campaign that sent tens of thousands of letters and telephone calls to the White House. President Clinton vetoed the Budget Bill and cited the Ward Valley rider as one of his reasons. Murkowski and his allies in Congress have pledged to try to transfer the land again this session and the Clinton administration has yet to take a decisive stand on the issue.

For ten years, the State of California, working closely with the nuclear power industry, has been attempting to build a nuclear waste dump at Ward Valley. Ward Valley is on federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The 1980 Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act directs the states to take responsibility for the waste generated within their borders by forming regional compacts. California is in the Southwestern Compact with Arizona, North Dakota and South Dakota. However, the law does not specify the method of waste containment and many states have outlawed shallow land burial.