Governor Wilson has selected a notorious waste management firm as the dump contractor. US Ecology, formerly Nuclear Engineering Corporation, has left a trail of leaking dumps and litigation across the country. Their nuclear dumps at Sheffield, Illinois; Maxey Flats, Kentucky; Richland, Washington and Beatty, Nevada are leaking dangerous radioactive materials into the surrounding ecosystem. Two of their toxic waste dumps are Superfund sites.

US Ecology has insisted that they have learned their lesson from their leaking waste dumps in the eastern (wetter) part of the country and has asserted that a desert dump would never leak. They offered as an example their Beatty, Nevada, nuclear landfill with the same design as the Ward Valley proposal.

Last year, it was disclosed that a scientist on contract with US Ecology failed to disclose data which revealed that radioactive materials had migrated 360 feet below the Beatty site and was marching inexorably toward ground water ten feet away. This revelation caused Deputy Secretary of the Interior John Garamendi to call for a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) to explore new information which has surfaced since the original Environmental Impact Statement in 1991. Dump opponents fear that the SEIS will only serve to delay a decision on the dump project. There is already ample evidence to conclude that the proposal at Ward Valley would contaminate the ecosystem.

Dump opponents have recommended that the SEIS explore alternatives to shallow land burial; analyze the waste stream slated for Ward Valley; honor Native American land, water, cultural, religious and sovereignty rights; recognize that the dump violates environmental justice mandates; and acknowledge the adverse impacts of the proposed project on the threatened desert tortoise. Other issues include the danger from the transport of nuclear wastes; financial liability for waste containment; the health effects of radiation exposure; and emergency preparedness. But, environmental impact statements are designed to mitigate projects, not stop them.

Shallow land burial of radioactive wastes results in contamination of the soil, air and water. All six of America's commercial nuclear landfills are leaking. There are environmentally and economically sustainable alternatives to shallow land burial of nuclear wastes. In fact, with on-site storage capacity to store most medical, research and biotech radioactive wastes until they decay, a nuclear dump is not needed. Most medical radionuclides are short-lived and decay in weeks, months or years. A small percentage of the waste generated by medical research and biotech companies is long-lived and should be stored in more permanent facilities such as decommissioned nuclear power plants.

Currently, both long-lived waste from nuclear power reactors and short-lived waste from medical research and biotech industries and put in the same "low-level" waste category. In other countries, what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines as "low-level" is categorized as "intermediate" or "high-level" depending on toxicity and longevity. This manipulation of language creates misconceptions of the dangers of so-called "low-level" wastes. Cesium and strontium, which remain deadly for up to 300 years, and plutonium, which remains toxic for 250,000 years are called "high-level" waste when they are in the reactor core. Once sifted out into filter resins they are re-classified as "low-level." According to the operating license, the proposed dump could receive 120 pounds of plutonium and tons of contaminated reactor parts from the Diablo Canyon, San Onofre, Humboldt Bay, Rancho Seco and the Palo Verde nuclear power plants.

Instead of creating a mixed brew of wastes from reactors and medical research facilities, radioactive waste should be segregated by longevity and treated accordingly. Reactor waste should be kept in long-term monitored, retrievable storage (MRS) facilities on-site wherever safe. A redundant monitoring system would detect leakages before they migrate into the surrounding area and retrievable storage mechanisms would remove leaking waste containers to repair or replace them. Leachate collection systems would collect leaking waste before they migrate off-site.