QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I will be your friend but don't expect me to hate your enemy."
-- Jose Barreiro
For many years various corporations have been trying to get Indian Nations
in North America to accept large amounts of money in exchange for putting
chemical waste dumps on tribal lands. These offers have split many tribes
with some members wanting the cash they thought would improve their lives
and others wanting to forgo the cash and instead sticking to the teachings
about protecting Mother Earth. For the most part, these offers were refused..
Now in the shadow of the Yucca Mountain controversy on "What shall we do
with the tons of radioactive waste spread out in dump sites across
America?", comes this report.
Published on Thursday, May 30, 2002 in the Guardian of London
Alarm as Tribe Offers Land for Nuclear Dump
by Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The bleak, barren land in Utah that was given to the Goshute Indians as
their reservation in the 19th century could now turn the tribe's few
remaining members into millionaires by becoming a nuclear waste dump - to
the fury of the rest of the state.
The 70 members of the Goshutes have offered their inhospitable land in Skull
Valley, Utah, to utility companies looking for a place to store 40,000 tons
of highly radioactive nuclear waste in advance of the construction of a
permanent site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. It is believed that the
companies would pay about $48m (£33m) to the tribe over 40 years for the use
of the land, which is about 50 miles from Salt Lake City.
An agreement has already been reached between the tribe and the eight
relevant utilities companies. Now it needs only approval from the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission to become a reality. An NRC staff report has already
been completed and concluded that the site meets all requirements. The
storage facility could open by 2005.
"We were given the land to use and this is how we want to use it," Leon
Bear, a former security guard who is now the Goshute Indian tribal chairman,
told the Los Angeles Times. He said that the tribe needed money for health
care, housing and other social programs. He points out that the military
already uses land near the reservation for incinerating chemical weapon
stockpiles and as a bombing range.
The rest of the state views the plan with alarm. "I have one focus these
days: to stop the storage facility from being licensed," said Utah's
governor, Mike Leavitt. "We don't produce nuclear waste and we refuse to
store it for those who do." The state has filed lawsuits to stop the site
being built.
The reservations were given to Indian tribes as sovereign territory in the
19th century as a permanent settlement of land disputes with the federal
government. In general, the tribes were given the most infertile and least
desirable land.
Over the past decade, many tribes have found that casinos - which are
illegal in most of the US - can provide the revenue they could never obtain
from farming the land. But few imagined that a tribe might one day make its
money from nuclear dumping and some members of the tribe are unhappy with
the plan. "We're here to defend the land not destroy it," said Sammy
Blackbear, a tribal member.
Most Utah residents are also alarmed. Polls show that more than 80% are
opposed to the reservation being used as a dump. The Yucca Mountain site
also faces opposition - mostly from tribes in Nevada who claim the site
would be built on their traditional lands.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright
law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ). All
copyrights belong to original publisher.
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