Lawsuit Threat Halts Dump Site Tests

Scientific evaluation of the safety of the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump has come to a halt after the firm chosen to operate the dump threatened to sue the scientists involved.

The testing to determine if radioactive waste could leak from the eastern Mojave Desert site was to be carried out by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and two members of a National Academy of Sciences panel on Ward Valley, for the U.S. Department of the Interior.

But US Ecology Inc., the firm licensed by the state of California to run the Ward Valley facility, contends that the research is unnecessary and part of a campaign by the Clinton administration to stall the project.

In letters to the scientists, lawyers for US Ecology said that the delays in opening the dump were highly damaging to the company’s interests. They warned the scientists that “should you continue your participation in Interior’s ill-advised project, please do so based on the knowledge that US Ecology intends to seek compensation from any persons or entities whose conduct wrongfully injures its interests in this manner.”

Deputy U.S. Interior Secretary John Garamendi denounced the letters as “raw intimidation” tactics.

“It’s a disgusting effort to deny the people of California scientific assurance that the Ward Valley site won’t put their health and safety at risk,” he said.

“The work by the two scientists has stopped, and the whole process has been significantly delayed,” Garamendi said.

He said that the two scientists, hydrogeologists Martin Mifflin and Scott W. Tyler, won’t do any more work until the federal government agrees to pay their legal costs if they are sued.

Officials of US Ecology could not be reached for comment Thursday. However, Elisabeth Brandt, who has led the state’s efforts to open the dump in Ward Valley, defended the company’s stance and agreed with US Ecology that the tests are not necessary.

“What the administration is doing has no legal basis. It’s costing people a lot of money, including the state and US Ecology,” said Brandt, chief administrative law judge for the state’s Department of Health Services.

Mifflin said he was angered by the letter but had to insist on indemnification before doing any more work.

“In my experience, it is unprecedented to get that kind of letter for considering a contract to do applied science. It’s my profession.

“But even if a legal action is entered into just for harassment purposes, the court costs could be more than the entire contract is going to pay me,” Mifflin said.

Tyler could not be reached for comment.

Garamendi said that the work will be delayed because the federal government cannot indemnify consultants under contract and that his office is trying to figure out other means of shielding them from legal costs.

After Lawrence Livermore was threatened with legal action, Garamendi said, “the lab declined to do some of the work and said they didn’t want to get involved except in a very limited way.”

A spokesman for Lawrence Livermore said Thursday that the laboratory is awaiting a full description of the work the Interior Department wants done.

“We won’t know until then whether we, in fact, can do the work,” said spokesman Gordon Yano.

As for the letter from US Ecology, Yano said, “We can’t say whether it will or won’t play a part in our decision until the federal government tells us what they want done.”

Garamendi contended that the letters from US Ecology were part of a broad campaign of intimidation, noting that its parent company, American Ecology, had sued a group of protesters in Texas, accusing them of “racketeering” in their efforts to shut down a hazardous waste dump there.

“We are convinced . . . the company is using threats as a tactic to get their way,” Garamendi said.

By delaying the Ward Valley investigation, he said, US Ecology is hoping to provoke Congress to pass legislation requiring the administration to relinquish the dump site to California. A similar effort by congressional Republicans failed this year.

The federal government owns the site just west of Needles. But the Clinton administration has refused to transfer it to the state until more tests are done to determine whether long-lived radioactive waste could migrate to the water table and to the Colorado River, about 20 miles away.

The government’s call for more testing is at odds with the Wilson administration, which has been engaged in a decade-long political battle to open the waste repository. State officials and US Ecology insist that the site has been thoroughly evaluated and found safe.

However, critics of Ward Valley, led by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), persuaded the Clinton administration to order a new round of testing after radioactive tritium was found 357 feet below the surface, near the water table, at another desert dump operated by US Ecology in Beatty, Nev.