Ward Valley Low Level Radioactive Waste Facility

In New York, the showdown came last spring on a bridge southeast of Buffalo. When state crews tried to inspect a proposed site for a low-level nuclear waste dump, they were met by a mob that included a column of wheelchair-bound retirees and 10 men on horseback, who charged. In Nebraska, promoters of that state's planned radioactive dump were greeted by ranchers toting buckets of feathers and hot tar.

U.S. Ecology, the firm that hoped to operate the Ward Valley nuclear waste dump, is seeking $162 million in damages in a lawsuit stemming from the Davis administration's abandonment of the project. The suit, filed Wednesday in San Diego Superior Court, would also require the governor to resume efforts to acquire the site of the proposed dump near Needles in the eastern Mojave Desert. Championed by former Gov.

In the turf war over the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump, the Wilson administration now says it plans to enter the federally owned land to do critical safety testing, just as the Clinton administration has cleared the way for its scientific experts to do the same tests. "We're just about ready to go," said Elisabeth Brandt, the Department of Health Services lawyer who has led the state's efforts to build California's first low-level nuclear waste repository.

As state officials resume their search for a long-term dump for low-level radioactive waste, environmentalists fear that a dismissed desert site near the Colorado River may be resurrected. Confusion over the fate of the controversial Ward Valley site was triggered by conflicting statements on behalf of government officials last week. The spokesman for a state advisory panel studying the hot-button issue said Ward Valley remained an optional site for the disposal of the waste.

Gov. Pete Wilson has rejected a request from the federal government to participate in joint testing of the proposed Ward Valley radioactive waste dump and instead has called for a congressional investigation of what he calls political game-playing by the Clinton administration on the issue.

While Gov. Pete Wilson continues to push for the Ward Valley nuclear waste dump, he is also trying to ban waste shipments out of state despite his assertion that stockpiles of radioactive refuse pose a health and safety threat. Wilson has for years blamed opponents of the proposed Mojave Desert low-level nuclear waste dump for forcing hospitals and research institutions to warehouse dangerous radioactive waste in store rooms, back alleys and other unsafe locations.

At an impasse in talks with the federal government over the safety of California's proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump, state officials are backing a move in Congress to transfer the dump site without conditions sought by the White House. A Republican proposal in the House, scheduled for a key committee vote today, would end further wrangling over the site by ordering its transfer and arbitrarily declaring that all relevant environmental laws had been met.

A House committee approved a disputed proposal Tuesday to transfer the Ward Valley nuclear waste dump site from federal to state control, a move that could abruptly cut off debate over the safety of the proposed dump. If approved by Congress, the language added to the Republican budget reconciliation package would transfer 1,000 acres in the eastern Mojave Desert without conditions sought by the White House.

Radioactive material that would be deposited in the proposed Ward Valley low-level nuclear waste dump near the Colorado River would come largely from nuclear reactors and could be far more toxic than previously portrayed, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

Trying to keep the door open for building a controversial low-level nuclear waste dump in the Mojave Desert, the state Department of Health Services has asked the federal government to transfer its ownership of the site to the state, it was learned Wednesday. The request, made last week in a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from state Health Services Director Molly J. Coye, was not made public, although copies were delivered to several state legislators.

Gov. Gray Davis said Wednesday that he will order a panel of experts and environmentalists to explore options for the disposal of radioactive waste now that plans for a controversial site in Ward Valley have been scuttled. The governor announced that he will not appeal a judge's decision in March that blocked an attempt by California to obtain the Ward Valley property in the eastern Mojave Desert from the federal government. Davis has been a longtime opponent of the Ward Valley proposal.

A federal judge in Washington has dealt an apparently lethal blow to the bitterly contested, 10-year-old plan to build a dump for radioactive waste in Ward Valley in the eastern Mojave Desert barely 20 miles from the Colorado River. "I think [the] Ward Valley [dump] is dead," said Joe Nagel, president of U.S. Ecology, the company that was going to build and operate the dump. "This was really the basic case that was going to decide whether or not there was going to be a Ward Valley [dump]." U.

Democratic leaders of the California Legislature have asked the White House to halt negotiations with Gov. Pete Wilson aimed at transferring the proposed Ward Valley nuclear dump site to the state. Wilson's proposal to acquire the land is illegal because the state Department of Health Services, which has been negotiating to buy the land, lacks authority to do so, the leaders say.

A steady, 16-year decline in the quantity of low-level radioactive waste disposed of in the United States is prompting officials in several states to question the need for a new generation of commercial nuclear waste dumps, the first of which would be in Ward Valley in the Mojave Desert in eastern California.

Radioactive material that would be deposited in the proposed Ward Valley low-level nuclear waste dump near the Colorado River would come largely from nuclear reactors and could be far more toxic than previously portrayed, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

In the turf war over the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump, the Wilson administration now says it plans to enter the federally owned land to do critical safety testing, just as the Clinton administration has cleared the way for its scientific experts to do the same tests. "We're just about ready to go," said Elisabeth Brandt, the Department of Health Services lawyer who has led the state's efforts to build California's first low-level nuclear waste repository.

In a move long sought by environmentalists, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt on Wednesday requested Gov. Pete Wilson to hold a public hearing to review safety concerns at a proposed nuclear waste dump in the eastern California desert. In a letter to Wilson, Babbitt made it clear that even though federal law did not require such a hearing, he wanted one held before he would agree to transfer the site, now in federal hands, to the state for the proposed Ward Valley dump.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has triggered the anger of environmentalists and some of California's Democratic leaders by approving a key environmental report for the state's proposed radioactive waste dump without awaiting the results of a hearing to examine safety concerns. Opponents of California's proposed disposal site in the Mojave Desert's Ward Valley near Needles accuse Babbitt and Gov. Pete Wilson of making the hearing a sham and acting as though the dump is preordained. Sen.

Gov. Pete Wilson has rejected a request from the federal government to participate in joint testing of the proposed Ward Valley radioactive waste dump and instead has called for a congressional investigation of what he calls political game-playing by the Clinton administration on the issue.

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.