Batt Defends Waste Deal; Says Foes Lack Alternative

Gov. Phil Batt escalated the defense of his nuclear waste deal with the federal government on Tuesday, calling his critics liars and claiming they have no plan to remove the hundreds of tons of highly radioactive material dumped in Idaho over the past four decades.

“They have twisted the details of the agreement, misled voters about its effectiveness and in some cases, flat out lied to people about what the agreement says and accomplishes for Idaho,” Batt told reporters called into his office for the counterattack.

And a leader of the initiative to void Batt’s deal and subject any future ones to legislative and voter approval essentially acknowledged last week in Idaho Falls that Stop the Shipments and the initiative have no plan for dealing with the stockpile of highly radioactive waste already in Idaho.

“We didn’t make the problem so we’re not really responsible for coming up with a total solution,” former state Sen. John Peavey said.

But Peavey claimed his comment was about the global waste problem, not Idaho’s, even though the question was about why the initiative did not include any solutions to the radioactive dumping problem.

The initiative, the governor countered, “will not stop the shipments. It will open us up to unlimited shipments. And it does nothing about getting the waste that is already here out.”

With less than two weeks until the polls open, the governor seemed increasingly confident that voters would reject the initiative.

The agreement, struck last Oct. 16, allows the federal government to dump another 110 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel - and nothing more - at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory over the next 40 years. In return, Batt secured a court-enforced time-table for cleanup and removal of that waste and most of the waste already at INEL by 2035.

Critics condemn the deal for being negotiated in secret and contend it is so riddled with loopholes that the federal government will welsh on cleanup and removal requirements and simply turn INEL into the nation’s de facto dump.

But Peavey has also conceded that should the agreement be voided there is no guarantee - beyond a human blockade at the state borders - that more waste will not be shipped into the state.

He maintained on Tuesday, however, that voiding the agreement would let the state go back to federal court where it can prove that Idaho is the worst place in the world geologically to be storing nuclear waste.

Peavey also claimed Batt was misleading voters by saying his deal really does limit waste shipments and set a timetable for cleanup and removal, blasting the media for not making his allegation clear.

But while the deal may have flaws that Batt does not readily admit, he maintains there is a prohibition against dumping any waste over the shipments specifically authorized and without it Idaho is open to thousands of additional shipments. Prior to cutting the deal, the government intended to send about 200 tons of waste to Idaho.

Almost more importantly, however, Batt claims that without the deal there would not be a comprehensive plan to clean up the waste that poses a threat to southern Idaho’s underground aquifer or the timetable for its removal. The amount of new high-level waste dumped under the deal will increase the total INEL storage of high-level waste by 8.4 percent.

After early polls showed a solid majority of likely Idaho voters supporting the initiative, an independent poll taken two weeks ago found those surveyed evenly divided at just over 40 percent each with 15 percent undecided.