Batt Says Idaho Off-Limits To More N-Waste Governor Sends Strongly Worded Letters To Clinton, The Navy

Republican Gov. Phil Batt, politically buffeted by controversy over additional nuclear waste storage in Idaho, told President Clinton and top members of his administration in no uncertain words Tuesday that Idaho is off-limits to more shipments of radioactive material.

“Our citizenry will no longer tolerate this action,” Batt said in extremely strongly worded letters to the president and Vice President Al Gore.

“It is time for other states to step up to the plate. Furthermore, it is past time to adequately plan for permanent storage and to move construction along.”

Batt has been hounded by questions over his decision to allow the Navy to ship another eight loads of radioactive waste allowed under the 1993 court agreement signed by retired Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus. Batt repeatedly has tried to assure Idahoans he will resist any shipments not included in the Andrus deal.

And with 600 loads of Navy waste having been stored at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory over the past four decades, Batt told Adm. Bruce DeMars, head of nuclear propulsion for the Navy, in a separate letter that “Idaho is no longer available.”

“We have been abused by the imposition of far more waste than could be fairly allotted to us,” the governor told DeMars. “I want to state, unequivocally, that we will resist, with every means at our command, additional shipments of waste to Idaho.”

Batt was especially exercised over Clinton’s new budget, which proposes cutting the federal financial commitment to cleaning up 260 tons of highly radioactive waste and millions of cubic feet of other radioactive and hazardous waste at INEL at the same time the federal Energy Department wants to ship even more waste to INEL if it legally can do so.

The governor was particularly offended by the failure of Assistant Energy Secretary Thomas Grumbly to mention during their meeting in Washington last week that Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary was ready to sign a document designating INEL as one of three national sites for government waste storage.

“I am chagrined that no mention of this was made to me during our meeting,” Batt wrote in a letter to Grumbly.

“We will no longer tolerate the designation of Idaho as a nuclear waste repository.”

Batt previously has said his administration is investigating options for resisting future nuclear shipments that include court action as well as possible imposition of regulatory roadblocks.

In separate letters to the state’s four-member Republican congressional delegation, Batt reiterated his belief that national policy toward nuclear waste disposal has been neglected.

And, he added, “Although I have taken a real beating on this subject, I believe that it has resulted in putting a focus on the need to open a final repository for nuclear waste.”