Idaho Tribe Blocks Nuclear Waste Shipment Shoshone-Bannock Leaders Delay Train While Demanding Feds Negotiate A Deal

Shoshone-Bannock tribal leaders blocked a federal nuclear waste shipment for more than six hours Tuesday, saying the feds haven’t negotiated any agreement for the waste to cross their reservation.

Fort Hall Business Council Chairman Delbert Farmer said the tribe wants the same concessions Idaho got in its agreement with the feds - including millions of dollars for economic development.

“We told them we would like an agreement equal to or more than the state of Idaho got,” Farmer said.

The tribe agreed to let Tuesday’s rail shipment cross the southeastern Idaho reservation after getting three promises from the federal government:

The train would not stop anywhere on the reservation.

Tribal police would escort it. The tribal patrol car cruised along a highway next to the tracks, lights flashing, as the train crossed.

High-level representatives from the Navy, the Department of Energy and the Department of Justice will meet with tribal officials at Fort Hall Friday to begin discussions about the shipments.

Farmer said federal officials agreed to notify the tribe when additional shipments are due to arrive this week, so tribal police can escort the trains.

Tuesday’s shipment was the first under the agreement Gov. Phil Batt negotiated with the federal government last week. The agreement allows nuclear waste into Idaho in exchange for federal concessions. No commercial waste is allowed, the number of shipments is limited, and the federal government promised to remove the waste by 2035 or face $60,000-a-day fines.

The agreement requires the federal government to give Idaho $30 million in DOE funds between 1997 and 2000 for “community transition purposes and any other purposes that are mutually acceptable to the parties,” including a project that would use Idaho National Engineering Laboratory nuclear technology to treat some types of cancer. It also promises funding for a new $7 million building at the Naval Acoustic Research Detachment at Bayview, plus money for environmental cleanup and waste processing at the INEL near Idaho Falls.

“Time will test whether that agreement is a good agreement for the state of Idaho or not,” Farmer said. But, he added, “We wish that the federal entities … would have come to the tribe and said, ‘Hey, we’re getting into an agreement for shipment with the state of Idaho, and we need to do the same with you because you’re a sovereign like the state.”’

Farmer noted that all the waste that travels in or out of the INEL under Batt’s agreement will cross the reservation.

“We can’t just let it pass,” he said. “We need to have some kind of an agreement that allows it to pass the reservation. We’re concerned about our homeland, as well as the environment and the people on the reservation.”

Tuesday’s shipment, which consisted of six casks of spent fuel from Navy nuclear warships at Bremerton, Wash., did not pass through Spokane or North Idaho.

Three tribal police cruisers intercepted the train just north of Pocatello.

John Bromley of Union Pacific Railroad confirmed that the train was held up for six to eight hours near Pocatello. “The negotiations were really between the government and the Indian tribe. All we did was wait until it was resolved,” he said.

Brad Bugger, spokesman for the DOE at Idaho Falls, said the Navy took the lead in Tuesday’s negotiations because it was the Navy’s waste shipment. “I know that the train was allowed to proceed through the reservation and it’s on its way here, and that’s really all I know,” Bugger said Tuesday afternoon.

Naval officials could not be reached for comment.

Gov. Batt’s spokeswoman, Amy Kleiner, said Tuesday that Batt has met with the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes a half-dozen times and toured their reservation last month. “They have not brought this issue up to him,” she said.

However, the tribes did try to attend a meeting Batt had in February in Washington, D.C. with Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, Kleiner said. They weren’t allowed to attend the meeting.

Kleiner said any new agreement would have to be worked out between the tribe and the federal agencies. “The state really does not have a role with that.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Betsy Z. Russell Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.