Feds Looking Over ‘Final Offer’ On Nukes Officials Tell Gov. Batt To Expect A Response On Future Storage Of N-Waste At Inel By End Of Next Week

The Clinton administration on Friday acknowledged receipt of Gov. Phil Batt’s final offer for an out-of-court resolution on resumed radioactive dumping in Idaho.

But Assistant Energy Secretary Thomas Grumbly said neither the department nor the nuclear Navy would be able to assess the proposition by Batt’s noon Tuesday deadline.

“We will respond as soon as possible and in any event by the end of next week,” Grumbly wrote in a brief note to the governor.

The governor immediately advised Grumbly that the extra time was no problem, but Batt warned that the administration should not consider using the extra time to muscle Congress into action adversely affecting Idaho.

And Batt took his own shot at President Clinton for refusing to discuss the waste controversy during his stopover Thursday in Idaho Falls.

The fact that the Democratic president had a half hour to chat with state Democratic officials and workers but refused to meet with the Republican governor raised questions about just how concerned Clinton is about nuclear waste disposal, Batt said.

“I have had repeated assurances, including a letter from the president himself, that this issue was of extreme importance to the nation,” Batt said. “Yet Mr. Clinton couldn’t find five minutes to consider Idaho’s plight in this matter.”

After being contacted by the White House staff on Wednesday about seeing Clinton off the next day as he left Idaho Falls en route from his Wyoming vacation to Hawaii, Batt requested the private meeting and was told the president did not have time.

“It led me to question his commitment to getting this matter resolved in Idaho’s best interest,” he said.

Several hours after Clinton and his family left Idaho, Batt sent Grumbly and the Navy brass what he called his “final best offer” for voluntary resumption of radioactive dumping. If it is rejected, the governor pledged to vigorously pursue Idaho’s court challenge to any new waste shipments to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

Despite what he acknowledges is overwhelming opposition to any more waste dumping, Batt offered to voluntarily take even more waste - 968 shipments - and give the government four decades to finally clean out all the radioactive material at INEL.

It was an offer begging for the same kind of severe criticism Batt subjected himself to within days of taking office in January when he declined to vigorously fight eight shipments of waste from the nuclear Navy that his predecessor, Democrat Cecil Andrus, had included in a deal he cut in 1993.

But that level of criticism had not materialized Friday and may have been blunted to some extent by Andrus’ wholehearted endorsement of the proposal. Batt, backed up by Andrus, went out of his way to emphasize the environmental benefits of the proposal. And aides pointed out that the 40-year life of the deal would preclude Idaho being subjected more onerous dumping schemes should continuing third party challenges to any renewed dumping fail - as many believe they eventually will.

The anti-nuclear Snake River Alliance filed its own federal court challenge to new dumping last month in anticipation of a deal that would result in the state dropping its case.

The public backlash in January prompted Batt to adopt the same staunch opposition to any further dumping at INEL that Andrus had displayed - often much more stridently - from the day he began the confrontation in late 1988.

But even with early-round court victories this spring, it became apparent that Congress would side with the nuclear Navy and its claims that without resumed dumping America’s fleet of nuclear warships would be weakened and national security imperiled.

Faced with the likelihood of a congressional mandate that dumping resume this fall, Batt has been trying to cut a deal that would limit new shipments and guarantee all waste would eventually be removed from Idaho.

Months of unsuccessful negotiations finally prompted him to publicly disclose his final offer - Idaho would accept 97 tons of new waste dumped at INEL over four decades in return for the guarantee that it and the 261 tons of waste already stored there would be out of the state by 2036.

The offer, which some outside the administration do not believe will be acceptable, requires nearly $300 million in extra federal cash for environmental cleanup and other projects. They include solidifying 330,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste and moving it off ground directly above the Snake River Plain Aquifer, the major water source for southern Idaho.

And it sets various benchmarks over its life that must be met or new dumping will immediately cease.

Although Andrus had been very vocal in opposing any new dumping, he was at Batt’s side on Thursday to back the offer, emphasizing as Batt did the importance of requiring the federal government to eliminate the serious threat to the aquifer posed by the liquid waste.

But while the offer addresses the country’s national security concerns, it offers the government no help in meeting its responsibility beginning in 1998 for all commercial nuclear waste since it prohibits such shipments to Idaho.

Batt admitted that has been a sticking point through the negotiations but is something he will not concede.