Feds To Give Batt An Answer This Week Proposal Would Allow Some Nuclear Dumping Now In Exchange For Eventual Removal Of All N-Waste

Federal policy-makers will put Gov. Phil Batt’s proposed deal for resumed radioactive dumping under their microscope today in what the governor hopes will lead to eventual removal of all nuclear waste from Idaho.

It is a proposition distasteful to both sides but one that Batt made in good faith to try to end the often-bitter seven-year confrontation between the state and the U.S. Energy Department over nuclear waste storage at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

Based on the long string of broken promises and commitments over the past four decades, critics of the deal say the federal government cannot be trusted to keep its word, written or otherwise. But the governor maintains that as bad as his deal might seem, the alternatives could be significantly worse.

In exchange for a court-enforceable guarantee that all nuclear waste will be shipped out of Idaho in 40 years, Batt offered to allow 968 waste shipments to be dumped at INEL during the same period - 968 more shipments than polls indicate Idaho voters want.

But as politically obnoxious as Batt’s proposal might be to most of his constituents, it also is far short of what Assistant Energy Secretary Thomas Grumbly reportedly has been demanding during the past three months of negotiations.

By midday Friday, the Energy Department is to advise Batt whether it is taking or leaving a deal that includes only half the waste it wants to dump in eastern Idaho and none of the material at Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation and none of that being piled up by commercial reactors around the nation.

The deal also has a much longer life span than government negotiators wanted in their most recent counter-offers that Batt rejected and longer than many Idaho voters believe is reasonable considering the potential environmental problems dumping creates.

The governor, however, believes the deal offers the state the kind of protection from being betrayed later on that cannot be provided by five-year or even 10-year schemes. In addition, the deal replaces vague verbal promises that the hundreds of tons of waste already stored at INEL will be cleaned up with the firm deadline of Dec. 31, 2035, for removal of all waste, along with specific performance bench marks that must be met along the way.

Seemingly whipsawed by government negotiators on one side and his critics at home on the other, Batt went a step further in making what he called his final best offer when he publicly disclosed the details last week, ending months of secrecy surrounding the waste talks.

That decision miffed Grumbly, who told Batt last Friday that federal negotiators “were surprised that you held a press conference concerning your counterproposal before we had an opportunity to review it.”

But Batt had advised Grumbly in the letter accompanying the terms of the deal that they would be disclosed publicly. And a week earlier, Clinton administration officials apparently leaked to the Washington, D.C., trade publication Inside Energy some terms of an offer seemingly more favorable to the state that Batt supposedly had rejected - an offer the governor said never had been made.

The governor tried to establish a more cordial relationship with federal officials over the waste issue right after taking office in January. But he acknowledged six weeks ago that “early in my administration, they were not as upfront with me as I would have liked.”