State Business Leaders To Battle N-Waste Issue Businesses Oppose Initiative To Repeal Batt’s Deal With Feds

Gov. Phil Batt’s one-man campaign in defense of the nuclear waste deal he cut with the federal government last year is about to be reinforced.

The state’s top business leaders are set to vote on Friday to formally launch a campaign to defeat the initiative aimed at voiding the October 1995 agreement and making any future nuclear waste agreements subject to legislative and voter approval.

Acknowledging that he has felt like the lone voice supporting the unprecedented agreement, Batt was buoyed by the news that the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry was joining his fight.

“I have not been particularly satisfied with the progress of the campaign to defeat the initiative, but I think it’s back on track now and will be a success,” the governor said on Thursday.

The association’s executive committee was expected to approve entry into the nuclear waste debate on Batt’s side, but officials said that effort would not detract from their primary target - defeating the One Percent Initiative.

Batt has told the business lobby that if the property tax-cutting initiative is approved in November, immediately shifting $228 million in school support from local property taxes to the state treasury, business will be the target of the state tax increases needed to pick up that tab.

But the business interests are also concerned about the potential impact on Idaho if the nuclear waste initiative wins approval.

Batt’s deal allows the federal government to dump another 1,133 loads of noncommercial waste at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory over the next 40 years in return for a court-enforced timetable for cleanup and removal of most waste from the site by 2035. Until the deal was struck, the government intended to make nearly 2,000 new waste shipments to the INEL.

Critics contend, however, that the agreement is so riddled with loopholes it cannot be enforced and that the federal government will welsh on its commitments as it has repeatedly on promises made over the past generation.

But Batt maintains that without it, there is nothing to stop the government from dumping thousands more loads of waste, both commercial and noncommercial, in eastern Idaho or require cleanup and eventual removal. He has repeatedly emphasized that states like South Carolina and Colorado have inquired about cutting similar agreements only to be told by the government that Idaho’s is one of a kind.