Nuclear Waste Initiative Called Unclear Proposal Would Likely Be Found Invalid, Attorney General Says

Attorney General Alan Lance on Monday said nuclear waste activist Peter Rickards’ initiative attacking Batt administration policies is so unclear a court would likely find it unenforceable and invalid.

“As it is presently written, the proposed initiative does not so much propose a law as it does express the wishes of the sponsors,” Lance wrote in the advisory opinion researched by deputy Matthew McKeown.

“There is no language in the proposed initiative that specifies exactly what must be done or which agency is expected to do it,” Lance wrote.

Rickards, the Twin Falls podiatrist who has repeatedly challenged the governor on nuclear waste, has warned that existing policies are setting the stage for radioactive contamination of southern Idaho’s primary water source.

In his initiative, he seeks to bar the state from reburying plutonium in the cleanup of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and requiring INEEL project applications for state air quality permits each include a written analyses of the potential for accidents and the amount of radiation Idaho residents would sustain.

But in addition to technical problems that would make the proposition difficult if not impossible to codify, Lance said the initiative is not specific about what plutonium is targeted, fails to consider superseding federal law on the issue and sets no standards for the accident and radiation analyses or what state officials or agency will do them.

Rickards has three weeks to decide whether to modify the initiative. He was not immediately available for comment on Lance’s assessment.

But the attorney general said that without drastic revisions, the proposition could not be implemented even if Rickards can get the 41,335 registered voter signatures to win ballot status and then convince a majority of voters to adopt it in November 1998.

Rickards has been a longtime critic of operations at the INEEL, but he elevated his profile after Gov. Phil Batt signed the unprecedented nuclear waste agreement with the federal government in October 1995.

He tried unsuccessfully to recall the governor and then staged an unsuccessful bid to oust Congressman Michael Crapo in the May 1996 Republican primary. He also actively campaigned for the 1996 initiative to void Batt’s waste deal - an initiative that was rejected by nearly two-thirds of the voters.