Peter Rickards (I)

Thu., Oct. 29, 1998

Education:

Doctorate in podiatric medicine, 1982, Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine

Bachelor’s degree, political science, 1974, Ohio State University

Employment history:

Pumped gas, painted houses, worked as a hospital orderly and other jobs while working way through college

Now employed as a podiatrist

Other professional activities/community involvement:

Serves as a citizen member, Centers for Disease Control advisory panel studying the first 45 years of radioactive releases and accidents at Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Personal:

Age 43, married with two sons ages 10 and 13; Twin Falls resident for 12 years.

By Peter Rickards, DPM Thank you for this opportunity to share the reasons I am applying for the job of governor. Northern Idaho is sadly aware of the effects of the federal government’s radioactive releases. I have been fighting a similar problem in southern Idaho for 10 years as a citizen, but we still haven’t heard the truth from Lockheed’s politicians. I have been trying to stop the reburial of plutonium over our aquifer and stop the plutonium incinerator. Cancer-causing radioactive plutonium particles from Colorado have been dumped in trenches at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory until 1970, when they new barrels were stacked above ground. Did you know when you voted to “get the waste out” that the deal allows the reburial of plutonium in this flood zone? Plutonium lasts 240,000 years and has already leaked 240 feet deep. My opponents, Dirk Kempthorne and Robert Huntley, were both salesmen for Lockheed’s nuclear deal. I showed them the documents, but their ads said, “say no to leaving waste above our aquifer.” Now the New Mexico dump document says to meet the terms of the deal, they will leave all the buried plutonium in Idaho! They have plans for a new 200-acre plutonium dump for about half of the plutonium stored above ground. My goal is to ban the reburial of plutonium. On other issues, I will continue the Republican effort to keep taxes low and budgets balanced. I oppose grizzly bear reintroduction. Not all dams should come down, but breaching the four lower Snake River dams is do-able. Common sense is what I offer.

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