Resistance from members within the targeted tribes, however, prevented the proposed dumps from opening.
Out of the hundreds of tribes approached, the Negotiator eventually courted about two dozen tribal councils in particular.
The Negotiator sent letters to every federally recognized tribe in the country, offering hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars to tribal council governments for first considering and then ultimately hosting the dump. Congress created the Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator in an effort to open a federal “monitored retrievable storage site” for high-level nuclear waste. In addition to many other activities, OGD has filed an environmental justice contention before the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions (NRC) Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB).īoth the federal government and the commercial nuclear power industry have targeted Native American reservations for such dumps for many years. Skull Valley Goshute tribal member Margene Bullcreek leads Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia (or OGD, Goshute for “Mountain Community”), a grassroots group of tribal members opposed to the dump. But there is another tradition on the targeted reservations as wellfighting back against blatant environmental racism, and winning. The PFS proposal is the latest in a long tradition of targeting Native American communities for such dumps. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a limited liability corporation representing eight powerful nuclear utilities, wants to “temporarily” store 40,000 tons of commercial high-level radioactive waste (nearly the total amount that presently exists in the U.S.) next to the two-dozen tribal members who live on the small reservation. The tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation in Utah is targeted for a very big nuclear waste dump. But even in the “nuclear sacrifice zones” of the desert Southwest, it is Native Americans–from Navajo uranium miners to tribal communities targeted with atomic waste dumps– who have borne the brunt of both the front and back ends of the nuclear fuel cycle. Nevadans and Utahans living downwind and downstream from nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining, and radioactive waste dumping have suffered immensely during the Nuclear Age. Tribal dump opponent Margene Bullcreek of OGD Keith Lewis, of the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario, reflecting on his impoverished communitys 50 years of working in and living near uranium mines & mills, and the health and environmental catastrophe that has resulted. “There is nothing moral about tempting a starving man with money.” Targeted at Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah
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