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Leon Bear
Chairman, Skull Valley Band Tribal Council
 Leon
Bear has been the most prominent member of the Skull Valley Band
on the subject of creating a temporary nuclear waste storage site
on his tribe's reservation lands in Tooele County.
With his father a former Chairman of the tribal council, Leon
Bear has been involved with tribal leadership positions through
the nearly 12 years of study that have gone into the Skull Valley
Band's decision to sign a contract with Private Fuel Storage.
Leon Bear was interviewed by Ken Verdoia in the Band's office,
which is located in South Salt Lake City.
Ken Verdoia: Chairman, I'm going to begin with a simple
question. How did the Skull Valley Band of Goshute ever become
involved with consideration of storing high level radioactive
waste?
Leon Bear: Well, it all started back in 1989 when the
DOE, the Department of Energy, came to us offering grants to study
to be a host for interim storage facility called the MRS. And
at that time my father and my uncle were the Chairman and the
Vice-Chair and they decided that they should learn about this
cause this is coming. And somebody's going to have to host this
facility.
Verdoia: So phase one, you kind of took a look at it and,
if I'm correct, weren't you involved with economic development
at the reservation?
Bear: No, I was the Tribal Secretary at the time.
Verdoia: Tribal Secretary. So you take a first look at
it. What's your reaction?
Bear: Well at first we thought that we're kind of leary
of the federal government, because of all the broken treaties,
but we were leary of the federal government and their offer, thinking
it was something, some way to tie us into this and get us to take
this waste at that time. And we got the grant, $100,000 to do
the phase one study and as we proceeded to do the study we realized
that actually hosting a interim storage was not a bad idea for
the Band. And so we proceeded into phase two of it which was a
$200,000 grant and we went to different countries, France, Sweden,
England and Japan to study this thing and the one thing that interests
us was the Japanese because they had been bombed and we we wanted
to see what the effect or the impact nuclear had on them. And
now their country is almost all nuclear. You know, the power they
get is from nuclear power.
Verdoia: Phase two, closely study it. Department of Energy
is encouraging that interest and then all of a sudden politics
weighs in and the Department of Energy pulls the rug out from
underneath you.
Bear: Well, they pulled the funding. They didn't actually
stop the program, they just pulled the funding which killed the
program. That was in 1993, almost 1994. In fact at that time we
had negotiated a contract or a lease with the Office of the Negotiator
and in January of 1994 we had actually gone up to Idaho with the
lease pretty much negotiated in hand. As we found out they had
pulled the appropriations out of it.
We had done some tours. We took the many members of the Band,
actually, whoever wanted to go, and understand this thing fully,
we took them up to INEL (the Federal Nuclear Research Facility
in Idaho) and showed them what a spent fuel, I mean, what a dry
cask storage is. We also toured Yucca Mountain. We took them all
to Yucca Mountain, to tour the repository. We actually took them
also to Prairie Island, Northern States Power, which is now Xcel.
We took them over and showed them that dry cask storage also.
So we've been trying to educate our people. Out of the phase one
and phase two programs though, we put together two reports and
two videos for the tribe, for information. And we showed those
videos and those phase reports to the Band and gave them a copy.
Verdoia: So what originally is begun as the Department
of Energy federal program, the funding gets pulled, how did it
become a private sector tribal program?
Bear: Well, we pretty much had a lease in hand when we
went up to, when we went up to the [Department of Energy] Office
of Negotiator, ready to sign it. And the Chairman at the time
wanted to, well after they closed that office, he wanted to make
sure that we cover all our bases and if there's anyway we could
do a storage facility we should look around and find out. And
so that's where we proceeded to look for a private entity to help
us store this.
Verdoia: So, Private Fuel Storage just kind of walked
through the door or did you walk through their door or how did
this come about?
Bear: Well from 1994 to 1996 it took us two years to find
a corporation or entity to partner up with us, to do this storage.
So it's been awhile. We stayed in the game and we continued educating
ourselves. We continued going to conferences, high level nuclear
waste conferences and other conferences that deal with environmental
issues or environmental justice issues. We also went to the state,
at the time Governor Leavitt, and we had told him that this was
our plan, this is what we were going to do, open up the storage
facility, and asked him if the state of Utah wanted to be involved
we would appreciate it. We also asked him that if he knew of anything
that could harm us in anyway, to let us know because we want to
study it. To make sure that we were doing the right thing. So
in 1994, we had included the state in this process.
Verdoia: So, you've been studying more than ten years.
You're in contact with the state since 1994. You signed the contract
with PFS and elected officials are saying, "Oh my gosh, how
can you do such a thing? We would have been glad to help you."
How do you respond to that type of comment that's made to you
now?
Bear: Well, the thing is that we kind of set ourselves
up. We went to the governor and asked him, asked the state if
they want to be involved and at that time the comment was, "Over
my dead body." That was the governor's comment to us. So
we were set up. I mean, we set ourselves up on that issue because
we wanted to know how the state was feeling about this whole project
and apparently that was how they felt, so in 1997 when we signed
the lease and it started picking up momentum, we knew that the
state was against it already, going into this. We knew the politics
were going to be there. The only thing we didn't know is how much
of it was going to be. And you know, that's the politicians they're
kind of scary guys. You go up to the Capitol, or you go to Washington,
D.C., and it's all politics. It's a game that they play.
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