Rep. James Hansen
(R) Utah's First Congressional District

Continued...

Rep. Hansen: Now, my heart goes out to those Indians. There's some really great folks out there and I wish they had something better with their economy and most of our Indian tribes have turned to gaming and gambling. A lot of things they've tried haven't worked but gambling has been one. So, here comes one where it would be kind of a Godsend to them but they're only, if I may respectfully say so, they look at the economy part of it and not so much of the safety of it.

Now let me go back to the Test and Training Range. It's just not the Goshutes that bother us, but you may recall when [Interior] Secretary [Bruce] Babbitt re-inventoried the BLM ground of Utah a couple of years back. Well, that would take part of the Test and Training Range into what we call wilderness study areas, or eventually to possibly become a permanent wilderness area. I have nothing against wilderness in its truest form and those who obey the law, it doesn't bother me at all. But I do get concerned when they just want to take little patches of that. Well then the second thing that happens, what a lot of folks don't realize, is a lot of our environmental friends, maybe I should say some of them are on the extreme fringe, get down to the idea that well we don't want anybody to fly over it. How can we possibly train pilots if we can't fly over that ground? And that would be a concern of ours.

In fact, last year, the environmental community filed a lawsuit here in Washington, D.C. that said that military aircraft couldn't fly below 2,000 feet over public ground. How do you train a pilot who's suppose to be dragging his wheels through the grass on an air to ground type of stuff? You can't train him. He's got to be able to be trained and so that becomes another concern of ours.

So what is the answer to all this? A year or so ago we passed the bill in the House and the Senate and sent it to the President of the United States saying that Yucca Mountain would be the final repository for high level nuclear waste. Why not? I mean, we've put all that money in it. That type of thing. Of course, our Nevada guys got all uptight about it as you would expect them to and they have fought it bitterly. And I think, Senator [Harry] Reid took the lead on that and the president vetoed our bill. Some people are of the opinion that his close relationship with the senator, which is fine. That may have been the reason, whatever reason it is, I don't know.

Let me say that myself, and Billy Tauzin who chairs Energy and Commerce, we've agreed to run another bill, very similar to the one we did last year, which will finally nail down where this stuff goes that would be the temporary site at Yucca Mountain and then into Yucca Mountain and there it goes. You know, you have a 10,000 year half-life on that stuff so it's going to take awhile. And that would be the final repository of where we get rid of it and that is of course the ultimate goal we're working on and we hope to be moving that bill as rapidly as we can. But it takes a lot to get all the things together.

Verdoia: If we have a permanent repository, you seem to be saying we don't need a temporary one.

Rep. Hansen: That's the point. Exactly. If you have a permanent spot to put it why do we need a temporary one? Unless you're just going to put it next door before you move it in the warehouse, so to speak. And that's about all we're talking about. And in that case, that's what we'd expect but you've got to take this into consideration, politicians have done a good job of scaring people to death when we start talking about high level nuclear waste. We start talking about unitary, obsolete chemical warfare. We start talking about ammunition of any kind. Well we have moved stuff around in America and I've noticed that many of the states have given some thought to saying, "Well you can't move it through us." It's "not in my backyard" type of syndrome that they're working on. Let me say, and I don't want to appear at all radical here, but I really, strongly disagree with a lot of those folks. When President George Bush, Bush "One," decided to move the chemical weapons out of Europe, they moved it through France, Spain, England, Germany, that whole area. We did the same thing in the Pacific Rim where we're moving that stuff out. It went around and they took it to Johnson Island, which is 774 miles southwest of the Hawaiian Islands and they demilitarized it at a place called Johnston Island, just a little spot on the map there but they did it. They did it very safely. We've moved things constantly. Binary and chemical warfare stuff has been moved. It can be done and it can be done safely.

Now let's say the states of Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada all say we can't move it through our state then we have to come up with federal law which will always superimpose itself over state law and we don't want to do that, so I would try my best to convince our state Legislative bodies, don't do that. The Army has shown they can move it. They've done numerous tests, and it usually becomes their problem to do it. In this case there would be certain restrictions and specifications they'd have to live up to before they could move that stuff. But somehow you've got to take it from those areas that's got to end up there and if the American people say you can't move it, then we've got a catch 22.