James McConkie
Attorney/Nuclear Waste Storage Opponent

Continued...

Verdoia: If this were any other form of industrial waste, you and I probably would not be having this conversation right now. What is it about radioactive waste, from nuclear power plants, that inflames the public's senses or the passions and at times the dialogue?

McConkie: Well it's the word radioactivity. And I think for Utah it's that lingering concern about the downwind situation [Editor's note: Being "downwind" refers to public exposure to radioactive fallout from the nation's above ground nuclear weapons testing program in Nevada during the 1950s and 1960s.] We were all told it was safe and yet it wasn't. The government wanted to accomplish an objective. It was willing to cut corners to accomplish that objective. It was willing to sacrifice human health concerns to accomplish that objective. And we're seeing the same kinds of things happening here. We have real pressure. We have these companies that are saying we're not going to have energy because we've run out of room to store this stuff. We've got to do something. And so you see a shortened process, where we haven't discussed, fully, the dangers and we want to store it above ground and we're literally saddling our people here in Utah with the responsibility.

If it's left here, of tending that kind of dangerous material for 10,000 years above ground. And the cost, the future problems involved, I don't think it's fair for us to say "Well, we can do it in the next 100 years safely." What's going to happen at the 2,000 year mark if it becomes permanent? At the 3,000 year mark? Are they going to have to move it? Will they be able to move it? Will those casks really last and for how long? Nobody really knows when you're talking about a 10,000 year period. And to do that on the spur of the moment and then claim that it's just temporary, when I say the spur of the moment, without enough time to really look into the safety, concerns of storing it above ground, is that really the direction we want to go? Is that what Utahns want to saddle their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren with? That kind of a problem?

Verdoia: For all of the well spoken concerns, for all of the emerging state initiatives, there is a sense that you, the Governor of the state of Utah, the Legislature of the state of Utah, are shooting paper bullets at a locomotive speeding down the track and you do not have the necessary tools or clout to stop what is already in motion. How would you respond to that?

McConkie: That's a concern. You have to be an optimist if you're going to be involved in trying to change public policy, particularly, when you're getting into it at this stage when there is tremendous momentum in the other direction. I think you're correct in saying that some of the bullets we're firing are paper bullets because the very fact that, that they're negotiating with the Indian Reservation, the problems with sovereignty limits the state in terms of what they may or may not be able to do to stop it. So the real battle ground on this is in the United States Congress because after all is said and done, Indian Reservations are sovereign but only up to a point. And the United States Congress can set policy and what we need to do on a national level with our representatives, with our senators and representatives, is to stop it there. And I think it can be stopped at that level. That's where the battle is going to be. Now, what can we do? If we're a passive population, and sometimes we tend to be, and if we don't energize people in this state against it, then we're not going, our political, our politicians aren't going to have the political wheel to stand up and be counted. And we had over six-thousand petitions signed, people that now are associated with our movement and our next step is to energize those six thousand and keep them focused and interested in these kinds of issues.

Verdoia: How do you respond to the assertion that it's specious to say we're interested in protecting our environment when the West Desert environment may arguably be one of the most poisoned stretches of ground in the North American continent?

McConkie: To me that's an argument in terms of stopping it now. I mean, we have a problem. We're storing nerve gas, we're storing radioactive waste. We've got companies that are polluting the atmosphere, that have recently been sued because they're taking advantage of the environmental atmosphere out here. We've done our share. We have enough. No one can say that Utah hasn't been more then cooperative in terms of storing dangerous materials on the West Desert for the nation as a whole and for different communities with impacted populations. That to me is an argument that says stop now, begin to reverse the process. That's one of our concerns is that we've gone so far without really thinking through the long term consequences of what we're doing and how we're going to be viewed as a people and as a society, as a state, as a result of our willingness to bring refuse, more and more refuse and dangerous substances into the West Desert.

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