Connie Nakahara
Utah Department of Environmental Quality

An attorney, Connie Nakahara has been designated the state of Utah's "point person" on the Private Fuel Storage proposal to construct a temporary nuclear waste storage site on the reservation lands of the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Indian tribe. She has primarily focused her attention on responding to state concerns with the Draft Environmental Impact Statement crafted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the project.

The interview was conducted in Nakahara's office in the Heber Wells State Office Building in Salt Lake City by program Producer Ken Verdoia.

Ken Verdoia: Connie, let's begin with that simplest of overviews. What is the Utah State Department of Environmental Quality and what's its role in this process of considering the Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS) proposal to create a high level nuclear waste storage site in the Skull Valley Band Reservation?

Connie Nakahara: Well, the Department's first regulatory agency and environmental areas. They deal with land, water, air issues. They help look into issues for the governor in developing environmental policies. With respect to the Skull Valley Band Goshute's proposal for high level nuclear waste, Dr. Diane Nelson, the Executive Director of the Department of Environmental Quality was tasked by Governor Leavitt in April of 1997 to chair a task force of state employees as cabinet members to fight the proposal to store high level nuclear waste within the state.

Verdoia: What is your job?

Nakahara: My main responsibilities are to oppose the high level nuclear waste storage facility proposed for the Skull Valley Reservation. I primarily work with educating the public, the media and participate in the litigation before the Nuclear Regulatory Licensing Board. And that's where I spend most of my time.

Verdoia: Public education, you emphasized that. That's one of my primary jobs, public education. Why is that so important?

Nakahara: It's to let people know what's going on in their state, let them know that an unprecedented amount of high level nuclear waste may be transported through their communities and how it will effect them. There are a number of citizens that are extremely concerned and I try and provide them with as much information to allow them to make decisions with respect to this project.

Verdoia: When the Draft Environmental Impact Statement was issued, the state came forward with what I consider a lengthy list of concerns about issues either not addressed or not addressed adequately in the context of that Draft Environmental Impact Statement. From your perspective, is the proposal of PFS being given the fullest consideration necessary in the licensing process?

Nakahara: No. Obviously the state's losing a lot of issues before the Licensing Board and the NRC did not develop a Draft Environmental Impact Statement that addressed a number of issues that the state thought, that the state believes is critical to evaluating the safety and the necessity of the project. And so no, we don't believe, I don't believe that NRC's adequately reviewing the process.

Verdoia: It's been characterized to us that there's almost a steady stream of NRC entering decisions or memorandums or findings in favor of PFS in the face of the concerns expressed by such as the state of Utah, the confederated Tribes of the Goshutes, that you're kind of getting, you know, a constant series of lost notices in the mail. Is that a fair characterization?

Nakahara: We initially started with some 30-something issues before the Licensing Board and we're down to probably less then a dozen. So we have lost a number of issues but the process is to raise everything that the state believes that the application did not meet - NRC requirements in the beginning, including small ones or big ones. We had to do it all up front or we would be prohibited from raising them again so we pretty much raised everything that we could think of at the time and we expected to lose probably the majority of them because a lot of the issues we raised are fixable.

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