We're about to celebrate the turn of the millennium. When I was a kid, I never dreamed of living to that distant year 2000. It seemed so far away. Holding my breath now (but not too tight), I think I'm going to make it. What now? It's nearly impossible for me to envisage a thousand years ahead. That's for the campfire chats after a few beers. Let's limit the prognostication to about ten years and I'll do better.
In ten years, I'll be eighty and counting. Looking back over the years, there were happy times and numerous pitfalls. I now look at how foolish and ignorant we often were. In my lifetime and yours, our technological successes have brought prosperity to many of us and ruin to others. We have journeyed the path together and made the most of it, yet we remain quite ignorant and not so smart.
Governor Leavitt seemingly has taken note of this and has introduced a year-2000 computer program, a smart pill entitled SmartUTAH. It's supposed to make communication more effective, government more efficient, and all of us much smarter. This should result in a better society.
It may have its shortfalls. I doubt that it will be readily available and a benefit to everyone. It seems designed for those already making wads of money and those who are technologically proficient. Unless the program is revamped, I fear it will prove to be yet another program for the haves but not the have-nots.
There just might be something to it however. If run right, it could help de-mystify all of the technical jargon and enable us to understand in simple words all of the proposals coming forth from the technological world. It just might give us the true facts of any situation and allow all citizens to have a voice and to help us make proper decisions.
Society has changed. An individual has become less effective in working with government, huge corporations, and other citizens concerning the problems that arise. The factual information necessary to function in this society is not always forthcoming. We have become increasingly impotent and a slave to the system.
A case in point, of great urgency, deals with our nuclear waste problem in the canyon country. Right now, hazardous waste is being shipped into the White Mesa/Blanding community. I've written of the White Mesa mill situation and nuclear waste storage previously, but I want to expand on those discussions a bit more as it provides an excellent example of what's wrong.
Communities across our country are increasingly being used as dumping grounds for toxic wastes. Many companies are victimizing their neighbors by dumping hazardous wastes in or near their communities, using substandard treatment technologies and practices, and leaving behind a huge mess and further costs. Over 30,000 toxic sites exist in our country today. What to do with the waste is an immense problem.
Industrial technology surely has its dark side. Most communities are not able to cope with these polluters. Headlines scream about hazardous chemical spills, drinking and irrigation water contamination, and air thick with smog and poisonous irritants. We are carelessly dispersing dangerous poisons into the biosphere with consequences that are impossible to predict.
A few years ago, International Uranium Corporation, a foreign based company, came into our midst when it purchased the White Mesa mill. It promised jobs and asserted a safe operation. Those needing jobs jumped at the bait as they desperately needed to feed their families. Some of our county officials and others also took the bait.
But problems and complications soon arose. After a lengthy operation in refining conventional and local uranium ores, and seeing even greater profits ahead, International Uranium rushed to acquire and ship to the White Mesa mill extremely hazardous wastes from Tonawanda, New York and other places to bolster its profits. This deadly material came from the waste generated from the development and manufacture of the deadly Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.
It was criminal indeed that no further environmental studies were then initiated. However, the full responsibility does not rest alone on International Uranium. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and other federal, state and local officers and agencies should have demanded it. We found that even here in our beautiful canyon country we were not immune or protected from processes and forces greater than ourselves. These forces were driven by money and profit, not for the public's well-being.
The nuclear waste industry found us an easy prey: ignorant, weak, poor, and racially divided. It found ready local political leaders who at every turn withheld essential information by refusing to call for public hearings and meetings. The bottom-line tragedy is that people still are not fully informed. I'll never forget that day in Blanding at a public meeting when I was told by an NRC official that I could ask no further questions pertaining to the nuclear waste disposal at the White Mesa mill.
I remember my own rejection by Judge Block, a judge with NRC connections, that I could not appear at a hearing to express my knowledge and feelings regarding the matter. Neither will I forget the repeated opposition by International Uranium and the NRC itself as to my involvement in those hearings.
Especially I'll never forget the day that Norman and Shirley Begay led their gallant White Mesa Utes to the entrance of the White Mesa mill in opposition to the disposal of nuclear waste on their aboriginal lands and near their town. They had not been given sufficient and essential information. Norman questioned the ethics of using aboriginal land in which his ancestors had been buried for a nuclear waste dump. He said that those sites, now desecrated, should be reclaimed and left alone and the burials given a chance to rest.
The Indian people, who inhabited this land before the white people came, buried their dead with full expectations that their grave sites and sacred areas would have the greatest of respect--as we value our cemeteries and burial sites today. It wasn't enough that this land was taken from them; they are now forced to further endure the indignities and dehumanization in sharing their hallowed places and their nearby settlements with that of a deadly nuclear waste dump consisting of material from the development of atomic bombs.
I cannot bear the continuing tragedy of seeing many of our people dying of cancer and other diseases. In the past we dismissed it for the reason we didn't have sufficient knowledge of the dangers of hazardous material. We have no such excuse today. No epidemiological study has ever been accomplished to verify the preponderance of cancer cases in San Juan County.
I'm tired of the threats to us who work to keep the stuff out of our communities--death threats to Norman Begay while he was still alive and anonymous phone warnings to me to keep away from hearings and to be wary while traveling the highways of San Juan County. I can't forget the absurd claim of the company that it was someone else who was responsible for dumping chloroform in their wells at White Mesa. Details are still awaiting.
There is something immoral about one community being forced to accept another community's hazardous waste. If it's so safe, why doesn't the host community keep it in the first place? There's money to be made, millions of it, and International Uranium is pulling it in whenever it can. Corporate responsibility? Damn the consequences. This same company now proclaims that if it doesn't get the hazardous waste material it'll close down the mill. If that happens, the company will surely pull out and we'll be left with a nuclear waste dump and nothing of benefit to really show for it, except for the human costs. Shades of the Atlas mill?
It is essential that we hold this company responsible--totally responsible for the waste it is bringing in, the costs of clean up, the cost to the community, and the cost of health treatment and insurance costs endured by our citizens. We need extensive testing and oversight of the White Mesa mill, its material and its operations. We need to gain more knowledge of the nuclear waste industry and the full workings of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who seem to be in bed with the industry itself.
We have a "right-to-know" and a "need-to-know" all that which pertains to the material, facilities, processes, cleanup methods and licenses and permits. In order to understand the information, we need honest technical advisors. Right-to-know laws presumably give individuals and community groups access to information about these dangerous materials. We need to tap into these laws the best we can and work toward establishing other new protective laws and regulations.
As citizens, we must lobby Governor Leavitt, the Utah Radiation Control Board, the Attorney General's office, and the Legislature to speak out and fight for our safety and our needs. We need to learn how to protect ourselves and our communities. We can do this by joining with those who are working toward similar ends--with citizen activists and environmental groups who care.
After much fighting, it's quite disconcerting to know that we're pretty much alone in this. The Indian people have long found they're usually alienated and seldom listened to. Even the Wasatch Front's Sierra Club recently turned their back on us and our needs. There's not much environmental and social justice here at all.
Linking neighbor to neighbor and community to community and finding people who care is a big job. It may be too late to do much now, but we've got to continue fighting in our own crude ways as it's all that we can do. In the years and centuries ahead, maybe the governor's SmartUTAH program will engage and help, but don't count on it.
May the new millennium be kind to us.