Tribe sees riches in Utah nuclear waste storage

By Adam Tanner

SKULL VALLEY, Utah (Reuters) – As some U.S. Indian tribes
have grown rich in recent years through casinos, others far
from population centers have struggled to overcome a historical
legacy of poverty.

One tiny tribe in Utah, one of two states that bars gaming,
has shocked residents and officials by planning to turn part of
their barren reservation into a temporary storage for highly
radioactive nuclear fuel waste.

“They gave us crap for land, but they want it back. It’s
kind of funny to me,” said Leon Bear, 50, chief of the
18,000-acre Skull Valley Goshute Reservation. “As long as we
are not doing something, the state of Utah is happy.”

Recognized Native American tribes have special rights on
their sovereign land, but many in Utah say the nuclear plan
should be stopped anyway. Even the tribe is bitterly divided.

The arid Goshute reservation lies between two mountain
ranges 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. For decades, the
United States engaged in toxic activities nearby, including
biological and chemical weapons storage and testing.

“We don’t have a resource like oil or gas or coal,” Bear
said. “We feel that we’re being prejudiced against as far as
gaming.”

The Skull Valley tribe has just 123 enrolled members. Fewer
than 30 live on the reservation, mostly in prefabricated houses
along a side road. They boast a single gas station/store.

Only in the late 1970s did Goshutes get running water and
electricity. The funding came from allowing Hercules Aerospace
to test rocket engines in a program that ended long ago.

Bear now hopes to usher in a new era of unprecedented
tribal prosperity with spent fuel storage. He also recently
opened a commercial dump for construction and household waste
that accepts 4,000 tonnes a day.

MILLIONS AT STAKE

The tribe’s dollar stake in nuclear fuel storage is not
public. “Millions, I wouldn’t say tens of millions — maybe
over time,” Bear said. “We do get an annual fee — it’s more
tuned to profit.”

In other words, the more concrete and steel storage casks
the $3.1 billion project brings in, the more the tribe earns.

Behind the plan is Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium
of eight electric utilities including Xcel Energy, American
Electric Power Co., Edison International and Entergy Corp.

They foresee temporary storage lasting 40 years for up to
44,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel rods. With the nation’s long-term
nuclear dump beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada still highly
uncertain, Bear sees his storage plans possibly lasting even
longer.

“If Yucca Mountain isn’t open by then, they’ll have nowhere
else to put waste,” he said. “By that time we’re going to call
the shots. The tribe can probably ask for anything they want
to.”

The effort received a major boost this year when the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave its licensing approval.

A number of obstacles remain: the plan needs approval of
the U.S. Bureau of Land Management; some questions about
transporting spent fuel are unanswered; and the state of Utah,
which strongly opposes the project, has appealed the license.

“We’ve spent the better part of 10 years trying to figure
out whether what they propose could be done safely and our
determination was it could not be,” said Dianne Nielson, head
of Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality.

TRIBAL DISSENT

Chief Bear also faces opposition from within his tribe,
including his neighbor across the road, Margene Bullcreek.
“He’s turning the reservation into a dump,” she said. “He’s
corrupt.”

“But what is really important to me is not Leon’s lies,
it’s not his dishonesty, his crookedness, it’s PFS coming down
on a small tribe. It’s environmental racism,” she said.

Chief Bear has also had personal legal difficulties.

In 2003 he was indicted on federal theft and tax-evasion
charges. He reached a deal to pay off back taxes and return
some tribal funds. “That’s all they could find on me,” he said.
“All of my books were clean.”

“How can I be dirty and corrupt? Look around here, there’s
nothing,” he said. “If I’m so corrupt why I am sitting here?
Why am I not someplace better?”

His living room in a prefabricated house was comfortable
but not opulent. As for the taxes, he said: “Previous chairmen
never had to pay no taxes. … On my income tax I put down
‘unemployed.”‘

Critics also complain Bear does not have a democratic
mandate as the tribe has not had a quorum of 44 people to hold
a new leadership election due since 2004. “If they don’t want
to come, what am I supposed to do?,” he said. “I’m chief for
life at this point.”

In the end, Chief Bear sees all of his personal troubles as
stemming from the fuel storage plan.

“Margene doesn’t want the reservation to improve, that’s
what’s going on,” he said. “You can’t go back; I wish you
could. We’re in the 2000s. We can’t go back to the 70s or the
50s.”