Wednesday — February 11, 2004

Idaho’s hottest potato

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The Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer beneath the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory is the sole source of drinking water for some 270,000 Idaho citizens. It provides water for uncountable millions of potatoes grown in southern Idaho.

Any contamination of this water source is a menace to the health of the people, the economy, the farming industry and the future of southern Idaho.

Yet, between 1952 and 1970, INEEL workers dumped approximately 16 billion gallons of liquid radioactive wastes into injection wells above this aquifer. In addition, there is an undetermined amount of soil at INEEL contaminated by other radioactive materials because of accidents, leaks or releases. None of this treacherous waste has been well documented or tracked by the U.S. Department of Energy, which runs INEEL.

It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to know that water runs downhill and that radioactive contamination of this aquifer will kill and make sick people who drink from it for many generations. This fact gives new meaning to the terms "hot potato" and "Famous Potatoes."

It’s nothing new for the DOE to shirk its responsibility to protect the people of Idaho from the consequences of the national mess at INEEL.

But the DOE has lowered its safety standards to a new level of cynicism. Its latest "Risk-Based End State" vision for cleaning up INEEL is a contemptuous hallucination that proposes to "guard" the radioactive waste rather than remove it, saving the DOE money at the expense of the health of the people and land of Idaho.

Nuclear waste is a threat. It needs removal.

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