Activists and tribe sue to avert blast

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Apr 23, 2006 | by Geoffrey Fattah Deseret Morning News

Two Utah anti-nuclear activists have joined with a Nevada Indian tribe in filing a federal suit to try to stop a planned large-scale non-nuclear explosion in the Nevada desert next June they say will kick up radioactive fallout left over from previous nuclear testing.

In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada, Salt Lake residents Peter Litster and Stephen Erickson joined members of the Winnemucca Indian Colony in a suit against the U.S. government and officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to put a stop to a planned June 2 detonation of a 700-ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb.

They say the blast will create a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud that could threaten the health of people living downwind and to the east of the Nevada Test Site.

Test site and federal officials have said the blast, some 280 times larger than the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, should not disturb surface contamination at the test site.

In their suit, tribe officials say the test, dubbed "Divine Strake," would desecrate ancestral lands that the Western Shoshone say were not turned over to the U.S. government.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has said the blast will help design a weapon to penetrate hardened and deeply buried targets.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, which operates the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas, has said the Divine Strake explosion will be at least 1 1/2 miles from the nearest underground nuclear test area and three miles from the nearest ground-zero areas of known radioactive contamination from above-ground tests.

The suit also says the decision to conduct the test violates federal requirements to seek public notice and to consult with affected Indian tribes. Plaintiffs also say government officials intentionally concealed the test in order to circumvent the law and conceal health hazards.

"This is a human rights issue and a public health issue, and this blast must be stopped," said tribe attorney Robert Hager of Reno.

"Our people were forcibly removed from their homes at the Nevada Test Site where the Western Shoshone had lived for thousands of years, without being told that our lands would be used for testing of nuclear weapons," said Thomas Wasson, chairman of the Winnemucca Indian Colony. "After destroying our lands and causing untold death and human misery with their radiation, the U.S. government now wants to do the same thing again. They must be stopped, for the good of the Western Shoshone and all people."

Defense Department, National Nuclear Security Administration and Defense Threat Reduction Agency officials have each declined to comment, saying they had not immediately seen the court documents.

When contacted by the Deseret Morning News, plaintiff Stephen Erickson said he joined the suit out of solidarity for the cause to stop nuclear testing.

There have been conflicting studies as to whether fallout was to blame for increased incidences of particular types of cancer in "downwinder" residents living in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 provides compensation to downwinders who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases.

Contributing: Associated Press.

E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com