Dirty Water Appropriations Rider -- Yucca dump implications
The appropriations bill also includes other riders weakening protections for our rivers, lakes, and oceans. In addition, it slashes $1 billion from energy efficiency programs and squanders $120 million on an old, failed plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
The Yucca dump proposal itself represents a huge threat to drinking water. If constructed and operated, the Yucca dump would massively release hazardous radioactivity, over time, into the drinking water supply below. That deadly contamination would then flow downstream, where a farming community -- Amargosa Valley, Nevada -- draws that water from wells for drinking and irrigation. Further downstream, in Death Valley, CA, the Timbisha Shoshone Band of Indians drink Yucca groundwater, where it surfaces in springs.
Yucca's guaranteed leakage over time is implicitly acknowledged, even by the U.S. EPA. EPA's Yucca regulations allow for an 11-mile buffer zone, downstream of the dump-site, allowing for a dilution zone for radioactive contamination of groundwater. That is, EPA would not even enforce regulations until an unprecedented 11 miles of "natural attenuation" takes place! If a dump is going to leak that badly, it should never be allowed to open in the first place!
An article by Beyond Nuclear that is along the same lines as Environment America's statement above is "After Flint, Don't Let Them NUKE the Great Lakes Next!" published at CounterPunch in January 2016. It was written in the context of international headlines about the lead poisoning of 9,000 children in Flint, Michigan via the city's drinking water supply, due to the Republican Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder's decision to save $100 per day by not treating the water to prevent severe corrosion of lead-lined piping. The article points out that the Canadian radioactive waste dump targeted at the Lake Huron shore could, ironically enough, poison Flint's drinking water with hazardous radioactivity as well. After the lead poisoning catastrophe, Flint chose to switch back to the much less corrosive Lake Huron drinking water supply (via the Detroit system), rather than the much more highly corrosive Flint River source (also switched to in the first place to save money, a decision made by the Gov. Rick Snyder administration).
July 12, 2017