Amargosa Valley residents are mostly indifferent about dump

Jace Radke

Friday, Jan. 11, 2002 | 9:11 a.m.

AMARGOSA VALLEY -- Riding fences on a shaggy brown mustang with a black Labrador trailing behind, Merlyn Turner cuts a startling, solitary figure against the backdrop of the jagged mountains that ring the Armagosa Valley.

Caked in dust from his boots to his tattered black cowboy hat, the 50-year-old, riding a once-wild mustang he broke himself, is the picture of the Old West.

Nevermind that the radioactive ridge beyond him hosts the Nevada Test Site -- once the home of his mount, Morning Star -- where more than 900 nuclear tests were detonated over five decades. Nevermind the worries of contamination and pollution. Nevermind that on Thursday federal Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he is recommending that the nation entomb more than 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, just over yonder some 12 miles to the north.

"I'm more concerned with more people moving out here than I am with whatever they want to bury under that mountain," Turner said Thursday astride Morning Star as they paused along the two-lane blacktop of U.S. Highway 373. "You're more likely to hear a conversation about sod farming up at the bar than nuclear waste."

But swirling outside this dusty, desolate stretch of desert where yucca plants and Joshua trees easily outnumber the 1,300 residents is a roiling nationwide debate over putting nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

While Nevada's political leaders are irate, the people closest to the proposed dump -- scattered around the high-desert valley that modestly boasts a bar, post office, restaurant, motel, elementary school and a spattering of homes -- are largely indifferent.

Although some residents say they are considering moving, others say the waste could bring new jobs and business to town. And others believe there is nothing that can be done to stop the proposed dump.

Ed Goedhart, who manages the Ponderosa Dairy near the center of the valley, said that the majority of the people in town are not concerned with nuclear waste.

"About 70 percent of the people here just don't care," said Goedhart, whose busy dairy of 6,000 cows produces about 25 percent of Nevada's milk. "There is another 20 percent who spend their checks at casinos and think that the dump will cause dollars to fall out of the sky for them to catch in butterfly nets.

"Then's there's the 10 percent that don't want it here."

Goedhart is part of the vocal minority that oppose the dump and said that the Department of Energy's record with nuclear waste must be called into question.

"They have an almost perfect record of contamination," Goedhart said. "Whether it is Hanford, (Wash.), Oak Ridge, (Tenn.) or Los Alamos (N.M.), they've all had problems."

About a mile from the dairy, Rosa Garey runs Rosa's Mexican Restaurant, one of the valley's only places for a night out. The smell of corn tortillas permeates the restaurant located off the highway.

"If they do put the dump here it could help business," said Garey, whose restaurant sits in an end suite of a brick and stucco strip mall that also contains a convenience store and unoccupied pads.

Garey, who has lived in the valley since coming to the United States from Mexico 23 years ago, said that she thinks the necessary safety precautions will be taken with any radioactive material brought through the valley to Yucca Mountain.

"I had a friend that checked the trucks going into the test site and those were safe, so I think these will be held to the same standards," Garey said. "I was here when they were exploding things at the test site. We haven't had any problems with that, and I don't think this will be a problem either.

"I live here because it is a nice, quiet place to raise my children without worrying about crime or drugs."

With only a five-year tenure in the valley, Armagosa Elementary School physical education teacher Bret Hart wasn't around when residents saw mushroom clouds boil up over the horizon.

Hart, who has a wife and three children, was already thinking of leaving the valley before hearing the news that Abraham will recommend nuclear waste be stored in his backyard.

"I like living out here because of the peacefulness and the fact that I don't even have to lock my car at night, but this may have people thinking more about moving," Hart said after a basketball practice with the school's team known as the Sandblasters. "We do have earthquakes out here, and I'd hate to think what could happen with that waste out there if we had a big one."

Residents will have some time to decide if they will stay or go as government officials estimate that waste will not be transported to the site before 2010.

"There is some time, but we have to speak out against it now before it's cast in stone," Goedhart said. "I could be retired by then, and living somewhere else, but there will be people out here and we should think about that.

"I'm sure they'd rather be stepping in a cow pie than a pool of nuclear radiation."