State says EPA’s rules on Yucca fail to protect public

Wednesday, May 8, 2002 | 11:05 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Environmental Protection Agency has failed to protect the public in setting the standards for containing radiation at the proposed nuclear dump site in Nevada, the state attorney general's office says.

The state, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups say the underground drinking water supply would be contaminated because of the lax regulations for a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.

The statements, filed Tuesday in a legal brief in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., said Congress "left no ambiguity (in the law) about the paramount obligation of the federal government to protect public health and safety."

The brief said the standards by the EPA allow radioactive contaminated water to spread over about 120 square miles, and travel as far from the site as 11 miles.

The proposed boundary standard is weaker than the contamination limit that EPA applies at other U.S. nuclear sites, said Geoffrey Fettus, attorney for the environmental groups. Because it allows the contamination to be spread over a greater area, the radiation can be diluted by ground water, the groups maintain.

The Yucca Mountain standard violates federal health and safety regulations, Fettus said, including the Safe Drinking Water Act.

"EPA's dramatically irregular boundary line has no precedent in environmental protection," Fettus said. "It would be laughable if we weren't talking about dangerous radiation that will be around for thousands of years."

EPA has also said the repository must meet the standards for 10,000 years. But the lawsuit says the peak radiation periods extend beyond 10,000 years.

Sun reporter

Mary Manning contributed to this story.