Monday, May 5, 2008

Why a brand-spanking new NTS EIS is desperately needed

Hello All,
I wanted to forward this news update to you so that you can spread the word and participate with your comments. Thanks!
Karin Tobin

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Speak now or for the next five years hold your peace.

The NNSA has issued its 'Draft Supplement Analysis for the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada.' The document, released on April 17, is the NNSA’s periodic report on the Nevada Test Site’s Environmental Impact Statement that was completed in 1996. Per NEPA, the NNSA must review the 1996 EIS every five years to determine if it is still applicable to current conditions.

The NNSA’s draft report is the basis for citizens’ comments submitted at public meetings or in writing or email through the end of May.

After the NNSA finishes reviewing comments submitted at public meetings and in writing the agency will 'determine whether the existing environmental impact statement should be supplemented, a new environmental impact statement should be prepared, or no further [NEPA] documentation is required.'

In the likely event that neither the mainstream media or even Western activists groups have given you a heads up about why a brand-spanking new NTS EIS is desperately needed, let's take a few pointers from Robert Loux of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects who wrote in his September 2007 letter to Stephen Mellington of the NNSA.

<<http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2007/pdf/nv070911nnsa.pdf>>

‘Since 1996...baseline conditions have changed markedly. It is difficult to see how the...Supplemental Analyses can possibly represent today's known baseline conditions, or how federal officials, using this outdated information, can make informed decisions on future uses and management of the NTS at the landscape.'

The core of Loux's concern - as it should be because of his position with the State of Nevada - is over a dispute with the State of Nevada on land issues. Loux contends that current and proposed uses of the NTS should be part of formal consultations with the Department of Interior per language in a 2005 report by the U.S. House of Representatives. The actual ‘uses’ of the Nevada Test Site have changed since 1996. After the 1996 NTS EIS was finalized, a number of new ‘uses’ were initiated. They include: an ongoing subcritical testing program announced in November 1996; various Congressional decisions since 1996 regarding readiness for resumption of underground nuclear testing; and large scale, open air explosive detonations, such as Divine Strake, at locations not previously evaluated and designated for such activities. Loux writes that there is a need for new environmental baselines using data from environmental impacts from subcritical and other testing at NTS since 1996 and that a new site-wide EIS is needed not only for Nevada land issues but also to assess the impacts to humans and the environment.

Loux is right on the money about a lot of things especially Divine Strake. The ‘additional use’ of the NTS for activities such as Divine Strake was NOT addressed in the 1996 NTS EIS. The DTRA and NNSA, if you recall, insisted that Divine Strake, the cancelled mega-conventional-explosive experiment, was addressed in that 1996 EIS and that is why we got three-in-a-row sham Environmental Assessments.

Insisting on a new environmental impact statement for the NTS will be the ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure for our future worries, woes and, quite possibly, cancers. The NTS EIS supplement analysis states that DTRA is still pushing ahead and describes DTRA’s Hard Target Defeat Program as an ongoing multi-year effort to evaluate 'alternative capabilities’ using ground and air munitions against tunnels, bunkers and buildings representing different geographic scenarios. The analysis states, 'Tests have been conducted using conventional military munitions in NTS Areas 12 and 16.

This is the only activity currently associated with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Hard Target Defeat Program.' [page 61] Reading between the lines, it is clear that this ‘ongoing’ DTRA program over the next five years will result in more high explosives testing at the NTS at DTRA’s favorite testing areas, such as Area 16 where Divine Strake was proposed, which were NOT adequately tested for soil contamination in 1996. This should be a major source of worries for downwinders. Why? DTRA and NNSA will, as they did before, justify any and all future open-air high explosive testing without the need for a new NTS EIS, which means there will be NO data on the level of contamination of soils related to these tests. Future use of these Areas [12 and 16] is folly without adequate testing of the soils, which received fallout from Shots Coulomb B, Shasta, Kepler and a number of others. Even tests a fraction of the size of Divine Strake can loft that still ‘hot’ radioactivity into St. George, Utah, or Las Vegas, NV. And ‘that’ radioactivity is not as innocuous as ‘eating a banana’ and ‘watching TV’ as one St. George-based pro-Divine Strake commenter once wrote. ‘That’ radioactivity will create a new generation of downwinders.

The process for a new NTS EIS will include scoping meetings, public written/oral comment frameworks and a full discussion of how activities such as subcritical and nuclear simulation testing – and more - relates to the mission of the NTS. This process will be the perfect occasion to bring up the fact that subcritical and nuclear simulation testing at the NTS violates the spirit of test-ban treaties and sends the wrong message – ‘do as I say not what I do’ – to the world community about our non-proliferation efforts. It will also be an occasion to repeat over and over again that the NTS activities – all of them – violate the treaty with the Western Shoshone nation. It will also be an occasion to remind the NNSA that their radiation monitoring network, called CEMP, is of third-world quality and doesn’t do nearly a good-enough job at ensuring the safety of people in St. George and Las Vegas and beyond of lofting radiation from the NTS in emergency situations especially large events such as earthquakes or tornadoes.

It is imperative that citizens go to these public meetings and submit comments to insist that the 1996 NTS EIS does not adequately assess the environmental impacts of future NTS activities over the next 5 years AND why it is not valid AND that a new site wide EIS needs to be prepared.

The public meetings, which appear to be Divine Strake-style poster shows, are in Pahrump on May 5, Las Vegas on May 6 and St. George on May 7. Times and location can be found here: http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/newsreleases/NTS_Draft_SA_Public_Meetings.pdf
Also, public comments will be accepted through May 30, 2008 to the address in the above document or to nts-sa@nv.doe.gov or hand delivered at the meetings.

The final supplemental analysis, which will include the NNSA's final action determination, will be issued on Sept. 30, 2008.

Links:
September 11, 2007
State of Nevada - Letter from Bob Loux to Steve Mellington requesting that DOE prepare a new site-wide EIS for the Nevada Test Site
Draft Supplement Analysis for the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada

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