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WASHINGTON - Opponents of a nuclear waste dump on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation looked Monday to harness star power to stop nuclear power.
Rock stars Ani DeFranco and the Indigo Girls joined actor James Cromwell to lobby senators to fight the plan by Private Fuel Storage to store 44,000 tons of nuclear waste on the Skull Valley reservation, about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
"There is no such thing as a barrel that can remain airtight and shipshape and good-to-go for a hundred thousand years. . . . There's no such thing as a schedule of transportation in which we can ship this waste all over the country without a mishap," said DeFranco, known for her strong-willed folk-punk music.
"We are at a crucial moment right now. This week, rather than writing a check to the Leukemia Foundation, we can stop the Skull Valley dump," she said.
The group also took aim at the energy bill in final negotiations between members of the House and Senate, which the activists said is heavy on subsidies and polluting energy and too light on renewable energy such as wind power.
The celebrities and advocates had meetings scheduled Monday with staff for a dozen senators - including aides to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and the panel's top Democrat, Sen. Byron Dorgan - and Interior Department officials. Their message was that the Interior Department was not meeting its legal obligation to protect American Indians from exploitation.
Amy Ray, part of the Indigo Girls folk duo, said that minorities and the poor have always been stuck with waste facilities like the Goshute proposal. "We ask people to stand in solidarity with Native American people against nuclear waste dumping," she said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is in the final stages of reviewing the license for the Private Fuel Storage facility. A decision could be reached by the end of the summer. If it is approved, the state has vowed to challenge the action in court.
"This issue is a watershed issue for this country," said Cromwell, who played the farmer in the movie "Babe," and the crooked police chief in "L.A. Confidential."
"It is polluting, not only the Goshute people, but those who handle the waste, those who live near the waste," he said, adding that he and others would be willing to lie down on the tracks to keep the shipments from moving, even if that means going to prison.