But the governor should do more than that. What's needed is a face-to-face meeting between Huntsman and Utah's representatives in Congress and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. In that setting, Utah officials can demand answers about the potential dangers of Divine Strake, a 700-ton non-nuclear explosion planned for this spring at the Nevada Test Site.
If they are not satisfied with the responses, they should do what is necessary to delay or, better yet, stop the test altogether.
The three public sessions the agency called in Las Vegas last night, Salt Lake City today and in St. George on Thursday were billed as "open houses," not hearings, and their format does not allow for open debate. Worse, there is nothing to ensure that written comments will ever be seriously considered.
Even the hearings that Huntsman has set for next week, in which ordinary citizens can and should speak out, are not sufficient to hold the agency accountable. Utahns certainly deserve to be heard, but their comments don't have the authoritative weight of state officials and members of Congress, armed with scientific data, sitting at a table with agency officials.
The federal government is asking Americans who live around the test site to trust its claim that the test is safe. Unfortunately, the government doesn't deserve that level of trust. Utahns remember too well how the government assured them that open-air nuclear testing in the 1950s was safe, and they have paid dearly in lost health and life for exposure to radioactive fallout.
The agencies involved with Divine Strake have done nothing to restore trust. They finally admitted that the blast could spread radioactivity from contaminated dust to the off-site public, but say the effects likely would be insignificant. That's easy to say, of course, when you don't have to define "insignificant" and seem to be under orders to skirt the hurdles of public opinion and science.
As this is a critical public health issue, it is up to Utah's elected representatives to ask the tough questions and demand answers, and to not pull any political or legal punches until they get them.
