So the Asays, whose kin homesteaded the area four generations ago, naturally were surprised last spring when they heard they might get a new neighbor. Then they were downright shocked when they learned that a monster pile of radioÂactive waste was moving in.

The U.S. Department of Energy had decided to move uranium tailings and toxic chemicals - as much as 18 million tons of them - from the banks of the Colorado River in Moab to just beyond the family land where the Asays live in a modest, ranch-style home, built by Rod and a friend two decades ago.

Most people would expect people like the Asays to resist. And, while they did at first, they have come to accept the Energy Department's decision, thanks to some time, distance and a measure of trust.

"I've got to hand it to the DOE because they have been very responsive to our requests," says Rod, a worker-safety trainer.

Sipping coffee at the dining table, Lani, a real estate office manager, agrees: "I have never dealt with a government agency that was so nice."

How the Asays have come to handle the situation may someday become a case study in dealing with the siting of hazardous waste facilities. NIMBY - or the "Not-In-My-Backyard" syndrome - is what the usual reaction has come to be called by the companies and government agencies typically proposing such projects.

And for years, they have struggled with people who want nothing to do with facilities that might bring a new hazard to their neighborhoods, like a radioactive waste cell.

Some might say NIMBY was what drove the Energy Department's decision to move the tailings from Moab, 32 miles south, to land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management at the foot of the Book Cliffs in Crescent Junction.

For decades, the tailings have been piling up at the old uranium mill site, just north of the Moab city limits.

As more became known about environmental impacts of the tailings, the campaign to move the waste swelled. Ammonia from the pile was leaching into the river and was thought to be harming endangered fish. Wind gusts sometimes would roil tainted dirt into the air.

And the threat of uranium-tainted mill waste polluting the river increasingly worried officials and representatives of millions of people downstream who rely on Colorado River water - especially in light of evidence suggesting a big flood might wash the pile into the river.

Pressure from U.S. lawmakers from Utah and downstream states took the pile out of the hands of the Atlas Corp.'s bankruptcy trustees and under the jurisdiction of the Energy Department. On April 6, the Energy Department announced it would haul the waste to Crescent Junction by rail.

David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard School of Public Health, suggests the Asays and people who wanted the tailings moved viewed the potential harm from dramatically different perspectives. People downstream probably felt more fearful because the hazard - the tailings pollution - was foisted upon them, because they had no control.

Contrast that, he suggests, with the feelings of trust the Energy Department has built with the Asays. By working with the couple to give them a greater sense of control - by providing information and promoting openness with the family - the Energy Department may have been able to avert a NIMBY reaction, he suggests.

"If you trust the people who impose a risk on you, you are much more likely to accept that risk," he says.

Kent E. Portney, a political scientist at Tufts University, says another factor in the Asay's reaction might be a reflection of something broader, that the public recognizes there are limits to their ability to stall or kill hazardous waste facilities.

"A lot of it has to do with what I call the political realism of it," he says.

There was certainly some of that with the Asays.

Lani Asay, whose great aunts staked the original claim on 320 acres at Crescent Junction, felt cheated and angry when she first learned about the tailings. In the Grand County government offices, she had been assured the Energy Department preferred two other options over land near her family's.

She recalls returning to the county council "in tears." She fielded "irate" calls from outraged family members, many of them among the 26 people who own the remaining 200 acres of the homestead.

Rod Asay is resigned.

"I don't like it," he says. "I'd just as soon they put it out in the desert, that it wasn't going to come here. But it's gonna come here."

Shortly after the Energy Department announcement, the Asays arranged a Saturday picnic with Donald Metzler, the DOE project manager for the Atlas cleanup, and Lani's worried relatives. The officials assured them the risk was small that the low-level radioactivity would have an impact on them, their land or the environment.

"It's not like waste rods out of a plutonium reactor," says Rod. "And even though it's low-level, they want to take every precaution."

Air monitors have been installed at and around the Asays' home to gather data. Water monitoring is planned, too. They will not get any compensation.

The couple is confident the Energy Department will take care to engineer a safe disposal cell, which will look like a flat-topped mound. Rod hopes they will never have to deal with contamination.

Meanwhile, Lani is in close touch with Metzler and Joel Berwick, another Energy Department employee handling the Atlas project. She vows to stay on top of the issue.

"I said [to Metzler], 'Are you tarping these loads?' He said, 'If that's what you want, that's what you get.' I said, 'That's what I want.' "

Metzler says he is intent on holding up the Energy Department's end of the bargain.

"It turns out we really built some strong allies with the Asays. They are a great barometer for us, a huge asset."

He concedes his agency does not have a strong tradition of good public relations.

Metzler's seen big changes, especially since the Cold War ended. A member of the Grand Junction-based team that has cleaned up 24 former mill sites in the past two decades, he has seen greater focus put on being open and fostering public trust.

"DOE has realized the public has to be part of the solution."

fahys@sltrib.com

The Atlas pile

The pile now covers about 130 acres.

It will take about 10 years to clean up.

The new disposal cell at Crescent Junction is expected to cover 300 acres or more.

The federal government expects to spend between $458 million and $697 million to clean up and move the tailings.