 |
 |
 |
||
|
||||
|
May 17, 2006
Native Americans protest planned non-nuclear blast at test site
By MARK WAITE
Graham suspects the testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s killed her brother. The family grew their own vegetables and butchered their own cattle, she said, on ground that could have been contaminated. She raised her nephew and niece. "They told me I could apply for compensation for my nephew and niece after my brother passed away," Graham said. "I filled out all my paperwork and they said it was the wrong type of cancer. Because of my brother I'm doing this protest. What's happening on our land." Duckwater residents aren't usually thought of as downwinders, the people who lived downwind of above-ground nuclear bomb blasts in the 1950s. Most people think of Utahns. But Graham was one of a handful of Indians protesting the proposed Divine Strake bomb blast, scheduled for June 23. They fear it will stir up old radioactive material. A few protesters held signs in front of Tonopah's Scolari's Supermarket May 9 and walked down Main Street the following day. They plan to protest the blast in communities along U.S. Highway 95 including Goldfield, Beatty, Lathrop Wells and Mercury. Protesters carried sweet-smelling sage, a cow's horns and were beating a drum. The protest includes overall issues of Indian rights, including the Treaty of Ruby Valley, which dates to 1864. "Seventy million acres is Shoshone land we're still fighting for," said Johnnie Bobb of Austin. The National Nuclear Security Administration reported a finding of no significant impact had been issued Jan. 30 for the Divine Strake test. It will be a detonation of 700 tons of heavy ammonium nitrate fuel oil-emulsion, a blasting agent, placed in a charge hole 32 feet in diameter and 36 feet deep, set off by 30 pounds of C-4 explosive to initiate the detonation. The device has been used before at the U.S. Department of Defense's White Sands facility in New Mexico, according to the environmental assessment. It will be the equivalent of 593 tons of TNT. The explosion will be at an uncontaminated site within the Nevada Test Site, the EA states. "The site of the proposed Divine Strake detonation (the U16b tunnel) has never been used for any type of nuclear testing activity, and radioactive contamination does not exist within the area impacted by the blast. Therefore the proposed action would not result in the suspension or dispersion of radioactive materials or human exposure to radioactive materials." Health physicist Lynn Aspaugh, who contributed to a National Academy of Sciences report on the proposed test, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "Personally I doubt that enough radioactive materials would be re-suspended so that it could be measured above background (radiation) down wind of the NTS." But residents remain skeptical. Several dozen southern Utah residents demonstrated against the explosion Saturday in St. George, Utah. Arvilla Mascarenas, a member of the Shoshone Duckwater tribe, said she doesn't know of anything "divine" about the blast. She signed on as one of the Duckwater Reservation residents appealing the blast in U.S. District Court. The government assessment doesn't seem to assure her. "I don't understand why everything that's happening down at the test site is happening," Mascarenas said. "Why do they want to set off this 700-pound blast? It's going to bring up everything from the soil below from the nuclear blasts they set off in the '50s. It's going to be floating in our air again. We're going to have more people getting sick. "Do they think the Shoshone people don't matter? They say it's not going to be dangerous but still they want to be testing this stuff. If it's going to hurt our people here, why do they want to set it off? Do they want to kill more people?" Mascarenas said she lived in Duckwater until she was 8 years old, then moved away. She moved to the Logandale-Glendale area in northeastern Clark county for 10 years where she said more people were dying of cancer. Mascarenas said her nephew died of leukemia in his late teens, her sister-in-law died when she was in her 30s. "I hope they don't go through with it," she said. "It's just a little bunch of people that are complaining. The big shots in Washington they do what they want. So you don't have a choice." Jack LaMotte, another Duckwater Reservation resident, also signed on as a plaintiff opposing the test. LaMotte, who said he has worked with Citizen Alert, an anti-nuclear organization, and the Dann sisters in Crescent Valley, a group fighting for Indian rights. LaMotte said a lot of people on the Duckwater Reservation were exposed to fallout from nuclear tests in the 1950s. "Why don't they wait until the wind blows south?" LaMotte said. "Why don't they wait to blow it over Vegas if it's that safe and no problem? "That's what I think. They say there's not going to be any kind of harmful chemicals coming out here, so why don't they just send it over Vegas? Prevailing winds are always going to the east. Is it because we're the poorer part of the area?" Many people on the isolated Duckwater reservation don't find out about planned experiments at the test site until it's too late, LaMotte said. The Duckwater reservation is 15 miles off U.S. Highway 6 at Currant, or about 150 miles northeast of Tonopah. "Out here in Duckwater not too many people we know get the newspaper ... we're pretty isolated. A lot of the information by the time I hear about it it's already old news. Once people found out what's going on, why do they wait until the wind blows north? That's what a lot of people said. "Everybody knows what a zillion pounds of explosives is going to do. Why do it? Just to film it? They're using the same stuff in Oklahoma City that blew up that building. Just because they're making it bigger, you can use a computer and have simulations. It's just a waste of money, its jeopardizing people's health. When nuclear blasts went off they said the same thing and up here some people can remember that white ash and playing around in it when they were kids." The National Nuclear Safety Administration said the explosion will be to test the bunker-busting ability of the blast. The Western States Legal Foundation charges that the Defense Department February 2006 budget states the program will go nuclear in the future. The Indian rights organization states that Divine Strake "will develop a planning tool that will improve the war fighter's confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage." Sonia Carleto, a resident of the Yomba Indian Reservation in northern Nye County, said most motorists passing by have been supportive, honking their horns or waving. "You have your few, unfriendly people, but not many," she said. "Many people think it's not going to affect me," Carleto said. "It may not affect that one person, as an individual, but it will affect their families, mark my words." Johnnie Bobb, an Austin resident, was concerned about protecting the long-term environment of Mother Earth. "It's very important for us to keep it clean. Even if people say they've been here 15 years and nothing happened to me." |
|
