A resolution passed by the Kane County Commission this past week says the federal government's plan to conduct a non-nuclear explosion at the Nevada Test Site contains one major flaw: the planned location.
Federal authorities have said the explosion, dubbed "Divine Strake," would send a mushroom-shaped dust cloud high over the Nevada desert. The Kane County resolution points out that nuclear tests conducted years ago at the Nevada Test Site released radioactive particles that now are blamed for various cancers suffered by thousands of southern Utahns. The fear is that those radioactive particles would be stirred into the air by a new blast.
"We just think the people of southern Utah have suffered enough and shouldn't be subjected to more of the same," said Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbe- shaw. "There is so much emotion over this test, I think the federal government owes us that extra measure of safety."
The commissioners proposed that Divine Strake and similar conventional weapons tests be conducted at a site not previously contaminated by radioactive materials. Habbeshaw said a copy of the resolution would be sent to Utah's governor and its congressional delegation.
"We're not against the test at all," Habbeshaw said. "We think that the technology learned from this test is important for the safety of all Americans. Our only opposition is to the location of the test."
The resolution, passed Monday, states that federal assurances that previous weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site were safe "resulted in the death of 15,000 people and injury to many times more across the 48 contiguous United States and Canada."
"I thought about whether I would be willing to stick around if they did the test in Nevada or whether I'd want to leave town for a few days, and I truly am not comfortable with it," said Habbeshaw. "I think we would encourage the test if it could be done safely somewhere else."
Kane County joins Washington County and St. George, both of which have issued a "position statement" against Divine Strake.
On Wednesday, the Western Shoshone Nation also sent out a news release condemning the test. The Western Shoshones say the test site is "within the boundaries of the Western Shoshone Nation formally identified by the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1893."
Nuclear blasts carried out there in the past, the news release said, caused a "legacy of adverse health impacts and disproportionate burden of risk borne by the people downwind."
Robert Hager, a Reno-based lawyer representing Western Shoshone tribe members, the Winnemucca Indian Colony and "downwinders" in Utah and Nevada who have sued opposing the test, said he plans to challenge flaws in a draft environmental assessment prepared about the Defense Threat Reduction Agency experiment.
The document has been the focus of public meetings this month in Nevada, Utah and Idaho, where elected officials have questioned the safety of the experiment. The test was postponed last year after Hager filed suit.
Critics have called the blast a surrogate for a low-yield nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb and have expressed fears that it would scatter radioactive dust contaminated by nuclear weapons experiments at the test site from 1951 to 1992.
The experiment would explode 700 tons of fuel oil and fertilizer over an underground tunnel, about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
With no date set for the test, U.S. District Judge Lloyd D. George in Las Vegas on Wednesday scheduled a March 2 status hearing concerning the lawsuit. He also told government lawyers he wants to be kept closely informed on plans for the test, and he wants to see the draft environmental assessment.
"I'll pay a lot of attention to this case, I assure you," the judge said.
Contributing: Joe Bauman, Associated Press
E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com