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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan.18, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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A project to build a low-level radioactive-waste dump in Ward Valley, Calif., threatens to pollute the Colorado River and the springs and wells of Ward Valley itself.
Despite strong protests against the dump, it may be built- -because of environmental racism. That's when major waste- management corporations intentionally choose low-income areas populated by Latino, African American or Native people as dumping grounds for hazardous waste.
This waste can harm children, adults and wildlife living in the surrounding area. Imposing it on a poor community of color is an example of class and racial oppression.
Ward Valley is located in the Mojave Desert 22 miles outside Needles, Calif. It is a wildlife preserve for the endangered desert tortoise.
It is also the sacred land of the Mojave and Chemehuevi people, who have been leading a struggle against the dump.
U.S. Ecology--the company proposing to build the dump site--has built two other waste dumps, one in North Carolina, another in Beatty, Nev. The company guaranteed that both these dumps would stay put without incident for 100 years. But both migrated in less than 10 years.
The leakage caused massive contamination of surrounding ground soil.
U.S. Ecology wants to build an unlined trench on Native land in Ward Valley to dump low-level radioactive waste. The trench would be built above an uncontaminated aquifer--an underground water source that remains in one place.
Such a project creates various environmental dangers. Radioactive waste from the whole Southwest would be transported to Ward Valley, endangering communities along its route.
If vehicles carrying waste in steel drums were in accidents, the drums could fall into the Colorado River.
Since the area surrounding Ward Valley may not possess solid bedrock, radioactive isotopes could leak through any crack or opening during a rainstorm and seep into the aquifer.
The Mojave--people of the river--and Chemehuevi--people of the desert--are indigenous to Ward Valley. These Native peoples scatter the ashes of deceased loved ones onto the desert sand. Ward Valley has been their church and cemetery.
Their historic presence can be seen in petroglyphs carved in black rocks lining the walls of Grape Vine Canyon.
The commercial media do not explain that in Ward Valley the mountains have stretched like a rubber band and may have splintered the bedrock beneath them. This means there could be cracks throughout Ward Valley that lead directly to the Colorado River, or to springs and wells filled with water from the aquifer beneath the dump site.
Philip Smith, a Chemehuevi who lives in Needles, tells journalists that U.S. Ecology performed a six-month survey of Ward Valley. But the company failed to heed the oral history of the indigenous people there.
Smith says: "We have been trying to get you people to understand that there is water here in Ward Valley--not just the Colorado, but here in the valley. There are springs throughout all these mountains.
"Because of that it won't take a thousand years to reach the Colorado but a few months. No one will listen to us."
People in Needles fear their drinking water could also be poisoned by low-level radioactive waste.
According to Smith, despite all its testing U.S. Ecology failed to consider the possibility that flash floods or nine-year rains could cause underground movement.
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