Court win on DOE NEPA compliance

[marylia <marylia@igc.org>]

Hi folks. I am going to post a couple things today from our newsletter that
I think are of broad interest. I hope you enjoy reading them. Peace,
Marylia

Big Win in Court: DOE Ordered to Stand Trial
by Marylia Kelley

from Tri-Valley CAREs' March 1998 newsletter, Citizen's Watch

At a hearing Feb. 20, federal district court Judge Stanley Sporkin ordered
the Dept. of Energy (DOE) to stand trial on contempt charges stemming from
the agency's failure to draft a comprehensive cleanup plan for its nuclear
weapons facilities, including Livermore and Sandia labs. (See also Feb.
1998 Citizen's Watch.)

This latest action is part of a lawsuit by 39 plaintiff organizations,
including Tri-Valley CAREs, challenging DOE's "Stockpile Stewardship" plans
as well as the Department's unilateral decision to drop environmental
review of its cleanup plans from a 1990 court stipulation mandating both
analyses.

Judge Sporkin ordered an October 15 trial, and awarded plaintiffs six
month's of pre-trial discovery. During the hearing he explained it this way
to our attorney Barbara Finamore of the Natural Resources Defense Council:
I want you to find out where the agency got off-track, just how
contemptuous they have been, and why they didn't get back to the court on
this.

First, DOE tried to argue that it was legally obligated only to publish a
"notice of intent' to conduct the Programmatic Environmental Impact
Statement-not actually do the review. Judge Sporkin was neither impressed
nor amused by this novel legal interpretation.

Then, DOE argued that there were no national or programmatic issues
involved in cleaning up the mess that is the country's nuclear weapons
complex-all issues, DOE said, are local and site-specific. The Judge
likened that argument to constructing an apartment building without an
architect, by just handing out tools to prospective residents and asking
each to construct his or her own unit.

We plaintiff organizations are seeking civil and criminal contempt
penalties against DOE, including over $5 million in fines to be put into a
fund to allow community-based groups and tribes across the country to
monitor the cleanup process at DOE facilities. In lieu of jailing DOE
Secretary Federico Pena until a schedule for preparing the new review is
published, we have requested an extra $5,000 daily fine to add to the
monitoring fund.

Altogether, these events, we believe, will go a long way toward making
cleanup a higher priority throughout the complex, and in better involving
the directly-affected public in decisions. Stay tuned.

Marylia Kelley
Tri-Valley CAREs (Citizens Against a Radioactive Environment)
Peace - Justice - Environment since 1983
5720 East Ave. #116, Livermore, CA USA 94550
(510) 443-7148 - phone
(510) 443-0177 - fax