Lawmaker wants U.S. to pay for fouling water with nuclear tests

CARSON CITY — A Nye County legislator wants the federal government to pay his county and Nevada for contaminating an estimated $18 billion worth of water under the Nevada National Security Site through 828 underground nuclear tests.

"This is the most massive contamination in the country," Assemblyman Ed Goedhart told members of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee during a hearing Tuesday on his Assembly Joint Resolution 5.

The resolution, which has no force of law, calls for the federal government to take steps to mitigate damage caused by the contamination of the underground aquifer during tests that ended in 1992 at what used to be called the Nevada Test Site.

The U.S. Department of Energy tests wells off the test site annually where the water is expected to move someday and has found no contamination. But Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, said the water over a long period of time will end up in his community, Beatty and Death Valley.

He noted the federal government required British Petroleum to put $20 billion in an escrow account for victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but has provided nothing for Nevada and Nye County, home of the 1,360-square-mile nuclear weapons testing facility.

No action will be taken on the resolution before a coming workshop, Natural Resources Chairwoman Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, said.

No Energy Department representative attended Tuesday’s hearing.

Goedhart said the federal government spends $65 million annually on nuclear cleanup activities at the test site, compared with $1.8 billion at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington. But the test site contamination is 1,000 times as extreme as in Hanford, he added.

"The federal government needs to man up, clean it up or pay up," Goedhart said.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.