ST. GEORGE — High-level nuclear waste and certain levels of radioactive waste aren't welcome in Washington County.

County commissioners recently passed an ordinance that rejects all proposals for a storage or transfer facility for high-level nuclear waste or greater than class-C radioactive waste within the county limits.

"This is really a pre-emptive action," said Washington County Commissioner Jim Eardley, referring to the ordinance adopted unanimously and in effect starting today. "We don't know of any proposals and we're not anticipating anything, but we feel like it's the prudent thing to do."

Washington County's proximity to a proposed nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada was a factor when it came to passing the ordinance, he said.

Also playing a part in the county's timing, he said, is Utah's ongoing struggle to stop the temporary storage of such waste on the Goshute Indian reservation in Tooele County's Skull Valley.

"It is a very sensitive issue down here," said Eardley, who grew up in Washington County and maintains a ranch here. "We want to be in harmony with the state when it comes to rejecting storage of nuclear waste."

Above-ground nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s and early 1960s released plumes of radioactive fallout that drifted north to southern Utah and beyond. Children drank milk from contaminated cows and farmers tilled earth that later tested positive with radioactive dust.

"We were never told what was going on over the hill, so we weren't afraid of that," said Michelle Thomas, a St. George native who beat back two forms of cancer and now struggles with a muscular disease. "It wasn't long after the tests began that people around here started noticing the effects. Those of you who've moved in here don't know; we're reading the obituaries of our friends everyday. People die prematurely in St. George."

Hundreds of area "downwinders" have been tested at a free medical and health screening clinic called "The Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program," or RESEP, at Dixie Regional Medical Center. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Division of Primary Health Care and numerous local health-care agencies, RESEP opened its doors in March 2004. Funding for 2006 have also been renewed.

"There are six clinics like ours in the western United States," said RESEP clinic director Becky Barlow. "Most of the downwinders we've seen are from Washington and Iron counties, but we have had people come here who now live in other states."

Above-ground nuclear testing conducted at the Nevada Test Site during those years produced radioactive fallout that drifted over the region, exposing an estimated 22,000 people, Barlow said.

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