Divine Strake session criticized

Toward the end of the second hour of a public information session Wednesday night on the planned Divine Strake explosion, a man shouted that anyone who was against the test should say aye.

"Aye" roared from the several hundred Utahns gathered in a ballroom of the Grand America Hotel, 55 S. State.

As officers were hustling the man out of the room, shouts came that this was a public meeting. That was followed by a response, apparently from an officer, "It's not a public forum."

And that description of the meeting is one of the many concerns of those who attended the Salt Lake gathering sponsored by the government agencies that plan to detonate 700 tons of explosive material that opponents fear will stir up radioactive dust from the same area when nuclear bombs were tested decades earlier. Another gathering is scheduled for tonight in St. George.

"They are so afraid of the public," said Mary Dickson, a member of Downwinders United and an anti-nuclear activist.

The man who was escorted out of the hotel refused to give his name but said he would be present at a public hearing next week sponsored by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. A plainclothes officer who had escorted the man told the Deseret Morning News he was Sgt. Andrew Oblad of the Salt Lake City Police.

"Yes, I asked him to leave," he said. Oblad added, "I'm done talking to you. Have a nice night."

Instead of a public hearing format, the government set up information stations around the ballroom where 23 public affairs officers and others from the test's sponsors were ready to answer questions about the blast. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and National Nuclear Security Administration plan to detonate 700 tons of fuel oil and ammonium nitrate at the Nevada Test Site.

NNSA posters lining a side of the large ballroom showed tunnels with aircraft and machinery, with the slogan, "Foreign underground facilities are a growing threat." DTRA officials with posters about the experiment itself were on the other side of the room.

A stenographer was ready to take verbatim statements from the public, a new wrinkle after heavy criticism that the meeting would not be a public hearing. Asked how many people had spoken to her, she said she was instructed to say nothing.

Asked why the agencies had not said earlier that oral comments would be taken as well as written statements, Kevin Rohrer of NNSA at the Nevada Test Site said, "You can't get every detail in every press release," but any comments would be considered part of the record.

The agencies have also been criticized for changing the location of the meeting the day before it was to take place.