Crowd fights Strake

Hundreds of Utahns attended a public hearing Wednesday night — the governor, professors, activists, politicians and grandmothers — some near tears, many angry, and nearly all of them opposed to the planned Divine Strake explosion.

A state official estimated that by the second hour of the three-hour state hearing, between 250 and 275 people were present, with 75 offering statements for the record. Their subject was the explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, proposed by the Defense Department for the Nevada Test Site.

The session was the second of two called by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. in response to the federal government's refusal to hold hearings on the subject. Instead, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Nuclear Security Administration had "public information" meetings where experts answered questions and a court reporter took oral comments.

But as one man discovered when he was escorted from the Jan. 10 session, it wasn't a public forum.

Huntsman, through the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, held the hearing Wednesday and said comments would be transcribed and sent to the federal government as part of his official statement.

"Divine Strake is a 700-ton conventional explosion, located over a tunnel within one mile of radioactive contamination from past nuclear tests," Huntsman said. It would be upwind of people who know all too well the suffering and death that came from open-air nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site.

"This test is being evaluated under a cursory environmental assessment," he added.

Particles of only 2.5 microns in size could become airborne by the test. These "very fine particles that could contain radioactive isotopes and pose a threat to an individual's health are not even included in this evaluation," Huntsman said. Also, there is no assurance this test won't lead to a resumption of nuclear testing at the Nevada site.

When a man in the audience yelled, asking why the hearing would help, Huntsman had a quick reply.

"Because nothing stops the power of the people, my friend," he said. "We're speaking out. We have access to people in Washington. This is exactly what our state ought to be doing, and we'll have an impact."

Dr. Zell McGee, a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said the Pentagon has maintained that there's nothing dangerous at the Test Site. "They may be thinking about I-130, radioactive iodine, which has a half-life of eight days and probably is decayed and not much danger now. True enough."