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Nuclear Nebraska: The Remarkable Story of the Little County That Couldn’t Be Bought
Susan Cragin
New York: Amacom Books, 2007
304 pp., $24.95, hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-8144-7430-3

What happens in Washington, D.C. can have profound effects on people miles away, and nuclear waste disposal has been one of those issues that Presidents and Congresses have imposed on local communities. Nuclear Nebraska provides another example of recurring realities:

• nuclear waste disposal sites are chosen for political, not technical, reasons,
• citizens will fight to protect their land, health, and environment, and
• the nuclear dumps are delayed, and ultimately defeated.

This engaging book, primarily based on interviews with dozens of participants, describes the almost 20-year fight of Save Boyd County, a community group that resisted efforts to open a low-level nuclear waste dump in that northeastern Nebraska County of less than 3,000 people. The struggle divided the residents, many of whom were fourth generation farmers; elected Governor (now Senator) Ben Nelson who played an important rule in killing the project; and stopped the dump.

Nebraskans, like people in most other states, took little notice in 1980, when Congress passed the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act, which mandated that states dispose of “low-level” nuclear wastes. “Low-level” is a catchall term for radioactive wastes that are not nuclear reactor spent fuel, not high-level waste from reprocessing fuel rods, and not plutonium-contaminated wastes from nuclear bomb production. “Low-level” waste ranges from low radioactivity wastes from medical and commercial uses to highly radioactive and long-lived wastes from nuclear power plants (the large majority of all such wastes).

In 1983, responding to the 1980 law, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana created the Central Interstate Compact, which was to develop one low-level nuclear waste dump site for the wastes from those five states. Nebraska, Arkansas, and Louisiana each have two nuclear power plants, Kansas has one, and Oklahoma has none. Each state provided one commissioner as the governing board of the Compact.

In 1985, the Commission hired the consulting company, Dames & Moore, to eliminate unsuitable areas and identify two potential dump sites in each of the five states. By 1987, public forums were held in each state. Susan Cragin writes: “The forums were crowded with angry anti-dump activists. They were antagonistic, opinionated, well prepared, and locally based: not only anti-nuclear and environmental activists, but a distressing number of state and local politicians, local NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] groups, Native Americans, and the occasional cancer patient. These speakers had no respect for the federal mandate and no interest in accepting the premise that the waste already existed and had to go somewhere. Most wanted the project either halted or changed beyond the boundaries of the Commission’s mandate.” No one from Boyd County attended the Nebraska forums because the Dames & Moore study did not show it to have any suitable site.

There was no obvious site, and only one company, US Ecology, wanted to operate a dump site. However, Nebraska Governor Kay Orr decided that since the federal law mandated a site somewhere, that her state could provide a technically suitable site some place where there would be strong community support. So on December 15, 1987, the Commission approved US Ecology’s recommendation to put the dump in Nebraska by a 4-1 vote (Nebraska voting no).

During 1988, US Ecology set up a Citizens’ Advisory Committee to find a community that would accept the dump for some economic benefit. At the same time, there was a statewide petition drive to oppose any dump. The well-funded opponents of the initiative claimed that it would raise electric bills and force out of the state nuclear medicine and research, and 64 percent of the voters were against the initiative.

Paulette Blair, a Boyd County elementary school teacher, got signatures for the initiative, and after it lost, changed the petition to “Not In Boyd County” and had more than 1,000 signatures by late November 1988. But the county was divided by a three-year fight over school consolidation, which resulted in Naper having its schoolchildren bused through Butte to Spencer starting in September 1988. Cragin writes: “Butte’s school system faced a slow death, and the people who lived in and around Butte knew the town of Butte did, too.” So the Butte town board voted to send a Letter of Interest to US Ecology. The Boyd County Supervisors voted to support the Letter of Interest, then, on January 10, 1989, voted to withdraw its support. Nonetheless, on January 18, 1989, US Ecology named Boyd County one of the three finalists, along with Nemaha and Nuckolls counties. Cragin writes: “The three counties had one thing in common in addition to declining populations and poverty. Each bordered another state, which was thought to make putting the site there more palatable to the state of Nebraska as a whole.”

After numerous meetings, in which Save Boyd County (SBC) demonstrated strong opposition – so much so that Gov. Orr ordered State Police to be at the meetings – on December 28, 1989, US Ecology selected Boyd County. The company bought an option to purchase 320 acres for the site. Apparently, it was the only site in the three counties that an owner was willing to sell at near market price. As Lowell Fisher of SBC said: “There are eleven hundred half-sections in Boyd County, and there’s more acres of standing water on that one than any.” Other problems with the site included landslides, the location was at the far northern edge of the Compact, not close to where wastes were generated as it should be, and earthquakes. Later, thanks to Greg Zephier of the Lakota Sioux of South Dakota pointing it out, the site also was found to be above the Ogallala aquifer, the nation’s largest freshwater aquifer.

Governor Orr was up for re-election in November 1990, and Save Boyd County contacted all the candidates to try to elect an anti-dump governor. Ben Nelson, a Democratic darkhorse with no statewide political experience, agreed to attend one of SBC’s regular forums, listened to people’s concerns, and promised justice. As a result, SBC strongly supported Nelson, who carried Boyd County in the April Democratic primary by 250 votes and won statewide by 42 votes.

SBC tried to show up at every Orr event to humiliate her and ruin her campaign. They distributed tee shirts, including one with Paulette Blair’s caricature of Orr with a foot-long nose that read “Pinochiorr.” The “Young Turks,” most in their 30s, dressed in camouflage-hunting clothes, carried guns, and attended many events, including their demonstration at an Orr campaign event with former President Reagan. Gov. Orr didn’t campaign in Boyd County, and in October said that she didn’t feel safe because of an August letter that she found threatening. The “death threat” got national press coverage. Six days later, Lowell Fisher, who was a long-time friend of Gov. Orr and wanted her to stop the dump since her principle of community support didn’t exist, announced he was fasting, would drink only fruit juice until either the dump was stopped or he died, and endorsed Ben Nelson. The fast resulted in statewide candlelight vigils, substantial media coverage, constant questions to Gov. Orr, and a focus in the Orr-Nelson debates. Nelson won the election by 4,030 votes.

Despite Governor Nelson’s actions and the Commission Executive Director being arrested and convicted of embezzling $1 million from the Compact, US Ecology and some people in Butte continued supporting the license application, which had been filed in July 1990. In January 1993, the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) announced it intended to deny the license. US Ecology then reduced the site to 100 acres to try to avoid the wetlands and flooded areas. The licensing process dragged on until public hearings in 1998 in which SBC members provided most of the technical testimony against the site. On August 6, 1998, DEQ announced that it intended to deny the license because of water problems at the site, that US Ecology wasn’t financially qualified, and that radiation safety programs were inadequate—precisely the points that SBC raised.

In November 1998, there were public hearings on the intent to deny the license, and the final denial was issued on December 18, 1998. However, SBC didn’t have its big celebration because the Commission and nuclear utilities sued the state for dragging out the licensing process and asked for millions of dollars in damages. The trial was held in 2002, and federal judge Richard Kopf ruled against Nebraska, awarding $151 million in damages because of Nebraska’s bad faith in continuing the license process long after the political decision was made to not allow the dump. Nebraska appealed, and lost, and ultimately settled for a payment of $145,811,367 to the Compact on August 1, 2005.

Sen. Ben Nelson’s foreword places the struggle in the larger context of the flawed legislative process – “Legislation, by its very nature, tries to solve tomorrow’s problems by mandating yesterday’s solutions.” Cragin’s viewpoint: “What happened to Boyd County should never happen again, but it will if we are not vigilant and do not learn the lessons of Boyd County. I’m grateful I had the chance to document this long and impassioned resistance, and to spend time with the people who showed how a grassroots effort can make a difference. We all owe the people of Boyd County a debt of gratitude.”

– DON HANCOCK

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