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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The leader of the Goshute Indians says his tribe has been betrayed by state and federal officials who worked to kill a plan to store nuclear waste on the Skull Valley reservation.
Leon D. Bear said that when a lease for Private Fuel Storage was denied by the Interior Department that his tribe lost the potential for millions of dollars in revenue.
The Interior Department blocked transportation of waste to the reservation and invalidated the previously approved lease between the tribe and its utility-company partners.
PFS had planned to move as much as 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to the temporary storage site in Skull Valley about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
"If they want to run the reservation, why don't they just come out and run it?" asked Bear.
Bear had led his tribe through a 17-year review process, that was initially funded by Congress in an attempt to find communities and tribes willing to accept nuclear waste.
But Utah's congressional delegation fought to keep nuclear waste out of the state, and Bear said nobody met with him to discuss alternatives for economic development.
"I don't feel very comfortable knowing one of our political leaders had done something like this to an Indian nation, without giving the Indian nation any consolation," Bear said.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who sat on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee from 1995 to 2004, said that while has no recollection of a request to meet with Bear, he has met with Goshutes on several occasions.
"They strongly opposed the Skull Valley project and shared with me many allegations of wrongdoing by Leon Bear," Hatch said in a statement. "These Goshutes know that I stand ready to help them with other plans for economic development, as I have for other tribes in Utah."
Support for the embattled Bear and the PFS project has not been unanimous among members of the tribe.
On Aug. 26, nearly all of the 33 adult tribal members who attended their annual meeting voted to disband the executive committee, and they have asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs to supervise an election. The executive committee conducts the tribe's daily business. Members also accepted the resignation of tribal Vice Chairwoman Lori Bear, cousin of Leon Bear.
As planned, the PFS waste site would have provided an open-air storage pad for used reactor waste, dangerously radioactive material that would be stored in steel and concrete containers on 100 acres across the road from the tribal village. The waste could be stored there for up to 40 years under the tribe's contract with PFS.
Bear said Interior Department officials had not spoken with the tribe since issuing their ruling last week.
Bear said his tribe has long been ignored by state and federal lawmakers.
"The thing is, they are supposed to be protecting us, to help us," said Bear. "When is that help going to come?"
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
