Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
I think I said I wasn't going to write about the Nara Visa borehole project again, but I'm going to anyway.
The lesson from the borehole project's sponsor has been how to shoot yourself in the foot.
The self-inflicted wound belongs to the U.S. Department of Energy, although it probably won't feel the effect because it's a thousand-legged creature that thinks it can get along fine with serious damage to one of its feet.
The DOE has yet to make an appearance or respond to an inquiry from any of the local folks who need a serious, unequivocal answer to the question: “Will any Nara Visa borehole ever contain nuclear waste?”
Let's face it. To the DOE, we're in “flyover country.” That's the territory they soar over while they look at their notes, sleep, or eat salty snacks and drink complementary beverages.
Flyover country is that boring green-and-brown checkerboard down there that happens to grow most of their food.
When their chief concern is ground transportation to another tall building in another metropolis, it's easy to forget that flyover country elected our current president. I would suggest to the DOE that as tedious as the small motels, diners and long drives may be, it might be a good idea to pay attention to the people who elected their boss.
What the current opponents to the borehole project need most is an assurance that, as DOE proclaimed before President Donald Trump took office, the Nara Visa borehole will not hold nuclear waste — ever.
The DOE will not say so unequivocally.
Representatives of the borehole contract bidders, Enercon and DOSECC, have tried valiantly to back their claims that the test boreholes will be only tests, but even they have heard nothing definitive on the main question from the DOE.
DOE has not said so to me, either. I inquired through their news media office after receiving assurances they would respond quickly. I sent them a question, complete with a deadline, that passed three weeks ago. No response. I've even checked my junk mail folders.
Borehole opponents tell me they have gotten nothing but run-arounds from the DOE. Certainly no answers.
They have worked hard. They come to community meetings armed with bookmarked reams of downloaded documents. They have walked the streets and knocked on doors.
While I think it's preposterous to believe the DOE would bury high-level nuclear waste under one of the nation's most important underground waterways, the Ogallala Aquifer, I can certainly understand the concerns of the Nara Visa area ranchers and residents.
They seem to be all too keenly aware they inhabit flyover country.
The DOE has the responsibility to find a place to store a few thousand tons of the deadliest waste material mankind has concocted but has done nothing to assure the flyover folks that they mean what they say about even a test borehole.
Why should the local residents not be suspicious about DOE's true intentions?
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at: [email protected]