My name is Gary Richardson. I am the executive director of the Snake River Alliance, Idaho's nuclear watchdog for 22 years. The Alliance began in 1979 when Idahoans became alarmed about the nuclear waste - some 16 billion gallons, as it turned out - that was being injected directly into the Snake River Plain aquifer. We helped Idahoans successfully end the injection of those waste. However, most of the contaminants remain in the aquifer.

The Department of Energy is not doing enough to clean up its buried nuclear waste at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. In fact, the DOE is playing a "shell game" - moving relatively safely stored transuranic waste from INEEL to the repository in New Mexico, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), so that more highly radioactive waste can be sent to Idaho.

Let me explain in a little more detail what I mean with a few pictures: Waste stored in intact barrels in buildings that comply with all the federal hazardous waste laws are being shipped to New Mexico for burial a half-mile underground, thus creating another potential waste problem. In return, millions of curies of the most radioactive materials on the planet - used nuclear fuel from Naval reactors and DOE facilities around the world - are being sent to Idaho for "storage," with no guarantee they'll ever leave.

The DOE's Environmental Management program is spending huge amounts of money - more than $60 million a year - but is not addressing the most serious problem that threatens the Snake River Plain aquifer. At the same time, they continue to dump low-level radioactive waste into unlined pits at the burial grounds.

There is a deeply embedded culture of denial at the DOE. We know that huge amounts of hazardous and radioactive contaminants are in the soil and water under the INEEL site. Yet, we are told not to worry -"Dilution is the solution to pollution"!

Well, that does not provide much comfort to our farmers. We are told that by the time the pollutants now in the water under the site reach the populated areas, the contamination will be below the Safe Drinking Water standards. Tell that to the farmers who raise Idaho potatoes or the barley used to brew a quarter of the nation's beer. Or to the Idaho trout farmers who raise 75 percent of the trout sold in America using water from the Snake River Plain aquifer. When plutonium or radioactive iodine starts showing up in the irrigation water, we will not be able to give away Idaho produce.

This report makes it clear that the government must change its priorities. IEER's report brings together in one place all the information available about the sordid history of the DOE's disregard for Idaho's major water source. It presents a compelling case for the government to change its priorities.

The DOE must fulfill promises made nearly 30 years ago to clean up its buried waste in Idaho. In 1972, shortly after the practice of burying the plutonium-contaminated waste in unlined pits was stopped, the DOE promised that the waste would be exhumed by the end of the decade. Of course, that never happened; and today the DOE is spending more on litigation costs over a failed attempt to characterize the buried waste than it is on trying to figure out how to get it out of the ground.