Thought I would pass this along
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Western Shoshones file Yucca lawsuit: Tribes cite 1863 treaty in claiming land cannot by used for waste repository
A contingent of Western Shoshones played what Yucca Mountain, Nevada nuclear waste project opponents consider their ace in the hole Friday: a lawsuit based on an 1863 treaty that the tribes say doesn’t allow building a repository on their native land.
It is the first time the Ruby Valley Treaty, authorized by Civil War Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, has been used in a case that targets Yucca Mountain, said Reno attorney Robert Hager, who represents the Western Shoshone tribes.
“I have always felt the Western Shoshone have the best claim to stop Yucca Mountain,” Hager said, flanked by tribal leaders outside Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas where the case was filed.
Yucca Mountain is a sacred site for Western Shoshones.
Hager said the tribes want to hold the departments of Energy and Interior accountable for the contractual agreement that specifies how their 93,750-square-mile swath across parts of Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho should be used.
The agreed uses do not include a disposal site for highly radioactive waste or a railroad to deliver waste to the mountain, which the federal government intends to do by submitting a repository licence application to regulators by the end of this year.
The lawsuit, with a motion for an injunction to stop the project, names Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton as defendants.
A spokesman for the Energy Department’s Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas had no comment on the lawsuit.
The mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is the planned site for a repository to entomb 77,000 tons of spent reactor fuel and deadly defense wastes. The repository sits on land covered by the treaty, an eight-