By Josh Long
Jackson Hole Guide

The landscape west of Idaho Falls is barren. And quiet.

A massive sign stands in the blazing sun miles ahead, disclosing the border of an 890-square-mile chunk of government property - where all is not quiet. For decades, scores of Idaho residents have depended on this land - or rather what occurs here - to feed their children, purchase automobiles and pay the mortgage.

This land - far removed from the splendor of the Teton Range and the Yellowstone ecosystem - is home to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab, and one of the largest employers in Idaho.

It is under siege. Beneath the surface of the land, there is pollution, destroyed documents and cancer-causing material, critics say.

Wyoming residents have geared up for a battle against government officials who plan to burn hazardous and radioactive waste - including plutonium - at the INEEL. The fight has drawn national attention, a celebrity lawyer, a senator and the vice president into the fray.

Who began this ruckus? Who first wanted to stop the incinerator?

A handful of women, determined to learn more about the INEEL and the incineration proposal, dedicated countless hours this summer to fuel an information campaign - one that has succeeded in apprising local residents of the possible dangers of incineration.

Without these women, and those who joined them, the INEEL and the incinerator might have gone unnoticed.

The stories of these citizens tell, in part, the fast-evolving saga of how a small community has banded together to protect what it perceives as a serious threat to the environment and posterity.

The Harvest wonders

Sophia Wakefield was residing in Munich, Germany, when the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant shocked the world. Munich is some 1,500 kilometers from Chernobyl, although close enough to cause grave alarm.

Government officials restricted citizens from eating local dairy products and vegetables, insisted they constantly wash their hair and told residents to put worn clothes in plastic bags, Wakefield remembered.

Some 13 years later, Wakefield and Angele Ferre, both owners at Harvest Natural Foods, would read an anonymous letter printed in the newspaper in May, 1999, regarding a proposed incinerator in eastern Idaho.

Entitled "Witches' brew," the Ketchum, Idaho, author wrote that a proposed incinerator will include "seven 90-foot smoke stacks" and "burn 650 pounds every hour of a witches' brew of nuclear and hazardous waste ...."

While the author's statements were significantly misleading - the incinerator, for example, includes only one horizontal burner - the article's theme had merit: Officials at the INEEL planned to burn a lot of waste, including carcinogens and radioactive elements.

Ferre was astonished. For starters, the 10-year Jackson resident had never even heard of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab.

She immediately called local officials and asked Jackson Mayor Barney Oldfield if there was action the town was taking concerning the incineration proposal. Oldfield, according to Ferre, said a Teton County Commissioner had attended a meeting in Idaho and believed that the project was safe. Moreover, Ferre said, transportation of the waste to the mayor seemed to pose more of a concern than the actual incineration process.

Ferre and Wakefield - not satisfied with the mayor's response - obtained information daily on the reported health risks of incineration while contacting scores of government representatives, varying from energy department officials to Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Mike Finley.

And they created a petition to oppose the proposed incinerator.

The Idaho Division of Environmental Quality would receive a letter from Ferre on June 9 which said that more than 500 people had signed the petition stating, "it seems clear that the best technology has not yet been discovered, therefore this proposed method of burning is premature and inadequate."

Complete strangers

Mary Mitchell, a social worker at St. John's Hospital, has been concerned about the activities at the INEEL for a few years. While at St. John's, Mitchell observed what she considered a significant amount of young people suffering from cancer.

"To me there seemed a suspiciously high number of cancers for a relatively young population," the social worker said of patients in Teton County. In May, Mitchell also read the letter to the editor. She called governors, local elected officials and environmental groups but nobody seemed to express much concern.

Mitchell had heard of Sophia Wakefield - she had never met her, however- and her pursuits to oppose the incinerator. She took some petitions from Harvest one day and gathered signatures at her child's Pumpkin Patch preschool graduation on May 26.

While Mitchell spoke with parents, Dr. Brent Blue signed a petition and called her in late June to suggest she contact Berte Hirschfield - another woman Mitchell did not know.

Hirschfield, who would later become president of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free - the group that officially formed to oppose incineration - was collecting information for lawyer Gerry Spence so he could request a comment period extension for the air permit.

The permit would close in a matter of days and had already been extended before. Idaho Department of Environmental Quality officials maintained that residents here were given sufficient notice of the public comment period. Spence and others, however, requested an additional extension and their petition was denied.

"The comments and concerns ... remind us that individuals living in areas such as Jackson, well outside the area of potential health or environmental impacts of a proposed facility, may still have concerns and questions about the project," wrote IDEQ administrator Stephen Allred to Hirschfield, Blue and Spence on July 8.

Suzy Kneeland - like the other women who took it upon themselves to gather more information on the mixed waste project - began writing to elected officials in the early summer. She also started to collect signatures on the petition at Harvest and gathered hundreds of names.

In August, she and others protested the mixed waste proposal and informed citizens at such functions as the global nuclear conference, which was held at the Snow King Center.

Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free

State and federal officials attended a meeting in July after the public comment period had ended. Citizens complained the gathering was "pure propaganda" since comments were not on the record.

In early August the non-profit group Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free formed. Several days later, Spence would ask residents for $1 million to legally challenge the incinerator.

Said Hirschfield of her attorney friend: "He's always said from day one if you want to beat this, you need $1 million."

While that dollar amount seems like an exorbitant fee to gather sufficient arms to win this nuclear war, residents aren't bluffing on their financial charge. Many citizens are determined to kill the incineration proposal, and more than $300,000 has already been collected in the bank to press legal action.