Unfortunately, most media coverage only emphasized the incredible financial success of the evening, and the performance of attorney Gerry Spence who has undertaken the awesome responsibility of managing the legal challenge without any compensation. The huge audience, however, understood the evening's deadly serious business, namely the prevention of a facility that wantonly threatens America's first and greatest National Park, Yellowstone and its millions of visitors, Grand Teton Park, and every resident of Teton and surrounding counties.

The plan to build a nuclear and hazardous waste incinerator was initially identified as a threat to all of us by a small group of concerned citizens. We quickly formed the Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free organization (KYNF), alerted all relevant county and state officials, gathered scientific data and petitioned INEEL for time to testify regarding the critical air quality hearing. In conjunction with Harvest Bakery & Natural Foods and those who volunteered their time and services, we organized last Tuesday's event.

KYNF has only one mission, disseminating scientifically objective truth regarding this project and taking all necessary steps to prevent its planned construction for this Fall. It is not an anti-nuclear organization, it is an anti-incinerator group.

As Gerry stated in his appeal for the funding so critical to our success, "this is a family and a community we are appealing to. It embraces liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, all segments of Teton County society and all people of good will. Anyone who attended Tuesday's meeting would have observed that every large donation was matched by small donations. Many were made in the of children and grandchildren, the generations that will be most vulnerable to the emissions of the proposed incinerator. People were moved by the hard, cold scientific facts presented, not the political smokescreens of INEEL and the Department of Energy (DOE).

Unfortunately, only one of our five county commissioners, Sandy Shuptrine, and no town council members attended this meeting. The superintendents of Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks also did not attend. Clarene Law was the only elected state or national official who attended.

For 50 years the DOE'S nuclear program has had a dismal record of lies, deception, misinformation, mistakes and fatal accidents affecting the lives of thousands. Congress has called it our worst managed governmental agency! It's INEEL facility has exhibited many of these traits.

The simple scientific truth regarding mixed waste nuclear incinerators is that no one can guarantee their safety or predict their consequences. There is little experience with incinerators built to mix PCB's with transuranic waste (Plutonium). It is a matter of public record that BNFL the British company building the incinerator, has a poor safety record in the UK and is under investigation for pollution of the Irish Sea. Its also true there are now viable containment alternatives. It is not surprising that all other U.S. states previously chosen rejected this project.

For the elected officials in Idaho it is a big business opportunity, for the citizens of Wyoming it is an extraordinary and unacceptable risk. INEEL has stonewalled KYNF and County Commissioners' requests for information and for a reopening of the hearings on air quality- the key issue affecting us. They have told Senator Craig Thomas that Yellowstone and Jackson are "not downwind" from INEEL and this facility, a statement that contravenes 150 years of recorded meteorological history and perhaps 50 million years of geologic evidence. These are the same people who are saying, "trust us, it's safe." Based on the record there is little reason to trust INEEL or the DOE.

Instead we have to trust our own citizens, our highly qualified (and unpaid) experts and a panel of scientists at the government's own Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California who stated that they viewed "incineration as a violation of the cardinal principle of radioactive waste treatment, namely, containing radioactivity rather than spreading it."

Similar facilities proposed at Livermore and in Rocky Flats (Colorado) were both defeated by legal suits filed on behalf of concerned citizens. Our community family must act as one in opposing a project that threatens our safe and healthy environment, our irreplaceable National Parks, our wildlife, our economy and our peace of mind. It is time for our elected officials and Park superintendents to join in this effort. KYNF needs your time, your ideas and your financial support.

Together we will succeed.