“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Who will speak up for Idaho?
One vital group, the Snake River Alliance, is speaking up as Idaho’s nuclear watchdog and Idaho’s advocate for renewable and nuclear-free energy. They raise community awareness about the dangers of nuclear waste, weapons and power while working to identify and promote sustainable alternatives. Their work is done through advocacy, collaboration, education and grassroots organizing.
Here are a few key areas that make the Snake River Alliance so important:
They support renewable energy, which is a massive return on your investment! Renewable energy is superior to fossil fuels. The latter draws on finite resources that will eventually dwindle, becoming too expensive or too environmentally damaging to retrieve.
Western states could save $600 million by using more renewable energy. The Rocky Mountain Institute analyzed a case study of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a co-op that provides power to more than 1 million consumers in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming. RMI found the co-op’s customers could save over $600 million through 2030 if the co-op integrated more renewable energy resources.
We can’t afford to be silent. The risks of transporting deadly nuclear waste, the environmental justice impacts and the long-term health effects are profound. It is a challenge to make nuclear power safe and nuclear fuel remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years after it is no longer useful in a commercial reactor. The waste disposal problem has become a major challenge for policymakers and Idaho’s own water supply is in danger (Source: Union of Concerned Scientists).
The State of Idaho’s own research shows that the water beneath the INL – and the radioactive isotopes it contains – will flow to the Magic Valley within 150 to 250 years.
The Snake River Alliance is connected to the community. They are your neighbors. They are your children. They are your grandchildren. They fight for the present and the future.
The recent rupture of a barrel of nuclear waste at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) highlights why the Snake River Alliance invested in a far-reaching public education campaign, Don’t Waste Idaho, to stop more shipments of nuclear waste to the Gem State.
Buhl farmers, Leslee and James Reed acted as part of the Don’t Waste Idaho advisory board, and called on Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and Governor Butch Otter to make sure there is a clear plan for any additional nuclear waste that comes into Idaho.
“If we don’t enforce our existing agreement with the federal government, the waste could get stranded in Idaho and threaten our water,” said Leslee Reed.
And this has been a long fight. In the 1950s and ’60s, plutonium-contaminated waste from the Rocky Flats H-bomb plant was buried in unlined pits and trenches in the Arco Desert above the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer. The Snake River Alliance was founded 40 years ago as a response to the resulting environmental degradation.
“When I learned that the federal government now wants to truck nuclear waste on I-84, right through Boise, I was horrified,” said Amber Labelle, a veterinary specialist who recently moved to the area and had no knowledge of Idaho’s nuclear waste issues. “As a mother and a scientist, I was shocked to learn about Idaho’s history of being used as a nuclear waste dump.”
So what are you waiting for? YOUR actions matters.