UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

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No. XXX

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NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL, INC.,

ET AL.

Petitioners,

v.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

Respondents.

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PETITION FOR REVIEW OF EPA RULEMAKING

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__________________________

I, Jennifer Olaranna Viereck, declare as follows:

1. I am affiliated with the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, and am a member of Public Citizen, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), and the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC). I am also a long-time member and occasional contracted employee of Citizen Alert. These organizations are Petitioners in this action. I have relied on their excellent representation repeatedly in matters pertaining to public democratic process and potential health and environmental effects of the proposed Yucca Mountain High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository. My involvement with Citizen Alert has included the following, over the past eleven years: research and consultation, organizing for and speaking at public events, forums and press conferences, and giving testimony at Department of Energy (DOE) public hearings (both on behalf of Citizen Alert in 1999 and in my own name on other occasions) about the potential impacts of Yucca Mountain on the Great Basin region. Other than the small nonprofit organization for which I am the Director, HOME (Healing Ourselves and Mother Earth), there is no California-based organization addressing the issues of Yucca Mountain on behalf of impacted Califoria residents. John Hadder, staff member of Citizen Alert, is a founder and Board Member of this organization. Citizen Alert and HOME have worked together closely on issues to protect the water quality on both sides of Nevada and California border. Inyo County, California, residents and myself, personally, rely heavily on the Petitioners named above to have our concerns represented in meetings, congressional matters, and public forums that we are unable to attend ourselves.

2. Representing my concerns with Public Health and Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for Yucca Mountain, Nevada, 40 CFR Part 197, the Nuclear Waste Task Force and Citizen Alert both submitted official comments on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) draft rule, communicated with staff at the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation and Office of the Administrator prior to the rule being finalized, and filed this Petition for Review. On March 9th, 2001, I personally co-authored a letter to President Bush with John Hadder of Citizen Alert about the proposed EPA radiation exposure standards for Yucca Mountain at that time. It was signed by nine key Great Basin organizations and twenty-six supporting organizations nation-wide, including other Petitioners in this action. Copies were also sent to appointed and elected officials, including the EPA, listed at the end of the letter.

3. I live and work in the town of Tecopa, California, in the Southern Amargosa Valley, approximately 50 miles due south of Yucca Mountain. I have been a participant in this community since 1989 and owned my own property and home since 1998. I am employed as a Community Advocate for the REACH Project, a state funded program for families with young children. I also direct the educational non-profit organization HOME from my home office.

4. The Alkali Flat-Furnace Creek Groundwater Basin (a sub-basin within the regional Death Valley Groundwater Basin), which includes aquifers below Yucca Mountain, flows southward through the Amargosa Valley area. It flows past Death Valley Junction, around either side of Eagle Mountain, to the towns of Shoshone and Tecopa. My community well taps the groundwater supply at 80-160 feet. Five households use the well water for every household need. Similar wells provide the only available source of potable water in the Tecopa area. Our immediate region has the dubious distinction of being the recipient of all radionuclides that would escape from the Yucca Mountain site by water pathways. The Amargosa River flows openly year-round about a quarter of a mile behind my home. It is the only surface water source for all animal and bird life in this region. There are seven tributaries on Yucca Mountain alone which flow into the Amargosa River. As reported by the Associated Press on May 9, 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey has previously documented that run-off from the Yucca Mountain region and the Yucca Flats area of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site considerably affected the river after moderate to heavy rainfall in 1995 and 1998. Potentially contaminated debris from bomb detonation sites still sits on the south side of Highway 95 near the Nevada/California border from floods during this study period. Local residents provide many anecdotal experiences of periods in the last twenty years when flooding caused the local roads to be closed for up to two weeks, necessitating airlifts of dry ice and food supplies. I have heard repeated accounts of residents rafting on inner tubes from Shoshone to Tecopa during such times, over ten miles of normally barren desert. As told to me personally by owner Marta Beckett, the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction had water marks on interior walls over three feet high when she purchased the property in 1961. In July of this year, I personally witnessed a three-foot high flash flood crest over the Tecopa Hot Springs Road, flooding the road for one hundred feet. This road crosses the normally dry portion of the Amargosa River, connecting the town of Tecopa to Highway 127. I took photographs of acres of flooded desert between Death Valley Junction and Shoshone along the Amargosa Riverbed, fully three days after rains in the Yucca Mountain area.

5. The EPA's Yucca Mountain radiation protection standards are critical for protecting Southeast Inyo County's water supply. I am informed and believe that approval of the Yucca Mountain Project - in terms of both the Secretary of Energy's site recommendation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's decision on licensing - is contingent on the facility's ability to comply with the EPA standards. I am also informed and believe that the standards set by the EPA permit the DOE to rely on dilution, rather than containment, of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. The DOE acknowledges that the repository will definitely leak and contaminate our water, but their studies do not clearly indicate just when life here will become unlivable. The proposed 'buffer zone' allow the situation to get hopelessly out of hand, within a mile or two of existing residential wells, before the standard would be acknowledged as violated. EPA's Yucca Mountain rule, as it currently stands, creates a potential for significant release of radioactive materials to our groundwater sources with resulting negative impacts on our health and well-being, our property values, and our enjoyment of our property.

6. We are already subjected to over six shipments of low-level nuclear waste per week, traveling to the Nevada Test Site on California State Highway 127. Highway 127 is a narrow country road full of oversized Recreational Vehicles that crosses the Amargosa River repeatedly. When shipments of DOE's transuranic waste begin traveling from the Nevada Nuclear Test Site to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico next year, total radioactive shipments will increase 42%. We have a tiny all-volunteer Emergency Response staff, with no radiological equipment. We feel that we are enduring enough already. We are concerned that the significant increase in trucks bearing radioactive waste to a repository at Yucca Mountain would create a likelihood of accidents and resulting risk of exposure to radiation via releases to air, water, and land with resulting negative impacts on our health and well-being, our property values, and our enjoyment of our property.

7. In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission referred to residents adjacent to the Nevada Test Site as "a low-use segment of society". Now, we are being called "human dose receptors" and subjected to site-specific Yucca Mountain standards that are more lenient than the generic standards that apply in other parts of the country. This disproportionately targets my community, primarily low-income and senior citizens. It also targets the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, only recently given back tribal lands in Death Valley Junction and other affected areas of Death Valley that they have been fighting for since the 1930s.

8. I am informed and believe that current Department of Energy (DOE) design scenarios and performance assessment models for the proposed Yucca Mountain repository rely heavily on "engineered barriers" to isolate the nuclear waste from the biosphere. Although the Department of Energy (DOE) claims that the waste packages made from Alloy C-22 would last for 10,000 years, State of Nevada research indicates that Alloy C-22 may not perform as expected, and the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board has criticized the high level of uncertainty involved in the DOE's projections. Water in our area is high in leached lead and other contaminants that could lead to premature deterioration of Alloy C-22. I am informed and believe that if the system of engineered barriers fails prematurely, radionuclides could quickly reach the aquifer beneath Yucca Mountain and contaminate the groundwater tapped by my well.

9. If the groundwater in our region is contaminated, I fear that it will raise risks adverse to the health and livelihood of my family and community, and to our fragile desert environment. In Southeast Inyo County, water is an extremely precious resource. Without accessible clean water this area would be uninhabitable to all species of life. The potential severe impacts on our area, to local residents and wildlife, the 1.4 million tourists who visit Death Valley National Park each year, and to our local tourism based economy, (which relies completely on local hot spring resorts and campgrounds, and hiking along the Amargosa River), are incalculable. Merely the threat of radioactive water contamination, based on EPA standards that include allowable releases, is already causing alarm among our water-reliant businesses and residents. Water contamination, and/or the fear of water contamination, would therefore have severe economic impacts in our area in terms of lost property values and business revenue.

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1746, I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Signed on the 12^th day of December, 2001,

Jennifer Olaranna Viereck

Member, Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Citizen Alert

Affiliate, Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force