FEATURE - Wyoming town fights incinerator in another state
Date: 17-Sep-99
Country: USA
Author: Alice Ratcliffe
Those who know the area around the town of Jackson and the surrounding
valley called Jackson Hole are outraged by plans for the incinerator,
which will burn waste contaminated with plutonium and PCBs
(polychlorinated biphenyls). PCBs can form deadly dioxins when burned.
Champions of the plan call it a high-tech marvel that will cause
practically no pollution. But talk in Jackson Hole is about cancer
worries, fears that wildlife could mutate and - nearly as bad - a drop
in real estate prices.
"If the incinerator is all that safe, why did they decide to build it
out here in Idaho? If it's as safe as they claim, they could have built
it New York's Central Park," newsman David Brinkley wrote in a letter to
the Jackson Hole News.
The controversy is what some call the latest twist in "environmental
justice" - putting a potentially hazardous project in a sparsely
populated, often poor area of the United States. What planners did not
plan on was the flap in Jackson Hole, 100 miles (160 km) downwind, where
the average home sold last year for $600,000 and smaller ones go for up
to $300,000.
LOOKING FOR FIGHT MONEY
Jackson - population roughly 6,000, or 15,000 including surrounding
Teton County - needs around $1 million to put up a decent fight, famed
Wyoming defence attorney Gerry Spence says. It has already raised more
than $500,000, a good portion of that in one night at a town meeting.
Spence, whose high-profile clients have included Imelda Marcos and O.J.
Simpson, also represented the estate of Karen Silkwood, a worker who
died on her way to talk to a reporter after she was contaminated in an
Oklahoma plutonium plant.
Sporting his trademark buckskin fringed jacket, he vowed at the meeting
to oppose the project "right down to the sub-permit." He waived his fees
to head a legal team to block the incinerator plan and he donated
$10,000 to the fund.
Other contributors include movie star and local resident Harrison Ford
and his wife, who donated $50,000.
But Jackson is also home to less-famous people - ranchers, passionate
outdoor lovers and environmentalists - and the meeting drew pledges from
people in all walks of life. One couple gave $5,000 "for our
grandchildren." A woman working as a massage therapist and house cleaner
gave $100. One man pledged $98, saing "It's all I have."
The incinerator is "probably the first issue that has ever brought a
town together like this," said film director Michael Lessac, who moved
to Jackson six years ago from Los Angeles.
The matter is particularly sensitive given Jackson's proximity to
Yellowstone Park, about 60 miles (100 km) by car to the north, and Grand
Teton National Park.
Administrators at both parks are weighing the matter. "We are in the
same boat as a lot of people, just learning about the project and
wanting to learn more," said Steven Iobst, assistant superintendant of
Grand Teton National Park.
NOT FAR ENOUGH
Although Jackson is relatively far from the proposed incinerator site,
and on the other side the Tetons, residents say dust and forest fire
smoke from Idaho blow in now and they fear minute toxic particles from
the incinerator could too.
"We run a great risk (that) anything in Idaho will blow over here,"
local meteorologist Jim Woodmencey said.
Spectacular scenery, mountains dominated by the Grand Tetons and a ski
area with the largest vertical drop in the United States draw more than
4 million tourists a year. President Bill Clinton and his family visited
in 1996.
So some fear the incinerator as a jobs killer.
"As a mountain guide and a mountain lover, anything that has a chance of
putting our mountains in jeopardy is not going to find any support. Not
in Jackson," said Wesley Bunch, a guide for mountaineering company Exum.
Doug Coombs, another mountaineer who is one of the world's best-known
extreme skiers, also lives near Jackson. "I don't want to be sitting on
top of the Gran
