The Energy Department and its incoming secretary, Samuel Bodman, have yet to give any solid reassurances to area governors that their concerns that the Moab, Utah, site won't be pushed aside as they were when the president pushed ahead with the controversial nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

"We cannot afford to assume the risks associated with having uranium tailings strewn along river banks and bars of the Colorado River below Moab," Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman insisted in a letter sent last week to the Moab project manager. "Good science and good sense tell us the tailings must be moved."

The tailings consist of a towering pile of waste from an old uranium mill that rests virtually a stone's throw from the upper Colorado River, which is, as any westerner is keenly aware, a primary source of water for the growing downstream urban areas in Nevada, Arizona and Southern California.

Environmentalists, and more importantly to the White House, state lawmakers of both parties, point out that the Colorado provides water for around 25 million people who would no doubt prefer that it not be mixed with radioactive material on a molecular level as it flows south.

The idea that the Colorado would some day erode its way to the Moab tailings pile and cause the material to crumble into the waterway has officials in Utah and other states sounding a clarion alarm, even if such an event were to occur decades down the road.

Dianne Nielson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, told the Deseret News in an interview last week: "What do you think 10 million tons of radioactive and poisonous waste would do to the water? It would be bad. The only thing we don't know is just how bad."

The worried rhetoric is similar to that heard a few years ago as the federal government endlessly dithered over a plan to make Yucca Mountain the one and only spot in the nation to store nuclear waste.

Warnings of possible geological flaws in the Nevada site were discounted, however, by President Bush, who announced in 2002 that the project was going ahead - regardless of Nevada's feelings on the matter.

The phrase "easier said than done" applies in earnest to the Moab project as much as it does to Yucca Mountain. Congress passed a law in 1999 mandating that the federal government, specifically the Department of Energy, do something about the growing problem in Utah.

The Energy Department late last year completed the draft of the environmental impact study of the project. It is about 1,000 pages long and requires 24 pages just for the table of contents.

But what has western politicians and officials worried is that the study includes possibly leaving the tailings where they are simply placing a cap over them rather than hauling them to a new resting place well away from the river.

Further, they found it unusual that the EIS did not declare that moving the tailings was the "preferred alternative," a step that is common in the EIS process.

The very idea that Washington was considering leaving the pile in place then set off political Geiger counters in the West where the unpleasant possibility arose that the White House might take the easy way out and let the Moab pile sit and simmer where it is.

"My concern is that short-term cost considerations are going to trump the right decision," Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, told Bodman last week during a House Science Committee hearing.

Bodman, who is considered in Washington to be a consummate administration company man, did not do much to mollify Matheson's concerns by responding blandly that he was aware of Moab and would follow through on the 1999 law to mitigate the problem.

"I can assure you that the department will not knowingly violate the law," he said. "There may be some differences of opinion as to what the law says, and I can't speak to that."

Bodman could be excused for not yet being up to speed on Moab; however, Matheson and other Utah officials have every reason to suspect that the department might opt for the cheaper alternative and leave the tailings in place.

Removing the tailings would require either the construction of a rail line or slurry pipeline or the expansion of nearby US-190 to accommodate a stream of trucks that would run for eight years.

In short, the EIS predicted, moving the tailings would cost anywhere from $329 million to $464 million depending on the site; putting a cap on the pile and leaving it where it is would run about half that.

The study stated that Energy Department officials wanted to wait for the end of the public comment period on the draft before selecting a preferred alternative. The comment period concluded Feb. 18, and the department has 30 days to make its choice.

The agency could indeed commit to the more expensive option of moving the tailings, although with the current federal budget deficit running at around $400 billion there is ample ground for suspicion in the West that the Moab tailings will be left like a cancerous tumor on the banks of one of the region's most important sources of water.

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