I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed MOX Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site across our border in Aiken South Carolina.

As a state legislator with a deep and long-standing concern for the health of the people and the environment of Georgia, I have kept close tabs on the activities of the Savannah River Site. Its past operations have resulted in radioactive water in the groundwater in Burke County and the downstream contamination from the plant is well known to the people of this community.

We have been reassured over and over that SRS is cleaning up its mess from 50 years of weapons production. But proposals such as the MOX fabrication plant fly in the face of those assurances. We are asked to comment today on the "scope" of the MOX plant EIS, and yet is it folly to pretend that this plant will exist in isolation from past operations, past radioactive releases, ongoing contamination, and plans for new plutonium processing missions.

Just last week Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham submitted a budget to Congress that would cut over $150 million in clean-up funds from SRS while adding nearly $40 million to MOX. We already know MOX will produce millions of gallons of new nuclear waste. So before the first 100 days of the Bush Administration have elapsed, the promises to Georgians and South Carolinians have been broken. The so-called dedication to cleanup vanishes in an instant when new plutonium processing missions -- and the MOX dollars to make them happen -- appear on the horizon.

It's a slap in the face to those who have already endured the contamination spewed by that plant. MOX has been sold to us with the promise that it will not jeopardize cleanup at the site.

But immobilization - the clean-up technology that could have handled plutonium in a less harmful way - has been canceled and now SRS takes the largest cut in cleanup dollars in the entire weapons complex. Thirty-four million gallons of waste remain on the site and groundwater contaminated with tritium continually seeps into our river. How many more babies in the womb will be exposed to that tritium and be irreparably damaged? How many will not be born for the contamination they receive in the womb? How many more inexplicable cancers will this community endure before we say enough is enough?

In some ways, the scope of the environmental impact of that MOX plant is impossible to measure. Tens of tons of plutonium shipments -- some in flammable, dispersible powder form -- will be passing through Atlanta -- my home, and the home to millions more (half of Georgia's citizens live in the Atlanta metropolitan area) -- and yet where are the scoping meetings there? Where are the scoping meetings in every town between here and the source of that plutonium -- in Texas and Colorado and Washington and California?

Virtually the entire stretch of the southern United States will be affected by MOX in some way. MOX fuel will be shipped on highways through Columbia and Rock Hill, South Carolina. Weapons parts from SRS will be shipped from South Carolina to Tennessee. Used MOX fuel would be shipped from North Carolina back to the west. MOX test shipments have already crossed the Great Plains on their way from New Mexico through Michigan and on into Canada.

And the scope is international as well. The MOX program signals a major policy shift in this country. It tells the world the US favors the commercial use of plutonium -- a message many have been eager to hear from us. A message that is a green light for plutonium fuel -- and thus plutonium fabrication and processing -- in every country with nuclear power capability.

Of course the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will not encompass all of this in its EIS. It has even admitted it will use as much material from existing EIS's as it can, even though earlier studies are already obsolete since the MOX plant has been redesigned since they were issued and the estimate of how much waste it will produce has increased. We are told it is to be expected that things will change from the documents provided to the public.

The point is that as we meet here today to offer our comments on just one aspect of this ill-considered plutonium policy -- as we weigh in on the specifics of the impacts of "just one more" plutonium facility at SRS -- we are completely blind to the global scope of the issue itself. What should the EIS consider? If it were to be a truly useful document, if it were to truly serve the public, it would question the wisdom of this entire project -- a luxury we have not been afforded. We are handed the crumbs around the edges after the decisions have been made and the papers signed and the ink dried on the multi-million dollar checks to the MOX contractors.

As a representative of the public in this state I will continue to raise these issues, whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, or the Savannah River Site contractors provide the forum or not. At a minimum, the NRC can begin to serve the public who will be most impacted by its decisions by drafting a truly comprehensive EIS -- one that considers the operating, safety and environmental records of the US and foreign corporations that will carry out this work. In their hands lies our health, the health of our children and even the health of generations to come. It is in your hands that the power to intervene on behalf of public health and safety lies. We will be watching to ensure you do exactly that.

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