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Honor The Earth! Friends and supporters of environmental justice, On this anniversary of Earth Day 2002, would you please take a few moments to read our Action Alert and commit to contacting your elected officials to express your views on the proposed radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain. In particular, the United States Senate needs to hear from you! We have just seen an environmental victory take place on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge vote - let the Senate hear from you, and be a voice for the many who will not be heard. Express your views about sacred sites, human rights and energy justice. Miigwech, What You Can Do Call, Fax, Write and Email your Senator with an urgent message: No Nuclear Waste At Yucca Mountain -- No Nuclear Waste on Native Lands! How You Can Do It Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202/224-3121 (to request a Senator's office directly) 1 Visit http://www.senate.gov and click on "List Senators by State" to determine who your Senator is - get the Senator's phone, fax and email contact info online. 2 Write your Senator on this issue at:
Office of Senator _________ Sample Letter To Your Senator Dear Senator ___________, The Western Shoshone Nation is unanimously opposed to President George Bush's plan to expedite storing high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, a plan that would not only endanger their Nation and the people of Nevada, but put 50 million Americans along nuclear waste transportation routes in jeopardy of deadly radioactive exposure. I stand in solidarity with the Western Shoshone Nation in opposing approval of Yucca Mountain as a federal nuclear waste repository. I strongly urge you to support the state of Nevada in vetoing the recommendation President Bush has issued to approve Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump. Nuclear waste is the most deadly substance created by humankind and remains deadly for tens of thousands of years. A decision to authorize a federal repository should not be made on the basis of politics or the desires of a corrupt energy lobby, but should be made on sound science and ethics. Yucca Mountain is volcanic. Evidence shows radioactivity could leak into underground aquifers at the site. This is not a safe place to store high level nuclear waste. And moving nuclear waste across the country from nuclear power plants in the east to remote Indian land in the west endangers all Americans with the threat of a nuclear accident on our highways and rails. What is left out of the nuclear waste debate is the fact that Yucca Mountain is on Indian land; land guaranteed the Western Shoshone Nation in a treaty of peace and friendship. The mountain is sacred to the original peoples of Nevada. Approving this site for the storage of nuclear waste is illegal, immoral and a blatant example of environmental injustice. I will monitor your vote on this issue when it comes before the Senate and hope you will do what is right, just and in the best interests of the citizens of this country.
Sincerely, (your name) (your city and state) 3 Courtesy of the organization Public Citizen, you can send an auto-fax to your senators opposing Yucca Mountain by clicking on this link and following the directions:
Please check out the Indigo Girls web site for more Action Alerts and www.yuccapetition.org to sign Public Citizens on-line petition.
Honor the Earth web site: www.honorearth.org
See Also: When It Comes to Atomic Waste Transportation, We All Live in Nevada
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Save Yucca Mountain No Nuclear
Waste on Native Lands!
Yucca Mountain is called 'Serpent Swimming West' in the Shoshone language, a name borne out by scientific evidence that this highly seismic mountain in Nevada is, in fact, moving. Despite this evidence, and many more facts that show Yucca Mountain is not a safe place to store nuclear waste, the U.S. government is moving fast to approve Yucca Mountain as a federal repository. Yucca Mountain is the only site under study for the permanent disposal of high level nuclear waste. Congress is going to make a critical decision this spring on the future of Yucca Mountain. Native peoples need your support and your voice to stop Congress from approving a radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain! A Sacred Site on Western Shoshone Land Yucca Mountain, a high ridge near the Nevada Test Site, is a place of deep spiritual and religious significance to the Western Shoshone and Pauite tribes, a place where the people gathered and continue to gather traditionally in the spring and fall to worship. Yucca Mountain is also on land guaranteed the Western Shoshone by treaty. Treaties are agreements between two sovereign governments and considered by the U.S. Constitution to be the "Supreme Law of the Land." Like almost every treaty the United States has entered into with Indian Nations, the treaty with the Western Shoshone has been violated again and again. The Nevada Test Site was carved out of their territory and today, the Western Shoshone Nation is the most bombed nation on earth. The United States has detonated more than 1,200 atomic bombs in their territory. High rates of cancer and illness related to atomic fall-out plague the people, who suffer from this historic injustice without any government health assessment, rectification or medical aid. To add insult to injury, for the past twenty years the Department of Energy (DOE) has occupied Yucca Mountain and spent billions of our taxpayer dollars to study whether the mountain could serve as a federal nuclear waste dump. If George W. Bush and the DOE get their way, they would turn a sacred site into a radioactive parking lot for 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste and confirm that our Constitution can be overlooked to serve corporate needs.
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