“As you know this
past week there was a hearing conducted by the Arizona Environmental Health
Office for the closure of Page Ranch. It was determined in advance that
I would be the spokesman for the University if it was needed and fortunately
it was not needed. There were several of us there from the University,
but the only people who spoke were those opposed to the closure of Page
Ranch. In fact, the only satisfaction that those citizens will have is
if all the environmental waste including low radiation that is buried there
is also exhumed. It is my firm belief that they will continue their harassment
of the University until that takes place. It would be my estimation that
it would cost at least $10 million to exhume everything at Page Ranch and
then where would we go with it? We would be digging up a tremendous amount
of soil and moving that soil to another dump site.
Martha believes perhaps there
is a way out of this political environment for at least the next several
years and that is as follows:
The United States government
has set up a super fund which is administered by the Environmental Protection
Agency, but is money geared for a research program which will administered
by the National Environmental Health Sciences and that money will go to
universities only. This year there will be $3 million available and in
three years there will be $35 million. The only purpose of that research
money is to investigate new ways to clean up the environment and to clean
up environmental waste sites. {the following is a hand- written note inserted
at this point into the text...and to develop methods to study health of
individuals living near those sites.}
There is a group of professors
on this campus who are extremely interested in applying for part of that
money through research and that team is headed up by Professor Dean Edwin
Carter who is an Associate Professor of Pharmocology and Toxicology.
After attending this session
this past week, it is my believe (sic) that the neophytes who
