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Prairie Island Residents
Plan Move Away from NSP Nuclear Plant
by Mordecai Specktor, 1998
reprinted from the Minneapolis Native American Indian newspaper,
The Circle
Obnoxious neighbors can occasionally pose problems, but residents of the Prairie Island
Mdewakanton Dakota Community living next door to twin nuclear power plants are facing anxieties around the clock. For years, members of the Dakota community located southeast of the Twin Cities have lived with fears that radioactive releases from the nukes could be endangering their health, not to mention the nagging worries concerning a catastrophic accident at the power plant.
There are now some concrete plans to move members of the Dakota community a little futher down
the road, about five miles away from Northern States Power Company's nuclear power plant.
The Dakota community has an application pending with the Minneapolis Area Office of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs to put 488 acres of land it purchased in 1995 into trust, according to Herb Nelson,
the Minneapolis BIA's environmental officer. "Fee to trust" land transfers enable sovereign Indian nations to supplement their exiting land base; when lands are put into tribal trust, the Indian nation no longer pays taxes to a non-Indian government.
The Praire Island community's environmental assessment provided with their application states that
it is "critical that the newly acquired land be placed in Trust Reservation and its location within the Mississippi River flood plain severly limits housing." In addition to the need for lots on higher ground, the tribal government asserts the "need for housing away from the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant because Tribal members are concerned about the power plant and powerlines."
Nelson said that "it looks like the property could be taken into trust," and the BIA is
now waiting for tribal officials to deal with "a few minor technical problems with the title."
The Praire Island community's environmental assessment provided with their application states that it is "critical that the newly acquired land be placed in Trust because the size of the Prairie Island Reservation and its location within the Mississippi River flood plain severly limits housing." In addition to the need for lots on higher ground, the tribal goverment asserts the "need for housing away from the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant because Tribal members are concerned about the power plant and powerlines."
"The Praire Island Dakota Community recently elected a new tribal council, and Audrey Kohnen, the newly elected council president, in a statement to The Circle, notes that new reservation land would "allow those members who live off the reservation to have a chance to move back to a safe community with other tribal members. We will be diligent in finding the best possible land for our future -- land that provides options for tribal members who wish to live in a place free from nuclear waste and high-voltage power lines."
There are 550 enrolled members, but only 160 members who actually live on the reservation near Red Wing, according to a tribal official. Kohnen's statement, which was signed by her and the other
members of the tribal council, also points out that some members of the Prairie Island community
do not want to move from their current homes on the reservation.
"We will continue to operate our tribal business (Treasure Island Casino) here on Prairie
Island and maintain and develop a strong infrastructure to support this community and those that
live and work here," the tribal council's statement concluded.
Beyond the 488-acre parcel currently in the works for trust land status, the Dakota band has
purchased another 450-acre chunk of land and is in the processing of writing a proposal to also
put that parcel into trust.
The BIA's Herb Nelson explained that the Minneapolis area office can approve trust land
applications. "That would be approved here and done," he said, and added that a second
step, "reservation proclamation," would have to be accomplished at the agency's
Washington D.C. headquarters.
For at least the last six years, there have been discussions about moving the community away from
the looming shadow of the NSP nuclear power station. In 1992, the Prairie Island Dakota shocked the
larger community ba applying for a federal grant to study the feasibility of storing nucelar waste
from around the country on the reservation. That move came in response to NSP's plan to build a nuclear
waste storage facility next to their power plant. The utility said that its indoor storage pool was
full of spent nuclear fuel rods and more "temporary" storage was required for the highly
radioactive spent fuel. Such interim storage was needed because the federal government has not
been able to build either a temporary or permanent national storage facility for commercial nuclear
waste.
NSP's plan to move nuclear waste to a site outside the NSP Prairie Island power plant was opposed by the adjacent Dakota community and environmentalists. Applying for the $100,000 federal study
grant in 1992 was largely a ploy to gain wider attention for the Dakota community's concerns about
NSP's proposed nuclear storage facility. NSP's "dry cask" nuclear waste dump was ultimately approved by the Minnesota Legislature in 1994.
During the furor in 1992, an attorney representing the tribe allowed that becoming a repository for the entire nations's nuclear waste would net the community "a few billion dollars and then everybody could buy some land and move away."
In 1996, the Prairie Island tribal council that was then in office came to an accord with NSP
to allow the indefinite storage of nuclear waste next to the Prairie Island reactors in exchange
for a $21 million payment and 1,750 acres of land for the tribe. The agreement was scorned by non-Indian environmentalists, and legislation to compensate the Dakota community for having to live next to the nuclear plant failed in the Legislature.
The most recent chapter in the long-running nuclear waste debate occurred on Dec. 5, 1997, when NSP announced that it would not ask the Legislature for more nuclear waste casks outside the Prairie
Island plant. The 1994 legislation gave NSP 17 storage casks, and the utility is currently seeking
permission to ship waste to a temporary storage site in Utah.
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