We do forget, but nothing disappears. In fact, everything spreads. When the wind blows onto our reservation from the north, it brings a yellow-brown mist from MagCorp s factory, says Leon Bear, tribal chairman of the Skull Valley Goshutes, whose reservation sits in Tooele County. When wind blows from the south, it brings smog from the Intermountain Power plant near Delta. The things we buy and consume every day create toxins as they re made, we forget.
Mass production means large concentrations of lasting poisons accumulate.
These toxins should be isolated from people, but even setting them in vast, lonely Tooele County can t contain them. So we all end up eating, drinking and breathing industrial waste that s hazardous to our health. Some people, like the Skull Valley Goshutes, shoulder more than their share of this health risk. We forgot about the Tooele County Goshutes a small band of American Indians surrounded by dangerous enterprises over which they have no control until May 1997. That s when Salt Lakers learned the Goshutes agreed to store 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive nuclear power plant waste just 50 miles upwind of the city.