Former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request in January for documents about the U.S. Department of Energy’s plans to seek a waiver from the 1995 nuclear waste agreement with Idaho to allow commercial spent nuclear fuel to be sent to the state, has formally appealed the DOE’s response, which he says took nearly six months and withheld much of the requested information.

“I’ve been dealing with the Department of Energy for a long, long time,” said Andrus, a four-term governor and former U.S. Secretary of Interior. “They have always been among the most secretive federal agencies. While I have become all too familiar with DOE’s historic refusal to truly engage the public in a discussion about its short and long-term plans for Idaho, it is simply not acceptable to withhold potentially critical information in this manner.”

Andrus said in response to his FOIA request, the DOE provided 41 documents, but 30 of them were “essentially completely redacted,” citing FOIA exemptions for “deliberative process, attorney-client and attorney work product” information. “Virtually the only unredacted documents provided by DOE were public news articles and limited correspondence that were already widely available,” Andrus said in his appeal.

The appeal comes as the federal government has turned up the pressure on Idaho to grant a waiver from the 1995 agreement, negotiated by then-Gov. Phil Batt, to accept two waste shipments to the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho. A recent letter from state Commerce Director Jeff Sayer to Gov. Butch Otter said the state’s been given a two-month deadline, and if it doesn’t grant the waiver by then, could lose millions in research projects. Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden has been adamant that he will not consider a waiver of the 1995 agreement until the Integrated Waste Treatment unit at INL is operational, which was initially supposed to occur by 2012, then by this fall, but still isn’t up and running. That treatment unit, under the 1995 agreement, is supposed to convert liquid waste now stored above the aquifer into a powdery substance, reducing danger to the aquifer. Both Wasden and Otter must agree for a waiver to be issued.

Andrus said in a statement, “DOE’s long-time pattern, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, has been to tout the short-term benefits of a ‘research project,’ while never taking into account what eventually happens to the highly radioactive material for the next 25, 50 or 100 years.” He added, “Bottom line: Idahoans are entitled to know all of what is being proposed.”

Andrus, who is represented by attorney Laird Lucas of Advocates for the West, said he isn’t ruling out going to federal court over his records request.

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