Wednesday, May 24, 2006 | 7:06 a.m.
In the heady days of the mid-1980s, former President Jimmy Carter, film star Martin Sheen and thousands of peace and environmental activists protested the ongoing underground detonation of nuclear weapons.
The "Peace Camp" was a semi-permanent and colorful presence at the Mercury exit for the Nevada Test Site along U.S. 95, the road from Las Vegas to Reno. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, protested until the end of nuclear testing in 1992, and smaller demonstrations continue.
Now the federal government's plans to detonate 700 tons of conventional explosive have refocused the progressive community's eyes on the Test Site. Originally scheduled for June 2, it has been postponed until June 23 at the earliest due to legal challenges. A federal court hearing is set for June 8.
Peace and environmental activists plan to once again congregate at the Mercury exit Sunday. Peggy Maze Johnson, director of Citizen Alert, a Nevada-based environmental group, says she hopes to have more than a thousand people join the demonstration.
Three issues are attracting the protesters, she says: Fears of environmental impacts from the blast, particularly the suspension of radioactive material from the years of above- and below-ground atomic testing; concerns that the blast will help develop a new generation of nuclear "bunker busting" weapons; and the long-standing claims by the Western Shoshone Nation to the Rhode Island-sized Test Site.
The blast, dubbed Divine Strake, would be the last of a Defense Department series designed to generate data on how to knock out underground, "hardened" structures. Federal officials have said the information could be used to develop conventional or nuclear weapons.
Johnson says that as in the 1980s, protesters Sunday will cross the do-not-cross line literally painted onto the road at the Mercury exit onto the Test Site.
Those who do so will be arrested and put into a chain-link cage near the entrance to the Test Site, according to Darwin Morgan, a spokesman with the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the Test Site. They'll be released at the conclusion of the demonstration.
"We support their right for civil disobedience," he said.
His agency prepared the environmental study that forecasts only minimal environmental impacts from the Divine Strake blast. He declined further comment on the environmental issues because of pending litigation filed by a coalition of groups opposed to the test.
Julie Fishel, an organizer with Western Shoshone Defense Project, says supporters from Minnesota, Connecticut and Georgia are planning to attend the demonstration. She hopes the re-ignited interest in the Test Site will spark more concern for the Shoshone and in other issues affecting American Indians.
"It's about time," she says. "The Shoshone people have never kept people out, but they want the peace and friendship that the federal government originally agreed on, and peace and friendship includes protecting the environment."
One out-of-state participant in the Sunday event, to be held just outside Test Site boundaries, is Andy Lichterman, program director of the Oakland, Calif.-based Western States Legal Foundation. Lichterman says he's concerned the test will lead to smaller, "tactical" nuclear weapons.
"We're leading the world into another century of nuclear arms race. There is extensive evidence in budget documents and other government documents that a main intent of this test is to simulate the effect of low-yield nuclear weapons on underground structures," Lichterman said.
Another group endorsing the Sunday demonstration, United for Peace and Justice, is an umbrella organization for hundreds of regional and national groups. Hany Khalil, organizing coordinator, said his group would endorse the demonstration and alert some 1,400 groups coast to coast.
An Idaho group, the Snake River Alliance, is also endorsing the protest, but is focused on the feared environmental impacts. Some people in Idaho and Montana believe they have been affected by nuclear projects, including atomic blasts at the Test Site and work at other Energy Department sites throughout the West, alliance executive director Jeremy Maxand noted.
"This is really starting to come up as an issue. Why are we moving forward with more tests when we haven't corrected the harm we have done in the past?" he says. "It's a long drive, gas prices are high, it will be hard to get down there, but I believe people will be down there."
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