Trying to Solve Problem of Dangerous Wastes : Industry: UC Irvine, other groups have launched ad campaign urging approval of controversial disposal facility.

IRVINE —  Every day, students and researchers step into UC Irvine’s science laboratories to stretch their minds and their creative limits as they seek to help solve mankind’s ills.

Their successes are helping create a strong biotechnology industry in Orange County, but their dross--low-level radioactive waste left when their experiments are completed--is stored in 55-gallon drums and stacked in a trailer parked on the campus.

For the past year, the university has been storing its own radioactive waste because, like all other such radioactive waste producers in California, it does not have a place to dump it safely and legally.

“It’s not going anywhere,” lamented Jim Tripodef, UCI’s associate director of environmental health and safety.

To solve that dilemma, UCI and a group of other organizations have launched an advertising campaign urging the federal government to speed up approval of the controversial Ward Valley project, a radioactive waste disposal facility proposed for construction in the eastern Mojave Desert near Needles.

The dump’s approval is on indefinite hold while the courts rule on environmental safety issues and a spate of lawsuits challenging the dump.

The coalition of dump proponents, whose members include the Orange County Biomedical Industry Council and Southern California Edison, said in its latest advertisement--printed in local newspapers last week--that if the Ward Valley project is not approved, California’s beleaguered economy could experience a further loss of as many as 200,000 jobs.

“California Has Lost More Than 800,000 Jobs in the Past Five Years,” the advertisement states. “Are We Trying for a Million?”

The coalition also charged that unless the dump is approved, the state’s growing biotechnology industry will be hampered severely and the nation will suffer from a resultant slowdown in new medical discoveries.

“This is a very important issue,” said Daniel Korpolinski, president of the biomedical council and chief executive officer of CoCensys Inc., an Irvine firm that is studying new drugs to cure certain brain-related diseases. “We can’t go on without a place to put this waste.”

Korpolinski’s company is not alone. From Fullerton to San Clemente, Orange County health care companies involved in discovering new drugs and procedures are stymied about where to put the radioactive waste, a necessary byproduct of the research and development process.

“We’ve been accumulating this stuff for some time,” said Mike Timmermann, a spokesman at Allergan Inc., the Irvine maker of eye- and skin-care products.

Alan A. Steigart, president of Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc., which is developing drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease, added that if California wants to pull itself out of the recession for good, it should create a friendly environment for businesses--like the biotech industry--that promise to grow the fastest in the next 10 years.

“The state can’t have it both ways,” he said. “You can’t invite industry here and then stifle it.”

But local activists insist that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt made the correct decision in November when he put a stop to a land transfer that would have made the Ward Valley dump a reality.

Babbitt ruled that transfer of the property to U.S. Ecology Inc., the Kentucky firm that would build and manage the dump, should not proceed until several environmental lawsuits filed by Ward Valley opponents are settled--a process that could take years.

The delay is justified, dump opponents said.

“This affects the entire public’s health,” said Marion Sack, executive director of Santa Ana-based Alliance for Survival. She added that the dump would be a final resting place not only for low-level radioactive waste produced by medical facilities but also for radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

“Babbitt’s decision was wisely made,” she said.

Sack said her group also opposes the dump because plans call for building it without expensive liners to prevent radioactive waste from leeching into underground water sources.

The proposed dump would be near the Colorado River, Sack said, and could possibly pollute one of Southern California’s major water sources.

She also blasted the coalition’s advertising campaign, noting that her group does not have the funds to match the pro-Ward Valley organizations’ publicity campaign.

“You can bet those are expensive ads,” Sack said. “There is no way we can possibly compete with that kind of exposure and that kind of money.”

But Ward Valley proponents say that the dump’s opponents, backed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), have been making themselves heard.

In a passage that alluded to Boxer’s presence among the ranks of Ward Valley foes, last week’s advertisement charged that Babbitt was “bowing to pressure by special interest groups and certain politicians.”

Biomedical council president Korpolinski charged that Boxer has exaggerated the dangers of the disposal site, threatening the future of the biotechnology industry, which “promises to be the biggest creator of jobs in the 1990s.”