Environmental justice: how green ideology denies poor blacks good jobs.

• Author: Payne, Henry

The Claiborne Enrichment Center would appear to be a perfect presidential photo-op. Poised for construction in northern Louisiana's Claiborne Parish, one of the state's poorest counties, the $855 million, state-of-the-art nuclear fuel enrichment facility - 50 times more energy efficient than existing plants - would bring jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue to this 50 percent black jurisdiction. It also would reduce American dependence on foreign enrichment suppliers. The plant showcases one solution to the nagging '90s questions of how to build environmentally sound industries, keep American industrial jobs, and return those jobs to blue-collar communities.

But since the project was announced, the plant's licensing has been fought every step of the way by the Clinton administration and its allies in the environmental and civil rights movements. In Claiborne Parish, the soaring rhetoric of environmentalism and civil rights has come to earth in the form of federal regulation - and fallen on the very ideals it promised to lift up.

In 1989, when Louisiana Energy Services, a consortium of five energy companies, announced the siting of its new facility outside Homer (population 4,600), the locals cheered. "We're elated," gushed Joe Michael, then mayor of Homer, the largest town in a county where 30 percent of the residents live below the poverty line. It's going to raise the standard of living for all our people."

Upon breaking ground in 1992, Louisiana Energy Services would pay about $10 million to the county school board as a one-time parish "use tax" on equipment. After construction and a 10-year "enterprise zone" exemption, the plant would pay $8 million a year in taxes and double the county's tax base. The construction project would employ 400 people, and the completed plant would hire 180. Only 21 of those jobs would demand nuclear-related experience.

The facility's economic impact would also be felt beyond the county's borders. America's only existing enrichment facilities, which separate fissionable U-235 atoms from natural uranium to make nuclear fuel, are owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. While these plants still provide the bulk of America's enrichment needs, they are expensive, 50-year-old energy guzzlers. As these dinosaurs aged, modern European facilities gained U.S. and world market share by offering cheaper enrichment services. In the past 10 years, the foreign share of the U.S. market has increased from 10 percent to 25 percent. The Claiborne plant would reverse that tide and expand America's export market.

But to anti-industry environmental groups, the project was a call to arms. A local environmental group, Citizens Against Nuclear Trash (CANT) - with help from the Sierra Club - filed a series of safety complaints with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...