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to move to Nevada. Last October the Environmental Protection Agency 

 denied the company permits to continue pumping hazardous wastes 

 underground at Rancho Cordova. The passage of California's tough new 

 hazardous waste initiative, Proposition 65, makes Nevada's relatively 

 weak pollution laws even more attractive to the company. 



The Sierra Club recommends a number of changes to S.854: 



1. A full environmental Impact statement (EIS) must be prepared, 

 by a federal agency or other independent source. The private 

 environmental study purchased by Aerojet is critically flawed. The EIS 

 should include an adequate range of alternatives including different 

 sites for the Aerojet facility and alternative mitigation measures for 

 unavoidable environmental and other Impacts. Such mitigation measures 

 should Include the purchase of environmentally-sensitive land in Nevada 

 as well as in Florida. 



2. Such an EIS should consider the alternative of no land exchange 

 at all (with acquisition of needed Florida lands using the Land & Water 

 Conservation Fund), and the lease and special use permit of Nevada 

 public lands to Aerojet. The lease should be limited to only sufficient 

 acreage for a rocket testing facility and buffer zone, and only for the 

 term of use, if any. If the Coyote Springs site is determined to be the 

 best site for such a facility, we would further ask Congress to add 



