Oct. 13--For its first three decades, the Idaho National Laboratory had a free ride in Idaho. In awe of the alchemy performed on the 570,000-acre desertscape in eastern Idaho -- including the first nuclear-generated electrical power -- nobody much questioned what went on behind the locked gates at INL.

Not when an experimental reactor's control rod was removed incorrectly, leading to a core meltdown and explosion. Not when U.S. Geological Survey scientist Jack Barraclough discovered radioactive iodine concentrations more than 25 times the allowable limit for drinking water in a well at the site.

But the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 transformed the political landscape, even in Idaho, and the Snake River Alliance began doing something rare in Idaho: Talking back to the experts.

The Boise-based environmental group -- celebrating its 30th anniversary this year -- was cofounded by Dorian Duffin of Rupert and led for a time by Beatrice Brailsford of Buhl. For years, it's had a hand in forcing the federal Department of Energy to be more accountable.

After then-Gov. John Evans formed a taskforce at the urging the SRA, the energy department in 1984 announced that it would stop injecting waste into the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, where much of the Magic Valley gets drinking water.

Its influence was a factor when Gov. Cecil Andrus blocked nuclear waste shipments at the state's border in 1988, and in a 1995 Gov. Phil Batt's agreement with the energy department set a schedule for removing low-level nuclear waste stored at INL.

And if Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. is unsuccessful in getting permission to build a nuclear power plant in Elmore County, SRA -- a vocal critic of the project -- will be a major reason why.

SRA's judgment hasn't always been perfect. In 1996, the group engineered a failed ballot initiative aimed at overturning the Batt agreement. But since 1979, the pronouncements of all of those PhD's at INL haven't been holy writ.

Big government, it turns out, doesn't always know best, and that message has resonated across the Idaho political spectrum -- even with those who favor nuclear power.

And to other realms of public policy as well. Idaho's technocracies -- the Department of Environmental Quality, the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, for example -- don't get a pass when they make complex proposals and decisions. They actually have to justify their actions.

Would that have happened without SRA? Perhaps. The Idaho Conservation League, founded six years before the SRA, has been holding policymakers' feet to the fire for a long time now.

Though effective, the ICL is a less confrontational, mainstream group. SNA was never afraid to raise hell, earning former Sen. Jim McClure's enmity as a "radical fringe" group.

Yet truth be told, INL is a more effective operation today because of pressure from the SRA. It does its homework, performs its due diligence and has stopped trying to pass off its actions as too complex for ordinary Idahoans to understand.

For the SNA demonstrated long ago that workaday Idahoans are smart enough to protect their state's best interests.

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