Hannah Smay, Board President
Over the last 18 months, the Snake River Alliance board and our wider community of supporters have undertaken a transformative process of renewal. We embarked on this intensive journey with the intention to reimagine, retool, and renew the Snake River Alliance to fortify the organization for the work ahead.
We are excited to share the fruits of our renewal and chart our path forward as Idaho’s alliance of land and water protectors united to fight nuclear threats and radioactive pollution.
Who We Are
We are warriors, artists, guardians, storytellers, stewards, and educators who belong to Idaho and to one another and hold a darkness that cannot be held.
Idaho’s Nuclear Landscape
Our alliance was born out of a violent and perpetual poisoning regime undertaken and maintained by federal agencies (Department of Defense and Department of Energy) at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho’s Arco Desert, precariously located atop the Snake River Aquifer. Since 1948, nuclear contamination from nuclear weapons manufacturing, nuclear reactor development, nuclear navy materials, and the resultant radioactive waste has been stored across the Idaho National Laboratory site on both interim and permanent timelines, forever contaminating this land and water and threatening Idaho’s communities of life.
We are called to reckon with this radioactive contamination. Invisible, deadly, and perpetual, Idaho’s radioactive legacy requires our attention as guardians of land and water and stewards of our toxic inheritance.
As an organization, the Snake River Alliance values:
- Our shared history and heritage as stewards of nuclear waste and protectors of Idaho’s land and water threatened by that waste
- A shared sense of belonging – both to the land and water of Idaho and to one another – as an intergenerational, diverse alliance
- Art and storytelling as tools to build, educate, and invite our community to a shared table
- Partnerships with other organizations to achieve our shared goals, and especially welcoming new generations and people to the anti-nuclear cause
