Comparison_pedlt3


 * < **Hanford** ||< **WIPP** ||
 * < From Bill Clinton’s [|Proclamation 7319] of June 9, 2000, which established the Hanford Reach National Monument:

//“The Hanford Reach National Monument is a unique and biologically diverse landscape, encompassing an array of scientific and historic objects. This magnificent area contains an irreplaceable natural and historic legacy, preserved by unusual circumstances. Maintained as a buffer area in a Federal reservation conducting nuclear weapons development and, more recently, environmental cleanup activities, with limits on development and human use for the past 50 years, the monument is now a haven for important and increasingly scarce objects of scientific and historic interest. […]//

//The monument is a biological treasure, embracing important riparian, aquatic, and upland shrub-steppe habitats that are rare or in decline in other areas […]//

//The monument also contains important archaeological and historic information. More than 10,000 years of human activity in this largely arid environment have left extensive archaeological deposits. […]//

//Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature of this monument and not to locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.// ||< How one of the experts involved in a report on permanent markers to warn future generations about WIPP described the messages they were supposed to convey:

//This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.//

//This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.//

//What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.//

//The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.//

//The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.//

//The danger is to the body, and it can kill.//

//The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.//

//The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.// ||
 * < -The site’s past is archeological and historical, highly valued, and needs to be protected from human intrusion. Potential intruders are threatened with punishment. ||< -The site’s past is dangerous, and its artifacts are devalued. Humans must be protected from the consequences for the sake of their own well-being. ||
 * < -The site is spoken about as a natural and historic site, with a rich (biodiverse) ecosystem. ||< -The site is spoken about as a constructed space that should be shunned ||
 * < -10,000 years of human activity into the past. The future contemplated here is not clearly specified. On one hand, radical timelines did not seem to be relevant (no loss of institutional control, for example, is assumed). On the other, there is the sense of preserving history and landscapes for posterity as part of the endowment of humanity. ||< -The 10,000 year timeline of human activity into the future highly shapes the message of this site, and the need to write this message into stone (rather than assume a continuity of governance). ||