Here's a perfect illustration of the ugly intersection of poverty and environmental degradation: the fight over whether the Goshute tribe of Utah should be able to use its reservation as a holding site for highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants around the country.

Time's Margot Roosevelt describes the tribe's stark, denuded homeland:

To the southwest lies the Dugway Proving Ground, where the U.S. government develops chemical and biological weapons. To the east is one of the world's largest nerve-gas incinerators. To the north is a giant magnesium plant, a major polluter. To the northwest sit a hazardous-waste incinerator and a toxic-waste landfill. The tribe's only profitable business is a municipal garbage dump serving Salt Lake City.

And now the beleaguered Goshutes have gotten a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to host 44,000 tons of nuke waste at a repository that would be built on their reservation, in exchange for up to $100 million over 40 years from a consortium of utilities. "People say this will destroy the land," says tribal chairman Leon Bear. "But how can you poison what is already poisoned?"

Says Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (R), "I'd lie prostrate on the train tracks to keep this out of our state." Many other Utahans feel the same (and some Goshutes, too, actually). Huntsman and other officials from the region are trying various moves to keep the waste at bay, but the Goshute tribe has status as a sovereign nation, so it's unclear how the whole matter will shake out.

What is clear is that well-off communities never volunteer to host waste sites, nuclear or otherwise. When people are desperate for economic development, they are susceptible to what one dissident Goshute characterized as a bribe. Says Lori Skiby, another tribe member, "Traditional values don't put a roof over your head."