ACTIVISTS INVADE CAPITOL TO PROTEST NUCLEAR DUMP.

Byline: John Howard Associated Press 

Greenpeace activists in climbing gear sneaked into the state Capitol on Thursday, dangled by ropes from the roof near the rotunda and unfurled a banner opposing a nuclear waste dump in Ward Valley.

Three people who participated in the protest - two climbers and a rooftop lookout - were arrested for trespassing, the California Highway Patrol said.

``It's a wonderful day! We're here to get the message across,'' said climber Jennifer Krill, 25, of San Francisco, speaking by cellular telephone as she clung to a line on the side of the Capitol.

Moments later, she was arrested.

Police and a Fire Department crew with a high-rise ladder tried to talk Krill and fellow climber Mike Sowle, 30, of Berkeley into surrendering, but the climbers refused to come down voluntarily. They were taken into custody by the fire crew after nearly three hours on the ropes with the 35-foot-wide banner draped between them.

Police removed the banner even as Krill was making her way down the ladder.

Passers-by, tourists and scores of children in Capitol Park watched as the demonstration progressed. Enjoying a warm spring day, onlookers sat on the lawn and snapped pictures as the afternoon wore on.

On the Capitol's east steps, Gov. Pete Wilson was attending a ceremony honoring people who had volunteered during the January flooding.

``This is the kind of childish trick that they think changes policy,'' Wilson said as he returned to his Capitol office. ``It doesn't.''

The protesters, decked out with climbing gear, entered the Capitol's west entrance and went up several flights of stairs to a restricted area. It was not clear how they obtained access to the roof of the Capitol.

``No Radioactive Waste Dump at Ward Valley

Save the Colorado River and Sacred Indian Lands,'' the banner read.

The demonstrators oppose a plan sanctioned by the Wilson administration to put a low-level nuclear waste dump in the Southern California desert near Needles. The proposed site, the object of controversy for years, is in arid Ward Valley, near the Colorado River.

Wilson has said repeatedly that the proposed site passes environmental muster and that a safe nuclear waste storage site is desperately needed.

The federal government has ordered an environmental review of the plan before turning over the land to the state. The Wilson administration has accused President Clinton of deliberately delaying the transfer.

Pete Baldridge, senior counsel for the Department of Health Services, said the state is meeting with the Indian tribes and trying to address their concerns. But the site is more than 20 miles from any tribal lands, and separated by the tribal sites by a mountain range, he said.

And while there are plants and animals in the area that are sacred to the tribes, they are found throughout the area and would not be threatened by the dump, he said.

The 90-acre dump site is near a pit where the state Department of Transportation dug up materials for a nearby interstate highway, and near a power-line easement and a water-pumping station.

``This is not what you would call a pristine wilderness, even without having this facility constructed,'' Baldridge said.