Yucca Mountain News Clips - Monday, January 12, 2004

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, January 12, 2004
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Boston Globe
January 12, 2004

Waste site foes go to court

Nevada to challenge nuclear dump plan for Yucca Mountain

By Ryan Slattery, Globe Correspondent, 1/12/2004

LAS VEGAS -- Two days before Thanksgiving, President Bush rolled into Las Vegas to announce the passage of the Medicare bill and attend a fund-raising luncheon at The Venetian with 500 supporters.

Outside the Strip resort, twice as many protesters paced the sidewalk with signs reading "No Nuke Dump in Nevada."

But the president never saw the signs or heard the chants because his motorcade whisked him down a side street to the casino's rear entrance. No surprise to protesters. For the past two decades Nevadans have opposed burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain -- 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- but say few outside the state have paid them heed. This week, they say, their voices will be heard.

On Wednesday, Nevada's team of lawyers will present its case before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. State officials, in an attempt to stop the project, have filed a half-dozen lawsuits naming various federal agencies, Bush, and the Department of Energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, as defendants. Four of the lawsuits have been consolidated and will be argued at the three-hour hearing.

A ruling is expected this summer and, Yucca opponents say, a legal victory could delay or even derail the project for good.

"I'm confident," said Joe Egan, the Washington lawyer heading Nevada's legal team. "A win could completely stop the project or rewrite the rules that will make it nearly impossible for the DOE to ever get the site approved."

In 2002, Congress approved Yucca Mountain as the burial ground for 77,000 tons of radioactive waste. The waste would be shipped by truck and rail to the site from nuclear power plants across the country.

Energy Department officials refused to disclose their strategies for the hearing, saying only that they're looking forward to defending their position and proving that Yucca Mountain is a safe and suitable storage site.

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U.S. Newswire
January 12, 2004

Nuclear Waste Storage Debate Goes to Court; Historic U.S. Court of Appeals Hearing Set for Jan. 14; Nuclear Experts Available to Media

To: National and Assignment desks, Energy Reporter

Contact: Kathy Yeager, 703-787-0198, or Kris Phillips Geddings, 202-744-3599, both for State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A team of lawyers for the State of Nevada will argue that the selection of Yucca Mountain for a nuclear waste dump is illegal and was based upon federal agency regulations which are both unlawful and unconstitutional.

The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is a $58 billion government project to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from our nation's nuclear power plants.

The oral arguments set for Jan. 14 at 9:30 a.m. are before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, the second-highest court next to the Supreme Court. It involves one of the largest number of combined cases against the federal government in the court's history. In addition to radiation safety issues, Nevada will also argue that the constitution does not allow 49 states to 'gang up' and impose an unwanted burden on a single state. It will also argue that the Energy Department did not use existing licensing, suitability, and environmental guidelines when choosing Yucca Mountain as the federal repository for nuclear waste.

A decision from the court is expected by this summer.

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What:

Oral arguments in State of Nevada vs. the U.S. Department of Energy

When:

9:30 a.m. EST, Wednesday, Jan. 14

Where:

U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia, 333 Constitution Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.

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Editors Note: To schedule an interview on this issue, contact Kris Geddings at 202-744-3599. Experts will be available immediately following the conclusion of the hearing outside the U.S. Court of Appeals Building.

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Las Vegas SUN
January 12, 2004

Nevada's GOP legislators have high election hopes

ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Republican legislators expect Nevada voters to put them in control of both the state Assembly and Senate this year for the first time since 1929. But Democrats say there's no way that will occur.

GOP lawmakers contend public anger over last year's record tax increase will help them win control. Republicans now hold a 13-8 advantage in the Senate but trail Democrats by a 23-19 margin in the Assembly.

"Taxes aren't going to go away," said Assemblyman Ron Knecht, R-Carson City, who's predicting a 26-16 GOP margin in the Assembly. "If we get the proposition on the ballot (to let voters rescind the $833 million tax increase), taxes will remain in peoples' memories."

"They are dreaming," said Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson. "What you will see is status quo. If you remember, the tax question was a bipartisan question. Half of the Republicans voted to increase taxes."

Fourteen of the 32 Republicans in the Assembly and Senate backed the increase, which originated with proposals from Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn. All 31 Democratic legislators voted for the increase.

Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, won't guess at the number of seats Republicans will win but predicts they have "better than a 50-50 chance" of controlling the Legislature.

Knecht figures Republicans will win at least four of the five seats held in Clark County by Democratic freshmen Marcus Conklin, Kelvin Atkinson, William Horne, Peggy Pierce and Bob McCleary; and he predicts Republicans can beat Democrats Sheila Leslie and Bernie Anderson in largely Republican Washoe County.

Knecht said Republicans will be helped by a double-dipping scandals, in which legislators took pay from local governments while serving in Carson City, involving Democrats Wendell Williams, Kathy McClain and Atkinson.

Knecht also predicted GOP gains because President Bush will be a favorite over any Democratic challenger.

Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, a Senate candidate this year, expects Republicans will end up with a 12-9 Senate advantage.

Democrats are ready to respond if Republicans try to pin the tax increase on them, said Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas. She noted most Republicans said before a final vote on taxes that they would have backed an increase of $704 million.

"It wasn't that they weren't willing to vote for new taxes because they were," she said. "They are in just as much peril as we are."

Eric Herzik, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno, predicts Democrats will keep control of the Assembly.

To win, Republican candidates must win all close races, and none of their incumbents can lose. History shows that won't happen, Herzik said.

Herzik predicts Democrats will oust Republican incumbent Don Gustavson in Washoe County. Gustavson is vulnerable, in part, because he was arrested shortly after the 2002 election on spousal abuse charges. The charges were dropped later.

Herzik also said Gustavson "didn't have a stellar session" and will be faced this year by former Democratic Assemblywoman Debbie Smith. She lost to Gustavson by little more than 30 votes in 2002.

Herzik also said former Democrat Assemblywoman Marcia de Braga could beat incumbent Republican Pete Goicoechea of Eureka and Knecht might lose in Carson City.

Democratic leaders agree, and also see victory for Las Vegas lawyer Justin Jones in a race against freshman Assemblyman Chad Christensen, R-Las Vegas. And they expect a Democrat will win the Henderson seat being vacated by Republican Assemblyman Josh Griffin.

Ted Jelen, political science chairman at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, doubts the tax increase will mean much to many voters. The kinds of taxes going into effect will not affect most people directly unless they drink, smoke or gamble, Jelen said.

Jelen also said Bush's popularity won't translate into votes for Republican legislative candidates because he backs a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain; and Republicans will suffer from some nasty primary battles.

Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal

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Reno Gazette-Journal
Yucca case to be heard Wednesday

By Ken Ritter

ASSOCIATED PRESS
1/11/2004 10:55 pm

LAS VEGAS — The federal government says entombing the nation´s nuclear waste beneath an ancient volcanic ridge in the Nevada desert will be safe.

Nevada says it´s a disaster in the making, and the state shouldn´t have to bear the burden of being the nation´s nuclear waste dump.

Site has presidential OK

So far, the Energy Department has won presidential and congressional approval for the Yucca Mountain project, which it wants to open in 2010 at a cost of at least $58 billion — about the same as the International Space Station.

On Wednesday, lawyers will squeeze more than two decades of debate and six lawsuits into three hours of oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C.

Ruling due in summer

If stacked before the bench, the legal briefs might tower 10 feet, said Martin Malsch, a McLean, Va., lawyer representing Nevada.

“I think I could hide behind it,’ he said.

A ruling, likely due out in summer, is crucial to both sides.

“We´ll find out if the DOE is operating a legal project,’ said Bob Loux, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn´s top anti-Yucca aide. “We´re going to know this year, ultimately, whether it goes forward to licensing or not.’

The state couldn´t muster the political clout to stop the project before. Now, it hopes the federal court will step in before the Energy Department submits a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“Part of our strategy has always been the court, (which) could kill it, change direction or slow it down,’ said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

If the regulatory commission gives the final go-ahead, the Energy Department plans to spend 25 years filling tunnels with special metal casks containing 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. The site would then be sealed, and scientists expect it will remain radioactive for at least 10,000 years.

Opponents say Yucca Mountain is seismically active, and that even in the desert, enough water would seep through the mountain over the centuries to corrode the metal alloy containers and let deadly radioactivity escape.

The Bush administration and the Energy Department say the repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will provide a long-overdue home for the nation´s most highly radioactive commercial, industrial and military material.

“Yucca Mountain will be a safe site to store nuclear waste,’ said Joe Davis, Energy Department spokesman. “If we didn´t think so, we would not have made the decision to move ahead.’

In an era of heightened security concerns, it makes more sense to store nuclear waste 1,000 feet below a desert mountain than in aboveground “stationary targets’ in 39 states, Davis said.

The nuclear industry has argued that a safe place must be found to store the spent fuel accumulating at 103 commercial reactors and various industrial and military sites around the country.

“It needs to be done. It needs to be done safely,’ said Bob Bishop, general counsel for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C. The institute, with 260 corporate members in 15 countries, is the industry´s top lobbying arm in Washington and a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits.

“Congress declared it a national policy to promote the use of nuclear energy consistent with the common defense and security and public health and safety,’ Bishop said. “It all comes down to Yucca Mountain.’

Judy Treichel remembers the earliest hints 30 years ago that a spot at the far western edge of the Nevada Test Site might one day be used to bury the nation´s nuclear waste. She was among the first to oppose it when the state Legislature seemed open to the idea.

“We´ve been waiting these many years,’ said Treichel, director of the nonprofit Nuclear Waste Task Force in Las Vegas. “This tests the entire system — the EPA rule, the NRC rule, the DOE rule, the recommendation, the EIS, the whole gamut. It tests the validity and the science and the constitutionality of everything that was done.’

Treichel is among those who derided Congress´ “screw Nevada bill’ in 1987 to reject other sites and consider only Yucca Mountain.

The state argues that since then, the Energy Department shaped its rules and findings to ensure that Yucca Mountain meet the qualifications.

“Nevada has maintained consistently, since square one, that what has gone on here is a changing of the rules, a changing of the requirements, to make Yucca Mountain work,’ Loux said.

Bob List, Nevada governor from 1979-83, is an NEI consultant and a voice for the Yucca Mountain project. He called the project a 95 percent certainty, and said the state is missing a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reap economic benefits from the biggest U.S. public works project ever.

“We have to face reality,’ List said. “In today´s dollars, this will cost more than Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal, the World Trade Center and the Eurotunnel combined.’

The cash-strapped state of 2.1 million residents is instead spending $4 million for a team of nuclear law specialists headed by Joe Egan and Malsch to handle the case.

They´ll challenge Environmental Protection Agency radiation limits for areas around Yucca Mountain, Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing rules and Energy Department environmental standards for studying and recommending Yucca Mountain.

They also will challenge the constitutionality of the federal government forcing one state to become the dump for all other states´ nuclear waste.

“The analogy we draw is that it´s as if the president decided to wage war in Iraq and only send people from Nevada to do the fighting,’ Malsch said.

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Salt Lake Tribune
January 12, 2004

Rural concerns fuel debate over Nevada nuclear site

By Ed Koch
The Associated Press

CALIENTE, Nev. -- On a slow Monday afternoon at the Knotty Pine Restaurant, co-owner Mel Robinson waits on two customers.

Asked about the Energy Department's recently announced preferred route that would bring trains carrying nuclear waste through the small town near the Utah border, Robinson says she believes that the federal government will win that fight and that folks need to accept it, as well as a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Federal government officials "have to make it as safe as possible and hopefully we will get some benefits from the government such as an enhanced fire department and some good-paying jobs for people around here who really need them."

Caliente's business district, 150 miles north of Las Vegas, is hurting. The street is full of closed stores -- Vasu Video, Carl's Burgers, the Nevada Club -- and buildings with boarded windows.

A few doors down from the Knotty Pine lives one of the town's most vocal antinuclear activists, Marge Detraz.

While others dined at the Knotty Pine, she prepared to go to the county seat, Pioche, to blast the Lincoln County Commission at its first meeting since the route was announced Dec. 23 for "selling out" to the federal government on the repository.

The Energy Department, which plans to open the high-level waste dump at Yucca by 2010, has chosen as its preferred route a yet-to-be-constructed, 319-mile rail line that would begin outside Caliente and wind north of the Nevada Test Site and west of the Nellis Air Force Range to its destination. The cost to build it is estimated at $881 million.

Rural matters: On a bitterly cold Monday morning in Pioche, a historic mining town 23 miles from Caliente, residents go to the Silver Cafe for breakfast. None of the restaurant's half-dozen patrons plan to join Detraz at the Lincoln County Courthouse down the street for the County Commission meeting.

At the Lincoln County Commission chambers, a small basement room in the two-story courthouse, the five commissioners -- Chairman Spencer Hafen, Tim Perkins, Tommy Rowe, Ronda Hornbeck and Hal Keaton -- and several county workers outnumber the audience.

It quickly becomes apparent how such a poor entity could welcome the opportunity to pick the federal government's deep pockets in exchange for allowing nuke waste to be transported over its grounds.

But a consultant who is paid $171,000 a year out of $699,000 in Lincoln County's Energy Department oversight funds does not have the best of news on that option.

Mike Baughman, president of the Carson City consulting firm Intertech Services Corp., tells the commission that transportation fee increases could be imposed on the federal government to get more money for Lincoln County's needs, but the county cannot broker the deal -- only the state.

In addition, a raise in Nevada's $150-per-train or truck shipment rate would have to show a corresponding hike in costs for Lincoln County, such as to have additional emergency response equipment and other safety measures, Baughman said.

The increase of fees "cannot be an underwriter of a general fund," Baughman said. "We must show that we are incurring the costs."

Nothing is mentioned about the state of Nevada's chilly relationship with the federal government over the nuclear issue.

That battle, which has simmered for 20 years, became all-out war in 2002, when Congress approved Yucca as the site to entomb 77,000 tons of radioactive waste produced by the nation's nuclear power plants and the military over the vehement objections of Nevada leaders.

Limited options: Robinson, who did not attend Monday's commission meeting, noted that while Las Vegans can afford to fight an all-or-nothing battle over Yucca Mountain, Lincoln County residents cannot afford to fight the feds and lose what little they have. Bargaining for concessions is their only logical option, she and others say.

Karlynn Chatwin, manager of the bar and casino at the Knotty Pine, says the nuke train could pump up business in her town.

"We are pretty recessed here -- we need something," says Chatwin, a native Las Vegan and a Lincoln County resident of 10 years. "Children grow up here and leave because there is nothing for them.

Chatwin knows what she would like to get.

"I believe one of the concessions should be that the federal government pays to put our children through college," she says. "Parents here certainly cannot afford to do it."

Standing firm: Back at the commission meeting, Detraz begins by berating the commissioners for their regular 4-to-1 votes.

Keaton, who opposes nuclear waste, is on the losing end.

Hafen warns her to stick to the agenda item and present her Yucca Mountain update. Detraz instead criticizes council members, including Hafen, for attending "secret meetings" with Energy Secretary Margaret Chu and other DOE officials.

In November some of the commissioners met with Energy Department officials in Amargosa Valley and in December at McCarran International Airport.

Detraz is cut off by Hafen as she reads the third of three newspaper clippings to support her claims.

During the break Hafen, a land surveyor by profession, denies doing anything illegal.

"Our job is to protect the health, welfare and safety of the people of Lincoln County," Hafen said. "Nobody here shouted, 'Bring [nuclear waste] here! Bring it here!' But part of addressing the issue is to look at the best proposal the DOE will bring to the table."

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Power Engineering
January 8, 2004

Sustainable Energy Coalition releases survey of presidential candidates' competing views on energy and related environmental issues

WASHINGTON DC, Jan. 8, 2004 -- The Sustainable Energy Coalition has released the results of a 30-question survey of the views of eight of the major presidential candidates on a cross-section of energy and related environmental policy issues.

The survey, released Jan. 8, includes responses received from General Wesley Clark, Governor Howard Dean, Senator John Edwards, Representative Richard Gephardt, Senator John Kerry, Representative Dennis Kucinich, Senator Joseph Lieberman, and Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun. (Responses were not received from either Rev. Al Sharpton or President George Bush.)

Significant policy differences among the candidates are reflected in their responses to the questions.

Issues addressed by the survey include budget and tax incentives for energy efficiency, renewable energy (i.e., solar, wind, geothermal, biomass/biofuels, hydropower), fossil fuels, and nuclear power; hydrogen R&D; auto fuel efficiency standards, hybrid vehicles, a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard, a federal Renewable Fuels Standard, a federal "wires charge" for energy efficiency; climate change and the Kyoto Protocol; oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; natural gas price increases and supply shortages; nuclear plant construction and relicensing; renewal of the Price Anderson Act; and the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository.

The full text of the candidates' responses + an executive summary can be found on the following web pages:

American Solar Energy Society:

http://www.ases.org/election2004/sec_candidates.htm

Environmental & Energy Study Institute:

http://www.eesi.org/publications\Press%20Releases\2004\Candidate%20Position.htm

U.S. Public Interest Research Group:

http://www.uspirg.org/reports/presidentialsurvey.pdf

The Sustainable Energy Coalition is a coalition of over 70 national and state business, environmental, consumer, and energy policy organizations which collectively represent several thousand companies, municipal utilities, and community organizations. (A complete list of the member groups is available upon request.) Founded in 1992, the Sustainable Energy Coalition works to promote increased use of energy efficient and renewable energy technologies. The Sustainable Energy Coalition released surveys of the energy views of the major presidential candidates in 1992, 1996, and 2000.

http://www.sustainableenergy.org

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Las Vegas SUN
January 11, 2004

Nevada Nuclear Waste Case Set for Court

By KEN RITTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada officials say a federal appeals court hearing this week on a collection of lawsuits will give the state its best chance to block the government's plans to entomb nuclear reactor waste under a mountain just 90 miles outside Las Vegas.

"Part of our strategy has always been the court," said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a leader of the state's fight against the Yucca Mountain project.

Reid said he hopes the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will "kill it, change direction or slow it down."

For 25 years, the state has lacked the political clout to stop the Yucca Mountain project, failing in Congress and with the White House.

The public debate will culminate in oral arguments before the appellate panel Wednesday on a case involving six state lawsuits against the federal government. A ruling is likely this summer.

"This is the state's best chance," said Bob Loux, Gov. Kenny Guinn's top anti-Yucca aide. "There's still the licensing arena if we fail, but the playing field is certainly more level in the legal arena than in the political arena."

Nevada is challenging Environmental Protection Agency radiation limits for areas around the site, Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing rules, Energy Department environmental standards for studying and recommending the site, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's recommendation, and President Bush's approval.

The nuclear energy industry also is suing the government, saying it missed a 1998 deadline for finding a place to store the spent fuel accumulating at 103 commercial reactors and various industrial and military sites around the country.

The Energy Department would spend 25 years filling tunnels inside the mountain with metal casks containing 77,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel. The site would then be sealed. Scientists expect it would remain radioactive for at least 10,000 years.

Opponents say the Yucca Mountain area is prone to earthquakes, and that even in the desert, enough water would seep through the mountain over 100 centuries to corrode the metal containers and let deadly radioactive material escape.

Nevada argues that one state shouldn't have to bear the burden of being the nation's nuclear waste dump.

"The analogy we draw is that it's as if the president decided to wage war in Iraq and only send people from Nevada to do the fighting," said Martin Malsch, a McLean, Va., lawyer representing Nevada.

If the courts uphold the $58 billion project it would still need a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license. The Energy Department says it will apply for the license this year and open the dump in 2010.

The agency insists Yucca Mountain is safe, and will provide a long-overdue repository for the nation's most highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.

"If we didn't think so, we would not have made the decision to move ahead," Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said.

Amid terrorism concerns, it makes more sense to store high-level nuclear waste 1,000 feet below a desert mountain than in aboveground sites that amount to "stationary targets" in 39 states, Davis said.

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On the Net:

Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov

Nevada Office of Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste

Nuclear Energy Institute: www.nei.org

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov

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Dayton Daily News
January 10, 2004

New post renews Hobson's fervor

By Mei-Ling Hopgood
mhopgood@coxnews.com

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. David Hobson was not on the House Armed Services Committee that was holding a hearing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in July. He was not a witness, either. He sat in, simply as a local Congress member.

But the leaders of that powerful committee, who had driven down a street on the base called Hobson Way to get to the hearing, were sure to pay their proper respects.

Vice Chairman Curt Weldon, R-Pa., told the audience, "There is in my opinion, no one who does (his job) better than Dave Hobson. He's aggressive. He's very well-respected on both sides of the aisle. He delivers.

"We're very pleased to not just have him here with us as an appropriator, but also to call him our friend. And we look forward to traveling again on Hobson highways in our own congressional districts," Weldon joked. "In fact, I'm willing to rename one of my major streets in Pennsylvania 'Hobson Thoroughfare' if the appropriate dollars are appropriated."

A year ago, Hobson — who had considered retiring just two years earlier — became chairman of the House Energy and Water appropriations subcommittee, a role that has given him new political focus and more influence in Congress, observers say.

Hobson, 67, a Republican from Springfield, controls a $27 billion spending bill that funds energy, water and Army Corps of Engineers projects ranging from flood control along the Mississippi River and science research at universities to nuclear warhead programs and supercomputers.

"I have a lot of new friends because of the projects in this bill," Hobson said.

The new position brought with it a new agenda, and Hobson — long known for dedication to local interests such as boosting Wright-Pat and Springfield development — has dived into a far-flung, eclectic and, in some cases, high-profile set of issues.

He has poured resources into developing Yucca Mountain, a controversial nuclear waste facility in Nevada. He trimmed Bush administration funding requests for nuclear weapons development, worried about fueling another arms race. He scolded the Florida legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush for not wholeheartedly pursuing the cleanup of the Everglades.

And he still delivered millions of dollars to Miami Valley projects in the energy and water bill.

Hobson's new job has boosted his campaign coffers, as well as his clout. He raised nearly $668,000 in the first nine months of 2003 and is well on his way to raising more than twice as much for this year's election as he did for 2002.

At the Wright-Pat hearing, he downplayed the deference directed his way, but his lighthearted words rang true. "I'm now the energy and water chairman, and everybody here's got a water project," Hobson told the audience. "Everybody in the world has got a water project."

New power founded partly in defiance

A few years ago, when Hobson was approaching 65 and had served a decade in Congress, he pondered whether to end his service or pursue a new leadership role.

Then, the Republicans in the Ohio legislature ticked him off when redrawing his 7th Congressional District, extending it to Perry County. It was less Republican and farther from Dayton, a community he knew much better than Columbus. Some state lawmakers were said to be eyeing his seat, if he retired.

Partly in defiance, Hobson stayed on.

After winning with 68 percent of the vote in 2002, Hobson immediately sought a new leadership role. Since 1999, he had been a "cardinal," one of the 13 chairs of appropriations subcommittees nicknamed for the power they have over federal money. As chairman of the military construction subcommittee, Hobson oversaw $10.6 billion in military construction.

Hobson, though talkative, is not one to grandstand or hog the spotlight. But his position as a cardinal gave him a lot of influence, especially with members with military bases in their districts. His four-year limit as military construction chairman was almost up, and Hobson wanted to keep that power. A position on the Energy and Water subcommittee — which was considerably larger and coming open — would give him more.

To date, Hobson has traveled to Miamisburg to inspect the Mound project, to Nevada to see Yucca Mountain, to the Florida Everglades to judge the progress of the cleanup and to Russia to monitor the disposal of nuclear weapons. He has toured laboratories in California and Army Corps projects in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama.

Miami Valley leaders have tailored their own requests for federal money to Hobson's new post.

Last year, for instance, the Dayton Development Coalition, asked for and got millions of dollars for sewer and infrastructure improvements at the Dayton International Airport and for environmental cleanup at the planned Tech Town site northeast of downtown Dayton. Previously, the region rarely pursued money in the energy and water bill, officials said.

Michael Gessel, coalition vice president for federal government programs, said he has seen a "marked increase in respect and public deference" toward Hobson among lawmakers and others.

"As he has risen in the ranks of appropriations, that respect has been rising," Gessel said. "But he has made a big leap."

Gessel pointed out Hobson's successful passage of legislation in the House that would establish a "national aviation heritage area" in eight southwest Ohio counties. If it passes the Senate, the bill would authorize $10 million over the next 15 years to promote heritage tourism, develop public educational and cultural programs and preserve certain lands, structures and facilities, many of them related to the Wright brothers.

Heritage areas are a tough sell because critics say they infringe on the rights of property owners. Hobson's influence helped pass the bill, Gessel said.

Hobson, who yearly secures millions for projects in his native Springfield, also was able to get $6 million for a data center there and $5 million for an another advanced computing center in Clark County.

Businesses and interest groups have taken note of Hobson's new role, as well. Contributions through the first nine months of last year, for instance, show the energy, utility and mining industries playing a larger role than in the last election cycle, according to data from Dwight L. Morris & Associates, campaign finance consultants hired by the Dayton Daily News.

Also, out-of-state contributions make up a slightly higher percentage of his donations. In August, an Alabama congressman threw a fund-raiser for Hobson in Mobile, where representatives from various agencies, local companies and a university came, met Hobson and contributed to his campaign.

Hobson said his staff tries to balance individual donations with those from companies and political action committees, and that contributions do not influence policy or the appropriations bill he controls. "I honestly don't really look a lot at those lists of who's giving and who's not giving," he said.

Kara Anastasio, a Democrat from Yellow Springs who is running against Hobson again this year, said such corporate contributions have a "corrupting influence."

"A lot of what I see are lots of games, lots of politics," said Anastasio, 36, who works as an office administrator for a Dayton attorney. "Just paybacks and power."

New position means broader interests

Hobson quickly has developed new interests and pet causes, though he does not always make everyone happy.

To the chagrin of some environmentalists and Nevada lawmakers, his top priority has been developing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project. Hobson wanted to give the project $765 million for nuclear waste disposal last year, $174 million more than the Bush administration requested.

Greg Bortolin, spokesman for Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, said Hobson and other lawmakers would feel differently about the project if their homes were threatened. The state is fighting the project in court.

Hobson said he is pursuing the will of the president and Congress, which passed bills supporting the project. "I think that the country has made a decision and we have to implement this decision," he said. "We have to have some way of reducing this waste."

On the other hand, Hobson — who voted with President Bush 96 percent of the time last year according to Congressional Quarterly — fought against Bush's efforts to develop new nuclear weapons. In the House version of the energy and water bill, he substantially cut the administration's request for new research on nuclear weapons.

"You have to challenge some of those things," he said. "We have too much of a Cold War arsenal."

His stand on those two issues put him at odds with Senate leaders. The chair of the Senate Energy and Water appropriations subcommittee, Sen. Pete Dominici, R-New Mexico, supports the research programs, which benefit labs in his state. That subcommittee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, is a fierce opponent of Yucca Mountain.

After weeks of stalemate, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert asked Dominici and Hobson to come to the Dole balcony on the west face of the Capitol, said Steve Bell, Dominici's chief of staff. There, they hashed out their differences.

"I think it's one of the toughest conferences we've ever had," Bell said. Hobson "was charming and he was nice and he was friendly, but he was sticking to his guns."

In the end, Hobson managed to get $580 million for Yucca Mountain, $185 million less than he wanted, but $155 million more than the Senate had designated.

About $6 billion still went to research into nuclear weapons programs, but Hobson said he trimmed out a lot for new research. He halved the administration's $15 million request for a weapon known as a "bunker buster" and "fenced off" money for some advanced weapons development. It will be released when the administration submits a revised weapons stockpile plan.

Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Water subcommittee, said Hobson is an especially effective legislator who does a good job balancing the requests of members and fiscal responsibility, and who is unafraid of challenging his own party.

"He's a staunch Republican, but that doesn't matter here," Visclosky said. "He wants to get the job done."

Hobson also wrote a letter to Florida leaders, saying the Everglades cleanup was going too slowly. He, along with another appropriations chairman, Canton-area Republican Rep. Ralph Regula, did not approve of the legislature's move to extend the deadline for companies to clean up the wetlands.

Hobson's bill says Florida will get federal money for the Everglades project only if the committee sees progress in the cleanup. Environmental groups including the National Audubon Society praised the effort, even though Hobson rarely scores well with such groups. The League of Conservation voters in 2002 gave Hobson only a 9 percent score for "environmentally friendly" votes. They disapproved of his support of Yucca Mountain and his support of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

The new job, Hobson said, has "changed me a lot. It's made me much more environmentally conscious."

The job has also invigorated Hobson, who lost 30 pounds last year on the Atkins diet. He's seeking re-election this year and wants to stay on as chairman another two years, to give the leadership continuity.

"I like being chairman of a committee and being able to make things happen," he said. "It makes it a little harder to walk away."

Ken McCall contributed to this report. Contact Mei-Ling Hopgood at (202) 887-8328 or mhopgood@coxnews.com

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Las Vegas SUN
January 10, 2004

NEVADA FOCUS: Crucial court showdown set on national nuclear dump

By Ken Ritter
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The federal government says entombing the nation's nuclear waste beneath an ancient volcanic ridge in the Nevada desert will be safe.

Nevada says it's a disaster in the making, and the state shouldn't have to bear the burden of being the nation's nuclear waste dump.

So far, the Energy Department has won presidential and congressional approval for the Yucca Mountain project, which it wants to open in 2010 at cost of at least $58 billion - about the same as the International Space Station.

If stacked before the bench, the legal briefs might tower 10 feet, said Martin Malsch, a McLean, Va., lawyer representing Nevada.

"I think I could hide behind it," he said.

A ruling, likely due out in summer, is crucial to both sides.

"We'll find out if the DOE is operating a legal project," said Bob Loux, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's top anti-Yucca aide. "We're going to know this year, ultimately, whether it goes forward to licensing or not."

The state couldn't muster the political clout to stop the project before. Now, it hopes the federal court will step in before the Energy Department submits a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"Part of our strategy has always been the court," said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., "(which) could kill it, change direction or slow it down."

Opponents say Yucca Mountain is seismically active, and that even in the desert enough water would seep through the mountain over the centuries to corrode the metal alloy containers and let deadly radioactivity escape.

The Bush administration and the Energy Department say the repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will provide a long-overdue home for the nation's most highly radioactive commercial, industrial and military material.

"Yucca Mountain will be a safe site to store nuclear waste," said Joe Davis, Energy Department spokesman. "If we didn't think so, we would not have made the decision to move ahead."

In an era of heightened security concerns, it makes more sense to store nuclear waste 1,000 feet below a desert mountain than in aboveground "stationary targets" in 39 states, Davis said.

The nuclear industry has argued that a safe place must be found to store the spent fuel accumulating at 103 commercial reactors and various industrial and military sites around the country.

"It needs to be done. It needs to be done safely," said Bob Bishop, general counsel for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C. The institute, with 260 corporate members in 15 countries, is the industry's top lobbying arm in Washington and a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits.

"Congress declared it a national policy to promote the use of nuclear energy consistent with the common defense and security and public health and safety," Bishop said. "It all comes down to Yucca Mountain."

Judy Treichel remembers the earliest hints 30 years ago that a spot at the far western edge of the Nevada Test Site might one day be used to bury the nation's nuclear waste. She was among the first to oppose it when the state Legislature seemed open to the idea.

"We've been waiting these many years," said Treichel, director of the nonprofit Nuclear Waste Task Force in Las Vegas. "This tests the entire system - the EPA rule, the NRC rule, the DOE rule, the recommendation, the EIS, the whole gamut. It tests the validity and the science and the constitutionality of everything that was done."

Treichel is among those who derided Congress' "screw Nevada bill" in 1987 to reject other sites and consider only Yucca Mountain.

The state argues that since then, the Energy Department shaped its rules and findings to ensure that Yucca Mountain meet the qualifications.

"Nevada has maintained consistently, since square one, that what has gone on here is a changing of the rules, a changing of the requirements, to make Yucca Mountain work," Loux said.

"We have to face reality," List said. "In today's dollars, this will cost more than Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal, the World Trade Center and the Eurotunnel combined."

The cash-strapped state of 2.1 million residents is instead spending $4 million for a team of nuclear law specialists headed by Joe Egan and Malsch to handle the case.

They'll challenge Environmental Protection Agency radiation limits for areas around Yucca Mountain, Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing rules and Energy Department environmental standards for studying and recommending Yucca Mountain.

They will also challenge the constitutionality of the federal government forcing one state to become the dump for all other states' nuclear waste.

"The analogy we draw is that it's as if the president decided to wage war in Iraq and only send people from Nevada to do the fighting," Malsch said.

---

On the Net:

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov

Nevada Office of Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste

Nuclear Energy Institute: www.nei.org

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov

Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov

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Reno Gazette-Journal
January 9, 2004

Keep speaking up on nuclear waste

Editorial

Three Western states and Nevada got their way when they stood up to the Energy Department on plans to transport radioactive waste from the Nevada Test Site to New Mexico. They didn´t stop the plan, expected to get under way on Thursday, but they showed how much power they have when they collectively approach a problem that is common to them all.

The lesson to be learned is that they can do it again for other disagreeable energy transit and nuclear waste storage policies if they work together. The feds would just have to listen, as they did this time.

The governors of Nevada, California, Arizona and New Mexico got together in October with the Energy Department after California officials objected to the plan to send radioactive material through the desert. The result was that half as many shipments will be transported through the four states, and another route must be found for the other half.

It would be easy to condemn California officials for indulging in unreasonable self-interest, since much of the material — contaminated tools, equipment and protective gear — originally came from a California laboratory. But that would be unfair, especially since Nevada has encouraged such cooperative efforts.

The truth is that Californians were the catalyst for this joint effort. Also, California´s objections come from knowledge. Officials there understand that it will take thousands of years for the material to decay to safe levels. And, skeptical of the safety level the federal government could provide, authorities also realize that the network of old, ill-maintained roads is not the safest. It´s possible that an accident could trigger a tragedy. Any public servant sensitive to health and safety concerns would make the same objections.

This kind of cooperation is a minor victory for states that oppose federal imposition of nuclear policy. But, it´s been a long time coming. Keep speaking up.

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State of Nevada
January 09, 2004

Arguments in Nevada's Lawsuit Against Yucca Mountain

Slated for Jan. 14 in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Court of Appeals decision expected in mid 2004

Nevada will have its day in court Jan. 14, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear arguments in the state's consolidated lawsuits that could result in the defeat of the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository, planned 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Anticipating the court will issue a ruling sometime in late spring or early summer, Joseph Egan, an attorney representing Nevada, said any of the state's lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or a suit challenging the constitutionality of a joint Congressional resolution designating Yucca Mountain as a repository, could derail the controversial project.

"We are looking forward to the opportunity to tell the court how the DOE, NRC, and EPA twisted their own rules in a blatant effort to make Yucca Mountain palatable as a warehouse for the nation's nuclear waste," Egan said. "We are confident that we can prove the government violated Congressional directives in recommending Yucca Mountain, and violated the Constitution by pitting 49 other states against Nevada in voting to approve the repository."

Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Executive Director Bob Loux expressed confidence that the high-profile legal team assembled to represent the state will prevail in at least one of the lawsuits. "We do not need to win them all to bring the Yucca Mountain project to an end," he said, "although we believe the arguments we present will be strong enough to carry the day in all of the cases."

Nevada's consolidated cases are the only items calendared for the court that day on the Circuit Court's complex docket, which allows both sides more time to present their cases and answer questions from the bench.

At the hearing, Egan, a former station-certified nuclear reactor engineer with degrees in Physics, Nuclear Engineering, and Technology & Policy, will present Nevada's cases against the DOE while Charles Cooper, cited by The National Law Journal as one of the 10 best civil litigators in Washington, D.C., will argue the state's constitutional case.

Martin Malsch, a former Acting General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel of the NRC and its first Inspector General, will handle the state's case against the NRC. San Francisco-based Antonio Rossmann, who has practiced land use and natural resources law in California for more than a quarter-century, will argue Nevada's case against the EPA.

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Pahrump Valley Times
January 9, 2004

Rancher objects to rail route

Fellini Says Energy Department Misleading Nevandans

By Mark Waite
PVT

TONOPAH - When it comes to the preferred route for shipping 77,000 metric tons of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, Warm Springs rancher Joe Fellini lies right in the path.

The northern Nye County public lands advocate offered an early indication to Nye County Commissioners meeting here Tuesday that ranchers will put up a stiff fight before allowing the Department of Energy to ship nuclear waste through their grazing lands.

The Department of Energy announced its preference for the Caliente route Dec. 23, which would entail building a 319-mile rail line from the Union Pacific tracks at Caliente, westward around the Nellis Air Force Training Range, to U.S. Highway 95 then south to the entrance near Lathrop Wells.

Fellini said the federal government is misleading the public in a notice published in the Federal Register Dec. 29, a request to withdraw 308,600 acres of public land. Fellini said he added up 1,002 sections listed in the notice, which, at 640 acres per section, would amount to a much greater land seizure of 641,280 acres.

Fellini said the land withdrawal would cut him off from water sources. He told Nye County Commissioners he's unsure what affect it would have on his permitted animal unit months for grazing. Fellini reminded commissioners that ranchers are about the last source of tax base left in the area.

The Department of Energy could take a shortcut by building a rail line through the Nellis Air Force Range, the Caliente-Chalk Mountain Corridor, which would be only 214 miles, but U.S. Air Force officials objected, he said.

"I call it blatant lies when they say it's only 308,600 acres and it's actually 641,208 acres," Fellini said. "They come in here and push this stuff down your throat and they don't tell you the truth."

"They come in here and trample on us and run an extra 100 miles of rail line just because they don't want to go through a little part of the test site when they're going through it anyway on the other route. I don't think it's right," Fellini said.

The DOE has asked for a mile-wide corridor through the sections of land. But Allen Benson, director of the office of institutional affairs for the DOE Yucca Mountain Project, said the corridor wouldn't include all 640 acres in each of the sections listed, a reason why there was a perceived discrepancy in the figures.

The land withdrawal currently under review is only for a two-year study period, to prevent encumbrances on the land from being filed, such as mining claims or claims to the surface estate, like the Desert Land Entry Act.

Benson said when the actual land withdrawal for construction of a rail line is requested, the strip might only be 20 or 30 feet wide, much less acreage than the study area.

"They (DOE) never even came to us. We're peons," Fellini said. "If we're going to have a mile wide (corridor) let's take a mile wide out of the whole United States."

County Commissioner Joni Eastley said members of the Sharp family, longtime ranchers in Railroad Valley, contacted her regarding their concerns.

County Commission Chairman Henry Neth told Fellini a good opportunity to express his views would be at a meeting of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board Jan. 21, at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas. While the technical review board typically discusses highly technical issues and not policies, the agenda for that day includes discussion on a transportation plan for shipping the waste, Neth said.

Jan Cameron, a member of the Amargosa Valley Town Advisory Board, said representatives of the various boards in Nye County would hold a joint meeting to discuss Yucca Mountain at 10 a.m., Jan. 17 at the Beatty Community Center.

Advisory boards in communities along the U.S. Highway 95 corridor like Beatty and Amargosa Valley haven't addressed the issue yet. The preferred route would travel south of Tonopah around the border of the Nellis range. The secondary preferred route, from Carlin through Big Smoky Valley to U.S. Highway 95, could impact communities like Round Mountain.

Ed Goedhart, manager of the Ponderosa Dairy and a member of the Amargosa Valley board, said the transportation route doesn't matter that much, all the nuclear waste will eventually arrive in Yucca Mountain, which is right up Highway 373.

"Whether it comes in from the north or comes in from the south is secondary to not wanting Yucca Mountain here," Goedhart said.

If the nuclear waste must arrive, Goedhart said he'd prefer it travel by rail, than by road, which would involve traveling nearer Nye County communities and along U.S. Highway 95, which is rated a dangerous highway with a high percentage of head-on accidents.

"It's going to take the product off the highways and it's going to reduce the likelihood of a catastrophic accident," Goedhart said.

The notice of land withdrawal in the Federal Register set forth a 90-day comment period. Comments may be sent to the Bureau of Land Management, 1340 Financial Blvd., Reno. The DOE announced a public hearing would be set at a later date for the land withdrawal.

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Pahrump Valley Times
January 9, 2004

Nye officials discuss YMP on Reno station

By Dennis Myers
Special to The PVT

A visit to Northern Nevada by two Nye County representatives to sell the county's posture on the Yucca Mountain project has drawn measured opposition from Gov. Kenny Guinn and other officials.

Nye County Commissioner Joni Eastley and Economic Development of Esmeralda and Nye economic development authority member Trish Rippie appeared on a Reno television show Dec. 29 to argue that Nevada cannot stop storage of high level nuclear waste at the proposed Yucca Mountain dump. They said Nye County has received large sums of money from the Department of Energy, which administers the repository project, demonstrating the benefit of the county dropping its "aggressive neutrality" toward the Yucca Mountain Project.

But Guinn appeared on the same program to respond that not only is the repository not inevitable but that it will never open, a stance supported by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.)

Eastley and Rippie appeared on "Nevada Newsmakers," a political chat show on Reno's KRNV hosted by Sam Shad and Andrea Engleman. Shad interviewed the two.

Eastley told Shad, "It has benefited Nye County to have the study performed on whether or not nuclear waste should be stored at Yucca Mountain.

"Nye County has been very successful at negotiating with the Department of Energy for some substantial benefits to the county ... we have approximately $30 million in four different endowment funds that we're using to benefit Nye County citizens, and this year, Chairman Henry Neth and I successfully negotiated with the Department of Energy for an additional $56 million worth of financial benefits over the next five year period." She said that after President George Bush endorsed the program, county officials decided to abandon their previous posture toward the waste storage facility, which she characterized as "aggressive neutrality."

Eastley added that she considers storage of waste at Yucca Mountain "inevitable. I think that that is absolutely going to happen."

Shad asked what the money was buying the Energy Department, and Eastley said, "This is in exchange for nothing. These are required payments through the Nuclear Waste Policy Act."

Rippie said that announcement of the proposed construction of rail shipment lines to Yucca Mountain had piqued interest in piggy-backing local uses on the lines. "We see the possibility of an economic benefit. I think most everybody saw the routes in the paper last week that are proposed rail routes for bringing the waste in. The routes should be used for multipurpose where there could be private use of the rails. Tonopah and Goldfield haven't had rail service for many years and that could be a possible means for us to get some kind of economy going, some new industry, with the rails.

"We look at the benefits - and like Joni, I think it's inevitable that it's going to come, and we should be getting as much benefits out of it as possible."

But in an appearance on the same program Tuesday, Guinn said flatly that the nuclear waste dump will never open: "I think that you can already see the Department of Energy has backed off a number of their positions."

Guinn did not criticize the two Nye County spokeswomen, but said the fate of the Yucca project is not in the hands of Bush or the Congress, but of the courts and regulatory agencies, where political influence or lobbying power is less of a factor. He said, "Other agencies are starting to say, 'Hey wait a minute. This hasn't been conclusively proved that it's safe'. And there's a number - certainly a myriad -- of issues that have not been satisfied.

"And I think when you get into court an impartial individual such as the judges, the three panel judge, os going to sit there not under the guise of anyone in Washington, D.C., or the White House or anyplace else and they're going to say, 'We want these areas cleared up'. And if they're cleared up, then that's what we're looking for, is to have clarity for the people of Nevada."

Speaking in Reno last month at an American Legion hall, Senator Reid also said the repository would never open. He said public awareness of the dangers of terrorism since September 11, 2001 has heightened concern and opposition to thousands of shipments of waste crossing the nation. He said on-site storage at the nuclear power plants generating the waste would be the final outcome.

Guinn added that of the five court actions against the repository project which will receive a hearing in Washington next week, only one has to succeed to stop the project.

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Pahrump Valley Times
January 9, 2004

Sewer lines beat out seniors

Senior Center, No to Abuse Lose Out on CDBG Grant Funds

By Mark Waite
PVT

TONOPAH - The expansion of the Beatty sewer plant and the continued rehabilitation of the Tonopah sewer lines will be the top two projects submitted by Nye County this year for funds under the federal Community Development Block Grant program.

Nye County Commissioners Tuesday debated whether to include, as a third and final priority, the Pahrump Senior Center's request for $200,000 to partially fund a new senior center, or $240,000 for No To Abuse to purchase land for an office and a shelter for victims of domestic violence.

Last year, 66 applications were submitted statewide, totaling over $6 million, for $3.6 million in federal CDBG funds allocated to small counties and towns in Nevada. Preliminary figures indicate only $3.1 million may be available for the 27 government entities this year.

County Commissioner Patricia Cox's motion to present the senior center as the third priority eventually passed by a 3-2 vote. Commissioners Candice Trummell and Joni Eastley voted against the motion.

Commission Chairman Henry Neth told No To Abuse Executive Director Linda Nowell the county could possibly provide land for her project, or arrange a land acquisition. Eastley inquired about the legality of donating county land or providing No to Abuse with money from the Payment Equal to Taxes Nye County receives from the Department of Energy.

"Both of these projects are absolutely worth funding," Neth said. But he added, "We're in a position to be much more of a service to No To Abuse with land we already own or are able to obtain."

Nye County Budget Analyst Harriet Ealey said state CDBG Program Manager Gene Etcheverry felt No To Abuse wouldn't be in a good competitive position to obtain more funding, as it hasn't yet spent $75,000 in CDBG planning funds. Nowell said her board would be meeting to consider awarding a contract for architectural services this month.

Commissioners also sought alternative funding for other requests.

• Pahrump Assistant Town Manager Peggy Warner asked for a $20,000 grant to pay for planning and engineering costs for a sewer line to connect the Pahrump Community Center, restrooms at Petrack Park, the town annex, Pahrump Valley Fire-Rescue Service and possibly the old Nye County government complex with the Utilities Inc. system. The facilities currently use an inadequate septic system, the project application states.

Commissioner Trummell suggested Warner return and request PETT funds.

• Tonopah Deputy Town Clerk Debbie Anderson was also unsuccessful at requesting funds to demolish the old Silver Strike Motel. Neth questioned the estimates of $179,000 to demolish the hotel and $200,000 for asbestos abatement. Anderson said the town of Tonopah planned to use a Brownfields grant for the asbestos abatement, a program under which funds can be used to clean up contaminated properties for economic development.

• The Nye County School District was unsuccessful at obtaining $65,500 for a five-year, long-range facilities master plan. The plan would be a guide for capital improvement decisions. Ealey said that would be a general government project ineligible under the guidelines.

Commissioners felt they didn't have a choice with the two sewer projects.

• Jim Weeks, manager of the Beatty Sanitation District, said the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection is requiring his district to make improvements to the Beatty sewage treatment plant. The project application states an engineering report was submitted to NDEP, in an unsuccessful attempt to demonstrate the plant wasn't a threat to groundwater quality.

Eastley said NDEP is threatening to take away their discharge permit. Beatty has about 1,100 residents.

The project meets the requirement as an urgent need; Weeks said a survey is being taken to see if at least 50 percent of the Beatty population qualifies under the low to moderate income requirement. Ealey said 33.7 percent of Beatty residents met that level, however Weeks said those figures were taken when many people were still employed at the Bullfrog mine.

• Stan Howerton, representing Tonopah, said the State Bureau of Water Pollution Control required the Tonopah sewer utility to improve its sewer collection system. Howerton told Commissioner Neth the sewer lines were 100 years old.

Tonopah's application states though the local population was only 2,721 in the 2000 census, it could increase with the opening of the Yucca Mountain repository, mine exploration in Midway or expansion of the Tonopah Test Range.

Howerton warned commissioners he will probably return to ask for $100,000 in PETT money. The total sewer line upgrade has been estimated to cost $2.17 million. Howerton said the U.S. Department of Agriculture is providing funds for much of the rest of the project.

The main argument was over No To Abuse vs. the senior center.

• No To Abuse operates a family violence prevention program, the Family to Family program for families with infants and the Pahrump Family Resource Center that caters to low income families. Between the three programs, No To Abuse states it has had 4,500 contacts per year in Nye County, or over 11

The organization needs at least three acres of commercially-zoned property, she said. The total project could cost $2.3 million.

Cox had concerns the Leisure Homes bankruptcy case, the successor to Preferred Equities Corporation, could mean No To Abuse being thrown out on the streets since the agency currently operates out of

• Claudette Crooks, a member of the Pahrump Senior Center board, said it just finished compiling architectural drawings for a new senior center on donated land behind the Pahrump Nugget Casino with last year's $175,000 CDBG money.

Rural Nevada Development Corporation calculated one-third of Pahrump's estimated population of 32,000 is senior citizens. The senior center has 357 paid members, Crooks said, adding senior center workers delivered 11,292 meals in the fourth quarter of 2002, both at the senior center and to homebound seniors.

"My dream is to break ground in July," Crooks said.

However, Nye County Budget Director Charlie Rodewald noted the county already provides $130,000 this year for Pahrump Senior Center operations.

While Cox noted the senior center project is ready to go to bid, Trummell mentioned the infighting by the senior center board.

"I personally prioritized No To Abuse, the constituency they are serving is without a doubt low to moderate income," Trummell said.

"I also have personal concerns about the way things have been developing at the senior center, about the disenfranchisement of the senior citizens, not having a vote," Trummell said. She was referring to a change in the bylaws whereby senior citizens don't elect members to the senior center board.

Crooks responded board members were never elected when Nye County ran the senior center, while many of those who were elected under the previous bylaws later resigned.

"All we are hearing is how they are serving the senior citizens and I've been hearing the opposite," Trummell said of the senior center board.

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Las Vegas SUN
January 09, 2004

Letter: Hanford waste is more urgent problem for DOE

Let's switch perspective for just a minute.

Everybody's focused on spent-fuel rods going to Yucca Mountain, but let's consider instead vitrified tank wastes from Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Such wastes are not as dangerous as spent fuel, and many of the 293 scientific questions given to the Energy Department would not apply if the mountain were to house vitrified wastes. Perhaps that is why the agency has been in no hurry to answer the questions.

Sixty-four tanks at Hanford are leaking profusely. Liquid levels in several tanks are below the gauges. More than a million gallons have leaked into the soil in Richland, Wash. More than 280,000 signatures were collected to put a stop to any more waste coming to Richland. Those people are fed up, and the Energy Department has to do something.

It's quite possible spent-fuel rods will have to take a back seat.

Ron Bourgoin Rocky Mount, N.C. Editor's note: Ron Bourgoin was a consultant to the town of Rolesville in Wake County, N.C., in 1984 when a site in that area was being considered by the Energy Department as the location for a high-level nuclear waste repository.

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Las Vegas SUN
January 09, 2004

Letter: Nuclear power should be banned

America's proposed energy policy defies common sense but can be explained by campaign contributions from the nuclear power producers. A $5 billion subsidy for the nuclear power producers is not based on sound science or sound economics. When the costs of storing and protecting the toxic nuclear waste is added to production costs and subsidies, nuclear power is the most expensive and dangerous method of producing electricity.

Fifty years ago the U.S. government saddled the American taxpayers with the costs for storing nuclear waste. Then the Price Anderson legislation limited the costs to the nuclear power producers in the event of catastrophe. If it's so safe, why the protection for the nuclear industry?

The Bush administration and Congress should declare a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain to be scientifically unsound. And the $5 billion subsidy for the nuclear power industry should be eliminated because there are viable alternatives.

Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy are slowly abandoning nuclear power for sources such as wind, solar, natural gas and geothermal. In this country, Nevada should be the test bed for wind, solar and geothermal. Regarding natural gas, production could be substantially increased, and the cost reduced, by allowing the proposed Alaska pipeline to take the least expensive and shorter route to connect into existing pipelines. These measures would lead to a cleaner environment and a more secure America.

Frank Perna

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Las Vegas SUN
January 08, 2004

Letter: Deny feds access to Yucca site

I was amazed at all the concern about nuclear waste in Sunday's paper. Now that the Energy Department has spent $4 billion of our tax money putting that hole in Yucca Mountain, do we really believe that it's not a political "done deal?"

If the storage casks are going to last for l0,000 years, they could just as well sit where they are instead of putting the whole country at risk by shipping them to Nevada. Things have changed at the DOE -- I have noticed that the little store fronts no longer say "Yucca Mountain Science Centers." Rather, they now say "Yucca Mountain Information Centers."

Since the the atomic tests in the 1950s, I have felt that the people of Nevada have been exposed to enough radiation. If the governor had some intestinal fortitude, he could deny the federal government access to Yucca Mountain. It is illegal for the feds to tell us that we must accept the waste from all the other states plus what is going to come back from the foreign countries that we have helped with their nuclear power.

Wake up people, we have been sold out again.

Richard A. Brown

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 09, 2004

Nuclear Shipment: N.M. protesters object

Waste goes from Nevada Test Site to WIPP

By Melanie Dabovich
The Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Protesters shouted and waved signs from an interstate overpass Thursday as a shipment of plutonium-tainted waste from the Nevada Test Site rolled through New Mexico's largest city.

The medium-level radioactive waste, in three huge containers aboard a tractor-trailer, headed east on Interstate 40 after being sent on its 1,130-mile journey Wednesday from the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Its ultimate destination was the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad in southern New Mexico.

While WIPP routinely receives radioactive shipments, Thursday's was the first from the Nevada site to travel through urban Albuquerque, home to roughly half a million people.

In all, there will be more than 110 such truckloads from the test site, each carrying up to 42 drums of transuranic waste. The drums contain equipment and materials tainted with plutonium from the nation's nuclear weapons research endeavors. The first 55 or 60 shipments will travel a southern route to the plant while the remainder will follow a route that remains to be negotiated by the affected states and the Department of Energy.

In Albuquerque, demonstrators yelled, "Stop, stop!" as the truck passed under the I-40 bridge about 11:05 a.m., honking at the protesters as it went by under escort by two state police patrol cars. Trucks in nearby lanes then also started honking.

The protesters, from the Center for Peace and Justice, Stop the War Machine and Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, held up signs reading, "Code Orange: WIPP" and "No WIPP trucks through Albuquerque."

They had a brief run-in with an Albuquerque police officer over the signs after they duct-taped some to the bridge. City ordinance prohibits anything from being fixed to an interstate bridge, and the protesters removed the signs to hold them instead.

Stop the War Machine's Bob Anderson had sent an e-mail to the organization's members urging them to gather on the bridge to protest "this appalling disregard for Albuquerque."

In Las Vegas, Peggy MazeJohnson, executive director of the statewide environmental group Citizen Alert, said she sympathizes with the New Mexico protesters.

"I don't blame those folks. We don't want it, so why do we put people at risk by putting it on the road again? It makes no sense to me," she said.

Maze Johnson said the outrage of anti-nuclear activists in other states no doubt will be carried over when the Department of Energy begins hauling high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel assemblies to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The waste and used fuel destined for the planned Yucca Mountain repository, about 77,000 tons in total, are currently stored in 39 states. Energy Department officials expect to begin those truck and rail shipments in 2010.

Most waste shipments to WIPP enter New Mexico from the north on Interstate 25 at Raton, then travel a sparsely populated route on U.S. 285 to Carlsbad.

Some protesters gathered Wednesday night outside the Albuquerque office of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. One woman was arrested after allegedly refusing to leave without first speaking with the senator.

The waste traveled through California and Arizona before arriving at 6:46 a.m. Thursday at New Mexico's western point of entry near Gallup.

At the Gallup point of entry, inspectors carrying radiation detectors walked around the rig and its cargo, scanning for leaks. They also conducted a mechanical inspection.

Inspectors found no leaks but did report a couple of loose fender bolts above the trailer's rear axle, said Gary Trujillo, chief inspector at the port for the state Department of Public Safety.

They also found antifreeze leaking from a hose in the tractor, which the rig's driver fixed by tightening a clamp, he said.

"It was just an oversight on our part and it's a minor thing we have to watch," said Cordie Mossier who was driving the rig along with her husband.

Mossier, of Carlsbad, played down the significance of the trip.

"It's our job and we try to do it the best we can, no matter if it happens to be the 100th trip or the 5,000th trip. It would be all the same to us," Mossier said before driving the rig away at 8:30 a.m.

Review-Journal writer Keith Rogers contributed to this report.

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KATU
January 8, 2004

Washington State sues Department of Energy for back taxes

OLYMPIA - The state has gone to court to force the US Department of Energy to pay a 6.8 million dollar tax bill stemming from work at the Hanford nuclear reservation.

The action was filed in federal appeals court in Washington, DC. It argues that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires the department to pay the equivalent of the state's business-and-occupation tax on surveying and other activities that occurred when Hanford was being considered as a possible site for storing highly radioactive wastes.

Hanford was a finalist for the repository site before Yucca Mountain in Nevada was selected.

The state filed its tax claim in 1993. The department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management has disputed the bill, although its Office of Hearings and Appeals issued a final order in the state's favor in July.

State Attorney General Christine Gregoire says the state hasn't seen any of the money despite repeated requests.

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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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