Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
September 07, 2004
Yucca court ruling set to take effect
By Cy Ryan and Benjamin Grove
<cy@lasvegassun.com>
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY -- The milestone federal court decision rendered in July and considered a setback for Yucca Mountain formally takes effect on Wednesday.
A Nevada challenge to the nuclear waste project's radiation standards was set to become effective seven days after the court disposed of all appeals. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out the one appeal -- brought by the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobbying group -- Wednesday in a one-sentence ruling.
At issue was a rule set by the Environmental Protection Agency that would require the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca to contain radiation to a 15-millirem level per year for 10,000 years.
As the Energy Department has researched Yucca and developed a dump proposal, the department has promised to meet that standard.
But the federal court ruled on July 9 that the EPA did not follow the law when it established a 10,000-year standard, largely because it did not accept the National Academy of Sciences recommendation of a far higher standard, perhaps 300,000 years.
Senior Nevada Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said the court's refusal to hear the nuclear industry's appeal was another victory for the state.
The nuclear industry has until Nov. 29 to file a petition for a U.S. Supreme Court appeal.
Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Mitch Singer today declined to say if NEI was planning a Supreme Court appeal.
NEI had argued in its appeal that the EPA started with the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences as it developed Yucca safety standards. But then it included other factors and devised the 10,000-year limit.
NEI, which intervened in the state's suit against the government, said 10,000 years is in line with other waste management practices on both radioactive and nonradioactive materials and it is strict enough to protect the public.
In its July ruling, the federal court ruled that the EPA now would have to create a new standard for public safety or that Congress would have to change the law requiring a lower standard.
The ruling last week was the second recent setback for the project. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled earlier in the week that the Energy Department did not have all of its project documents in order and that many documents were missing.
The DOE is scrambling to submit new documents so that the commission can officially certify them. The commission cannot begin considering the DOE's application for a license to construct Yucca until six months after the documents have been certified.
The DOE still plans to submit that application by year's end. The department plans to begin construction in 2007.
The NRC must approve both the design of the first-of-its-kind repository and deem it safe before construction begins.
The Energy Department's documentation has to be available online on a special licensing network for six months before its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can be considered.
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Lahontan Valley News
September 07, 2004
Gibbons warns politics could affect future of Nev. bases
David C. Henley
Partisan politics will play a major role in determining the fate of NAS Fallon and the state's other military installations during the upcoming round of U.S. base closures, Nevada Congressman Jim Gibbons warned Monday.
Although NAS Fallon and Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, the state's two largest military bases, are considered the "Ph.D schools of Navy and Air Force aviation," national political maneuvering on the part of senators and congressman from other states with large military bases could conceivably put Nevada's bases at risk, he said.
Visiting Fallon to participate in the annual Fallon Labor Day parade and Kiwanis Club Breakfast, Gibbons said that Nevada lacks the clout of most other states because of the small size of its congressional delegation.
Although Nevada has two U.S. senators like the other states, it has only three members of the House of Representatives.
"Look at California. It has 54 members of the House of Representatives. They have banded together to protect their bases. We in Nevada must double our efforts to protect NAS Fallon, Nellis, Hawthorne Army Depot, and the Air National Guard base at Reno-Tahoe International Airport or we could be in trouble," Gibbons said.
"The politics involved in the BRAC (Base Closing and Realignment Commission) scares me. We must be prepared in Nevada to see to it that all Nevadans and the rest of the country realize the importance of NAS Fallon, Nellis and the other bases.
"What particularly worries me is the fact that Congress members from other states who are trying to get the nuclear depository located at Yucca Mountain in Nevada may have a vendetta against Nevada because we are fighting against the depository in our state," Gibbons said in an interview with the Lahontan Valley News Fallon Eagle Standard.
Environmentalists and others desiring to close or downsize Nevada bases also could create havoc in this state, he said.
"Look at what happened to the Vieques Navy training facility in Puerto Rico. The base was closed two years ago because of environmental pressure. It was a political nightmare," he continued.
In an effort to protect Nevada's bases, Gibbons earlier this year organized a statewide committee charged with organizing a campaign to showcase the importance of Nevada's bases for the national defense effort.
Because there were no efforts in this behalf coming from the governor's office or the Legislature, Gibbons created the committee, which is composed of leading citizens from all parts of Nevada, including Fallon and Churchill County.
The committee has had several meetings so far, and will be holding its next meeting in Fallon on Sept. 20.
Gibbons said he will be meeting with the group here at that time to assist it in further developing a statewide and national public relations campaign to publicize the importance of Nevada's bases.
"It is imperative that all Nevadans work together in this endeavor. Other states and many individual communities with military bases have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and have hired retired admirals, generals and high-ranking former government officials to lead these efforts.
"We cannot be left behind," he said.
Turning to his political future, Gibbons, who is currently running for his fifth term in office, said he will not reveal his future plans until the beginning of 2005.
Acknowledging that he has been asked by many Nevadans to run for governor in 2006 when current Gov. Kenny Guinn's term ends, Gibbons said he will be putting together a steering committee to help him with his decision.
Because Nevada's term limit law prohibits the governor from serving more than two terms, the 2006 race for governor will be "wide open," Gibbons said, and thus he will carefully consider the pros and cons of running for governor.
In Monday's Fallon parade, Gibbons drove his 1915 Model T Ford "Runabout" through the streets of Fallon. Last year, he rode in his other ancient car, a 1914 Model T "Speedster.
Gibbons, accompanied by his wife, Dawn, said the 1915 car cost about $450 when it was first sold.
"The car I'm driving today belonged to my grandfather. I found it in an old barn in pretty good shape. I did much of the restoration work myself," he said.
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Pioneer Press
September 07, 2004
Set limit on nuclear waste storage plans
Taken to its illogical conclusion, Minnesota could become one tightly packed nuclear waste storage farm. For the third time, Xcel Energy is going to seek more above-ground dry cask storage so it can operate its three Minnesota nuclear power plants further into the future.
The question prompted by Xcel's announcement last week is: How much nuclear waste is Minnesota willing to tolerate for an indefinite period? We think there is a limit. And we think that limit should be debated in the Legislature instead of the non-elected Public Utilities Commission, where chicken-hearted lawmakers shunted the nuclear waste issue last year.
Xcel sees this as an economic issue to provide electricity to its customers at a low purchase price by using plants built in the 1970s to generate part of the increasing electricity demand in Minnesota. Opponents of nuclear storage expansion see it as enabling the aging plants to operate longer than they were designed and licensed for, while the toxic waste piles up with nowhere to go.
The debate headed for the Public Utilities Commission will be the same as in 1994 and in 2003, when Xcel sought and received permission to store power plant waste in the state because the long-promised federal repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., had not materialized. And we'd bet it never will. So why generate more spent nuclear power plant fuel?
The commercial energy utility says its nuclear plants at Monticello and Prairie Island provide safe, clean and economical power and that retaining the nuclear plants over the next 30 years will cost about $1 billion less than replacing them.
What then? Another extension? An embrace of developing technology that has matured by then?
During last year's go-around with the request for more nuclear storage, we said that foresighted energy management and options are key to building a secure, growing state that preserves its unique environmental assets. We still think so. But not that nuclear is a necessary part of such management for at least three more decades.
The political environment is an imperfect place to hash out such complex economic and moral questions. But it is the only truly accountable place. We also hate to see this round disappear into the PUC where opponents are apt to have less traction for their positions precisely because regulatory bodies have insulation that lawmakers do not.
Anyone who remembers the initial struggle in 1994 over dry cask nuclear waste storage and the relatively less explosive one when Xcel successfully came back for more last year can see a pattern. The most positive aspects are that political compromise has energized Xcel's commitment to adding alternatives and conversions of some of its most worrisome coal-fire capacity to cleaner natural gas. The most negative aspect is the endless tap-dance around the toxic elephant in the ballroom.
Xcel's request will provide another opportunity to set a limit and maybe even stick with it this time. We'd like to see the PUC prove us wrong in doubting its commitment to dealing with the elephant, not just the dance.
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Scripps Howard
September 06, 2004
Neither Bush nor Kerry dealing Nevada out
By Les Blumenthal
McClatchy Newspapers
LAS VEGAS - Less than a month before he flew a hijacked plane into the World Trade Center, Mohammed Atta checked into a $35-a-night motel amid the wedding chapels, adult bookstores and pawnshops of the Las Vegas Strip's north end.
It was not the first time Atta had been in Las Vegas. In the months leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he and four other terrorists involved in the plot met here on occasion. Little is known publicly about their movements. Yet, their shadowy presence still haunts this desert city.
And with new information surfacing about al Qaeda surveillance of Las Vegas, homeland security and the possibility of an attack on the Strip remain touchy subjects for Nevada voters as the race for president begins in earnest.
No city outside of New York and Washington was more shaken by the terrorist attacks than Las Vegas. Fifteen thousand of the 90,000 workers on the Strip lost their jobs as tourism plummeted. Occupancy rates at casino hotels, which normally top 90 percent, plunged, in some cases, to less than 10 percent.
"It was dead, it was a ghost town," said Tim Donovan, who heads security at the Monte Carlo casino and is president of the Las Vegas Security Chiefs Association.
At first glance, Nevada might by the unlikeliest of presidential battleground states.
With only five electoral votes, the state has rarely been on the radar screen when it comes to presidential politics. But President Bush won the state by fewer than 22,000 votes four years ago. Both sides are taking Nevada seriously and looking for traction among voters who are well aware of the implications of another terrorist attack.
Unlike many of the other battleground states, Nevada's economy is booming.
For 17 straight years, Nevada has been the fastest-growing state in the nation. The Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas, is opening 12 to 15 new schools every year. Stucco and red-tile-roofed homes are spreading into the desert amid arid foothills.
"It's the jobs, not the weather," said D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of Culinary Local 226, the second-fastest-growing union local in the country. Among its 48,000 members are the maids, bartenders, bellmen, cocktail waitresses and cashiers at the Strip's casinos. Even before tips, they receive middle-class wages and pay no health premium.
The Bush campaign will claim credit for the economic boom, pointing to the 95,000 jobs created in the state since 2002 and an unemployment rate well below the national average.
Democratic challenger John Kerry will focus on a more parochial issue - his opposition to the Bush administration plan to have Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas, be the storage site of the nation's nuclear waste.
The wildcard is the almost quarter of a million people who have moved to Nevada since the 2000 election.
When it comes to terrorism, most are tightlipped about whether Las Vegas is actually in the crosshairs of al Qaeda.
"Who knows what they have up their sleeves?" said George Togliatti, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's homeland security adviser. "We have so little information. We pray a lot."
There are warning signs.
Several recently discovered videotapes show terrorists casing Las Vegas casinos. In May, Las Vegas taxicab drivers were provided with photos of seven suspected terrorists.
On New Year's Eve, federal officials banned air traffic over Las Vegas as 300,000 people guarded by 7,500 police and casino security personnel partied on the Strip. It's the nation's second-largest New Year celebration, topped only by the Times Square fete in New York City.
F-16s and Black Hawk helicopters patrolled overhead and scientists tested for radiation and radiological "dirty" bombs. Casino operators turned over the names and other information on an estimated 270,000 guests to the FBI. Las Vegas was the only city where the FBI required hotel operators to provide guest lists.
"You can assume what you want," William Conger said in an interview about whether Las Vegas remains a terrorist target. Conger is deputy chief of the Special Operations Department of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Bush once had an overwhelming lead in the polls over Kerry when it came to questions about homeland security and the war on terrorism. But the margins have slipped and, depending on the poll, Kerry has gained credibility as a potential commander in chief.
"It's still an issue that plays well for Bush, but Kerry has overcome some of his initial weakness," said Michael Dimock, associate director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
Though once opposed to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Bush finally agreed to consolidate 22 agencies in one of the largest governmental reorganizations in decades.
In the beginning, the department hit some rough spots as officials suggested people should buy duct tape and plastic wrap so they could seal themselves in their homes in the event of a biological or chemical attack.
Of late, there has been unease over the motivation behind the decisions to elevate national terrorist threat levels.
"We don't play politics in the Department of Homeland Security," said Tom Ridge, who heads the department.
Even so, 40 percent of those questioned in a recent Time magazine poll said they believed the Bush administration was "not above" using terrorism alerts for political purposes.
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KVBC
September 06, 2004
Anti-Yucca Mountain Group in Nevada
An anti-Yucca Mountain group is hitting the road in Nevada in an effort to boost opposition to a planned national nuclear waste repository. Citizen Alert will haul its 20-foot mock nuclear waste cask to Rachel in rural Lincoln County on Monday in what will be the first of 25 stops in the state to increase membership, enlist volunteers and secure donations.
The tour is called "Back to Our Routes," and is patterned after the 1975 journey of Susan Orr and Katherine Hale who went town-to-town to warn Nevadans about the dangers of nuclear waste. This year's final destination will be Las Vegas on October 22nd.
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Las Vegas SUN
September 03, 2004
Cheney reaffirms Bush stance on Yucca Mountain
By Kirsten Searer
<searer@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
Vice President Dick Cheney repeated the same message Friday about putting the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada that President Bush made when he visited the area in August.
Cheney, speaking to an estimated 2,000 supporters at Cashman Center, said that Bush has relied on sound science when making decisions about the project and will honor any court decisions that affect the project.
"We will keep the people of Nevada safe," Cheney said. The crowd answered with a cheer, just as they did through most of his speech.
Many Republicans said they were motivated after this week's Republican National Convention.
"You can feel it here today," Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt.
Cheney was interrupted by one protester, whom Secret Service agents dragged out of the auditorium by his hands and feet.
"Looks we better put him down as undecided," Cheney said afterward.
Outside about 80 protesters held up signs and chanted slogans against the administration's position on the Yucca Mountain project.
Cheney, however, was often interrupted with chants of "four more years" and "flip-flop," meant to describe Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
"This is a great crowd," said Cheney, on his fifth visit to Las Vegas this year. "I'm having a lot of trouble concentrating on my speech."
The vice president focused largely on the war on terrorism, saying the administration has shut down funding for terrorists and captured or killed "most of the masterminds" behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
"To put it simply, this is an enemy that we must destroy," he said.
Cheney criticized Kerry's plan to reach out to more allies when making decisions about terrorism and fighting a more sensitive war.
"Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness," he said.
Las Vegas resident Glen Moore called the vice president's speech and this week's convention, "outstanding."
"They talked about everything that was important," he said.
Moore said that Bush had dealt with tough decisions about the Yucca Mountain project years before he entered office.
"I think he probably weighed everything and made the best decision he thought was right," Moore said, a 50-year-old part-time resident of Las Vegas.
Jerry Shaner, a 47-year-old retiree who once worked at the Nevada Test Site, said he thinks people don't understand the Yucca Mountain project.
"They worry about what's going to happen 10,000 years from now," he said. "In my mind, we should worry about what's going on now."
Cheney was expected to stay overnight in Las Vegas before heading to Roswell, N.M., for his next campaign stop.
Kirsten Searer can be reached at (702) 259-4062 or searer@lasvegassun.com.
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Las Vegas SUN
September 03, 2004
Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: Sandoval blew chance
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
Weekend Edition
September 4 - 7, 2004
Celebrating Labor Day.
Tomorrow the entire country takes pause, between the barbecues and the swimming parties, to honor the working men and women of the United States. We do so with the full knowledge that those who contribute most to this country's well-being -- whether in the trenches of Iraq or some far away war zone to keep us safe, or the trenches of American business to keep us prosperous -- are regular folks who get up every morning and give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.
So, how do we explain to the working men and women of our state the abject failure to do the job by Nevada's attorney general, Brian Sandoval. I am talking about the job he has sworn to do, that of protecting the people of this great state, and the way he failed to show up for work when he had his moments at the Republican National Convention this past week. Brian had the distinct honor and privilege of being invited to address the delegates and, by extension, the American people at the GOP get-together in New York. It was an opportunity that is rarely afforded the attorney general of a small state unless that state is one of a handful in play for the presidential sweepstakes this November.
As we all know, Nevada will probably be one of the last two or three battlegrounds in the 2004 election, and that makes Sandoval and every other public official in this state important to both sides. So, what should have been on the Nevada attorney general's mind as he approached the podium of national prominence? Let me try the first answer. How about YUCCA MOUNTAIN?
Brian Sandoval is the chief legal officer of the state of Nevada. As such, it is his responsibility to prosecute our case against the federal government and all those who would send trucks and trains full of deadly radioactive waste to our state for the next 30 years. Until this past week, he was doing reasonably well because he and his lawyers convinced the appeals court in Washington, D.C., to agree with the state that the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency failed to follow the law when it came to the science surrounding Yucca Mountain. Specifically, the Court of Appeals found that the DOE and the EPA -- both agencies of the federal government and both led by political appointees of President George W. Bush -- ignored the law by ignoring the National Academy of Science when it said that any repository must be made safe for hundr eds of thousands of years.
Instead, the EPA came up with an arbitrary 10,000-year standard that proved politically sound but violated any semblance of sound scientific thought. In short, Nevada's claim that politics and not science was driving Yucca Mountain was validated. Of course, the Yucca fight is not over. Not by a long shot. President Bush has doubled and redoubled his own efforts to make sure that Yucca Mountain opens on time so his friends in the nuclear power industry have a place to bury their mess.
Since he will control those he appoints to the EPA and the DOE, his re-election is key to whether or not Nevada families have to suffer multiple generations of health and economic problems in the future. President Bush already broke his promise to Nevadans in 2000 that he would make a decision based on sound science. The court of appeals has found clearly that science had nothing to do with the Yucca Mountain issue. In fact, science was ignored by the very people President Bush relied upon for scientific information. How comfortable for him!
Sandoval had the perfect opportunity to tell the entire country what is wrong with the Yucca Mountain plan and why it is dangerous for all Americans. He had the perfect opportunity to tell Americans why science was ignored by the president and why American families would be put in jeopardy across the country as a result. He had the perfect opportunity to tell the delegates and all Americans why the Republican Party's all-out support for Yucca Mountain was a bad idea based on bad science. But he didn't. He never showed up for the work he was elected to do. And Sandoval is not alone. From the governor on down, not one GOP elected official in this state will express anything more than "disappointment" with a president of his own party who has made it part of his crusade to bury Nevadans under tens of thousands of tons of deadly radioactive waste.
These are the people the voters in Nevada have entrusted with their health and safety and security, and they continue to be found wanting on the one issue that threatens us in all three areas. If I didn't know any better, I would think that the people we elected to high office, the people who swore an oath to protect and defend us, have been more concerned with protecting and defending the political life of George W. Bush at the expense of Nevadans. And, now that I think of it, why should I know any better? Sandoval was there, the spotlight was on and the microphones were live. It was the perfect time for him to share Nevada's message with the entire country. What happened? Why did he go silent? Is winning an election more important than protecting the lives and livelihoods of Nevada families?
The answer to that question is for each of us to decide this coming November. The way it looks, the election will be so close that Nevada, by itself, could make the difference. If that is true, each of us will have to decide whether to leave the fate of our families, our jobs and our security in the hands of people we elected to protect us and who have failed to show up for work, or to take responsibility for ourselves and vote for the people who will end the madness of Yucca Mountain. There is a clear choice on Yucca Mountain. Labor Day should give us plenty of time to figure it out.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 05, 2004
State Senate races burn with heat from divisive Legislature
By Erin Neff
Review-Journal
Last year's contentious legislative session is fanning political fires in individual state Senate races this primary season.
Republican incumbents are being challenged for their support of various tax plans and Democrats are dancing around the edge of the issue amid personal attacks in one of the most negative legislative seasons in recent years.
Four Southern Nevada races have generated the most attention this session.
State Senate District 1
State Sen. Ray Shaffer never had much trouble winning re-election to the heavily Democratic district in North Las Vegas. But that was when he was a Democrat.
Now that he's switched parties and missed the key tax vote in the 2003 Legislature while vacationing in Hawaii, plenty of Democrats think they can beat him, including his wife.
Sharon Shaffer says that accompanying her husband to the Legislature each session has given her the insight needed to serve. She says she wouldn't really run against him if she makes it out of the primary, but given the district's 7,600-plus registration edge for Democrats, she could beat him there anyway.
So voters could see Shaffer vs. Shaffer in the general election. But first Democrats will see Shaffer vs. Schaefer, as in perennial candidate Mike Schaefer.
Schaefer, 66, is petitioning the Nevada Supreme Court for reinstatement as an attorney after being disbarred in 2001 for multiple violations of court rules. He works as a property manager and served on the San Diego City Council more than 30 years ago. Schaefer has run before against people who share his surname.
Former Assemblyman John Lee, 47, is trying to return to the Legislature after an unsuccessful bid for state controller in 2002 against Republican Kathy Augustine, who is now being investigated for using her office staff to help her in that very campaign.
Lee, a business owner, said he has raised about $100,000 for the race and has been campaigning door to door talking to voters about education, crime and growth concerns. He has deluged voters with mailers and expected to send 10 before the primary.
Sharon Shaffer, 68, is targeting senior voters in her campaign pieces, proposing a No Senior Left Behind act to stop elder abuse.
"I think her desire was that he (Ray Shaffer) continue to serve as the (state) senator for the (state) Senate district and one way to help is to get into the primary and try to diffuse my campaign," Lee said of Sharon Shaffer.
Shaffer said she would beat her husband in the general election.
"Of course he would like to win," she said. "But if I win, he knows I'll do the job."
Chris Colasuono, a 28-year-old salesman unhappy with the incumbent Shaffer's party switch, has been running a largely grass-roots campaign. Gary Rogers, a 59-year-old building inspector who favors negotiating for benefits for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, is also in the race.
State Senate District 4
The district that had one strong voice speaking for it is now a cacophony of political noise, which comes in the form of mailers, phone calls and door-to-door campaigning as five Democrats vie to succeed Joe Neal.
For the first time in 32 years, the district is seeing a full-out assault. A variety of labor unions are coming to the aid of Steven Horsford while gaming company Station Casinos is helping Cedric Crear.
Horsford, 31, chief executive officer of Nevada Partners, has mounted an aggressive mail campaign, using his position as Democratic National Committeeman to reach voters and his job ties with the Culinary union to attack Crear.
Crear, 35, and a telecommunications consultant, after months of running a race based largely on his biography and plans on state issues, was forced to respond to a Culinary mailer that said he has cost thousands of people their jobs while he was an executive at companies that downsized.
Theresa Malone, 52, is an elected member of the state Board of Education, and has been attacked in mailers sent by a nurses union backing Horsford.
"It is not my style to criticize my opponents," Malone said. "In fact, I shake their hands when I see them at the same event I'm at."
Linda Howard, 49, an elected member of the Board of Regents, has Neal's endorsement and is focusing largely on the black and Hispanic areas of the district. She is seeking to be the first black woman elected to the Legislature from Southern Nevada.
"As a regent, I found out about a lot of problems that I can't do anything about," Howard said. "As a (state) senator I can address a wider range of issues."
Bert Mack, 57, is an attorney and Army veteran with decades of community and Democratic Party experience.
"I am the only candidate in this race with military service," Mack said. "I have experienced working for a paycheck and I have experience running my own businesses and can associate with someone who's being taxed."
State Senate District 5
Some mail in this Republican primary suggests state Sen. Ann O'Connell is a liberal tax-and-spender and that Joe Heck is a fiscal conservative.
Some radio ads paint Heck as a pawn of the special interests and O'Connell as a taxpayers' hero.
No matter how you spin it, this primary with implications for state Senate leadership, has become one of the nastiest.
O'Connell did cast votes and took positions supporting some very large tax increases during the 2003 Legislature, but abstained on the final vote for the $833 million plan. At the time, her husband served on a bank board and she felt there could be an ethical conflict voting on a package that included a tax on financial institutions.
"I would have voted to press that red light quick as I could have," O'Connell said when asked how she would have voted if she had not abstained. "There would have been no way to support any bill that didn't require government to live within its means."
Heck, 42, and a doctor who works on homeland security issues for the Metropolitan Police Department, said O'Connell was inconsistent.
"For whatever reason, she co-sponsored a bill for a huge tax increase and she voted for things in committee and said she had no intention of voting for them on the (state Senate) floor," Heck said. "If you're going to tell me you're anti-tax, then you better be anti-tax for the whole process."
Heck said the recent finding that there's $141 million in surplus revenues should be used to fill the state's rainy-day fund to its previous $50 million balance and that the rest should be given back to taxpayers. He also supports capping property tax assessments to the cost of living.
O'Connell, 70, a retired businesswoman who has served in the state Senate for 20 years, said her support of the bill sponsored by state Sens. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, and Mark Amodei, R-Carson City, was done as a protest of the governor's proposed $1 billion tax plan.
The Care-Amodei bill sought $1.6 billion, but included tax reform and tax cut measures.
"This was an alternative to what the governor was talking about," O'Connell said. "It was never really meant to be a tax bill per se."
A political action committee, Citizens for Fair Taxation, has been slamming O'Connell's tax positions in a series of mailers. The PAC was organized by GOP consultant Mike Slanker and is run by Mark Jolley, former GOP state Senate caucus director.
The PAC is backed heavily by gaming companies, but Heck said it is operating independently of his campaign, which is funded by a variety of sources, including individuals, physicians, contractors and gaming companies.
O'Connell is viewed as someone who could challenge state Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, for his post and bring leadership to Southern Nevada. She aligns with fiscal conservatives, Barbara Cegavske of Las Vegas and Sandra Tiffany of Henderson, both of whom are pushing for a change in leadership.
State Senate District 6
The tax debate in this district's GOP primary has its own share of nastiness.
State Sen. Ray Rawson, 63, is being attacked by Assemblyman Bob Beers for supporting the $833 million tax plan. Beers led the effort to block taxes.
Beers, 44, is accused of ignoring the state's funding needs by refusing to work on a solution and forcing the Legislature into two special sessions.
Beers has hit Rawson as a tax-and-spend liberal while Rawson counters that Beers is an anarchist. The tit-for-tat has been going strong for weeks.
The Committee for Truth in Politics, organized by Republican Doug Roundy, has accused Beers of being against seniors and schoolchildren, and, in different mailers, of being a Libertarian and a liberal.
The Culinary union also has weighed in on Beers, reprinting an e-mail Beers wrote to a woman he thought was a constituent during the last legislative session. In the e-mail he condemned the children of service workers as being "prone to dropping out of school, reproducing illegitimate children, often while little more than children themselves, abusing drugs and alcohol more frequently, and even killing themselves more often than people who do value education."
Beers now disputes that the comments were about service workers but still stands by what he wrote, admitting "it was harshly worded."
Rawson also has been sending out a mailer saying Beers had given the ACLU $3,000 in donations. "The ACLU has been the enemy of Republican values for decades ... and Bob Beers has been funding this hated organization," it reads.
Beers said in a debate Wednesday he paid the group to cover a portion of legal fees from a case several years ago. ACLU attorneys helped defend Beers after he was fined for putting out a campaign flier the state ethics board ruled "true but negative," he said.
Beers has said he would repeal the $833 million tax increase, saying he could not support a 33 percent increase in state spending.
Rawson disputes the 33 percent number Beers uses. He said Beers actually voted to create programs in the 2001 Legislature that resulted in a 22 percent increase in costs that the 2003 Legislature had to consider amid the state's revenue shortfall.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
September 04, 2004
Letters to the Editor
Environment claims add insult to injury
On the Yucca Mountain dump, President Bush promised he´d decide based on the science. What he didn´t say was that he would just say “no’ to the scientists! He´s been pushing for this dangerous project ever since he took office.
We have a clear choice here. Candidate Kerry says “not on my watch,’ and his voting record shows that´s been his position all along, whenever he´s had a choice.
I can´t think of one environmental issue where the Bush administration hasn´t done serious long-term damage. We´ll be breathing (and drinking, and looking at) the consequences for a long time. That he claims the opposite just adds insult to injury.
Catherine P. Smith
Reno
When you go to the voting booth Nov. 2, ask yourself, “Do I really want one billion, 540 thousand pounds of highly radioactive waste to reside in the state of Nevada?’ The site of the repository of this deadly waste is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The state of Nevada rates third highest in the nation for earthquakes and volcanic potential. Las Vegas has very high air traffic, and the combination of jet fuel coming from the skies combined with salt from the Earth creates a very aggressive oxidation/corrosion — a very deadly combination.
With more unresolved issues (60 percent) than solved ones at the Yucca Mountain Repository, I don´t believe the Federal Department of Energy (DOE) should be considering obtaining a license/permission to go forward with this extremely questionable site.
I believe every state should take care of its own garbage, and, as a consequence of that, it would be more discreet about the radioactive waste they would create for their own back yards. When you go to the voting booth Nov. 2, I am asking you to please vote to prevent highly radioactive waste in our state.
Jean E. Brown
Reno
I am a resident of Nevada since 1967 and would like to ask: What is wrong with people?
I don´t really want a waste dump in my home state but cannot think of an alternative site. I would ask that instead of bashing the president, those people should come up with a better site.
Glenda Heffner
Sparks
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Reuters
September 05, 2004
Factbox-Key Campaign Positions of Bush and Kerry
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - These are the positions of Republican President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, on some of the central issues that have dominated the 2004 presidential campaign:
ENERGY POLICY:
With consumers paying near record prices for gasoline and still stinging from an electricity crisis, both candidates support efforts to mandate increased automobile fuel efficiency, to build a natural gas pipeline to Alaska and to raise the use of alternative fuels. But they differ on fossil fuel development. Bush, a former oil executive, favors oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while Kerry opposes such drilling. Bush also supports the construction of new nuclear plants and the storage of nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, both of which Kerry opposes. Kerry supports the continued use of existing nuclear plants.
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The State
September 05, 2004
Campaigns hone strategies as presidential race begins in earnest
BY WAYNE SLATER
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS - (KRT) - Now, after a year of political jousting, six months of primary campaigning and two full weeks of partisan conventioneering - now, the presidential race really begins.
It is a rule of politics that campaigns begin on Labor Day, and however many months and millions of dollars already have been spent in pursuit of the White House, the combatants find themselves on Monday in a Ground Zero of their own.
Despite a post-convention bounce in the polls for President Bush, most believe that the contest - a virtual tie going into last week's Republican gathering - will tighten up again.
"This is a race that's going to be very, very close," said Matthew Dowd, the president's campaign strategist. "And absent something adjusting it tremendously, it's going to be very competitive until Election Day."
If the main themes are terrorism and the economy, the strategies of both sides during the next two months will differ, according to interviews with principals in their campaigns.
The Bush blueprint seeks to energize base voters - including 4 million Christian evangelicals that White House political chief Karl Rove says did not vote in 2000. John Kerry's camp hopes to woo millions of so-called "persuadables" by challenging the president's handling of the war and promising a better deal on jobs and health care.
The Bush appeal: Strong and steady leadership by the commander in chief. The Kerry counter: A strong America begins at home.
"They have concluded that their formula to win this election is to mobilize their base and get people who did not participate last time into the pool of the electorate," said Kerry strategist Tad Devine.
"Our message and media," he said, "will be broad-based, aimed at swing voters who have an economic agenda."
Of about 20 battleground states where the race is close, four offer the richest cache of electoral votes - Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. And it is there that the candidates likely will focus much attention.
"If we win three out of four of those," said Devine, "it is very, very difficult for the president to put this thing together."
Moments after finishing his acceptance speech Thursday at center stage in Madison Square Garden, Bush boarded Air Force One bound for Pennsylvania. The last balloon had barely dropped in New York when Kerry took the stage at a midnight campaign rally in Ohio, skewering Bush as "unfit for office and unfit for duty."
In the escalating drumbeat of the campaigns, advisers in both camps say different battleground states will pose different challenges.
Until the last few weeks, when hurricane damage has battered Florida, the state's economy has been fine (advantage Bush), but it also has a growing Latino population (advantage Kerry). Yet, even among Latino voters, there are differences - Democrat-leaning Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans and historically Republican Cuban-Americans.
The task for the Bush and Kerry camps is to seek out their voters with a combination of tools - television, local radio ads, direct-mail brochures and targeted phone calls.
It's much the same in Ohio, which is not so much a battleground state as a series of battlegrounds within the state.
In northeastern Ohio, part of the Rust Belt, the Kerry side plans an intense appeal to union voters by emphasizing local unemployment and the outsourcing of jobs overseas.
In southeastern Ohio, which is more socially conservative, the Bush camp has tapped Christian evangelicals by assembling voter lists from church directories, aired commercials for Christian radio stations touting the president's religious faith and prepared a direct-mail attack depicting Kerry as wrong in his support for abortion rights and gay marriage.
Across the Buckeye State, Republicans have sought to duplicate the Democrats' past success door-to-door, neighborhood-to-neighborhood. The GOP has revamped voter registration efforts, signing up 60,000 volunteers, making 1 million phone calls and mapping an aggressive get-out-the-vote plan for the campaign's final 72 hours.
"You've seen our focus on grass-roots, on technology, on the 72-hour effort. So these things are also important parts," said Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman.
Bush won both Ohio and Florida in 2000, but Democrats say they see public uncertainty over the war in Iraq and economic discontent as an opportunity this year.
In Nevada, a small but important swing state, Democrats have tailored their appeal to a hot local issue. Last week, the Kerry campaign released a new television advertisement accusing Bush of breaking a promise to block the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
The GOP says it is massing an army of volunteers, and Democrats also have dispatched thousands of volunteers in recent weeks in swing states to register voters and assure they vote on Election Day. Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe said his party has an active program on early voting.
"The day those polls open in different states, we want to begin a massive operation and drive people to the polls early," he said.
As a measure of the high-tech, high stakes this year, McAuliffe said the national party has a 170 million-name database and was sending 700,000 e-mails an hour at one point last week.
"We have placed $45 million in paid media (television and radio ads), and we have reserved a very substantial contingency to supplement that media buy," he said Thursday. "We're not going to light up 20 states all at once. We're going to start, state by state, media market by media market. We think we can have a very large battleground."
In the calculus of the 2004 race, undecided voters account for about 5 percent of the electorate, according to most polls. But the universe of "persuadable" voters - those who are likely to vote and could go either way - ranges up to 20 percent of the electorate, according to polls.
Both sides say they want to win over persuadable voters; Democrats say they have an edge. Polling indicates that these voters hold a more negative view than the average voter of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, his foreign policies, the economy and domestic initiatives. Nearly seven in 10 of them say the country is on the wrong track.
"They will break toward us," said McAuliffe. "But they're not going to do it yet."
Supplementing the campaigns' efforts are various allied groups.
The Bush-Cheney ticket has been aided by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose members are unhappy over Kerry's 1971 criticism of the Vietnam War.
The Kerry campaign is benefiting from several independent groups, including the Media Fund and MoveOn, which have raised millions of dollars to target the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and the economy at home.
Ultimately, the candidates themselves are the marquee names of the election, crisscrossing the country in pursuit of votes.
"John Kerry will be working day and night in the next 60 days," said McAuliffe. "He's not going to come up for air."
Likewise, Bush's campaign schedule is filled with rallies, speeches and carefully scripted public events in target states where he brings the imprimatur of the presidency as commander in chief.
The candidates will meet in debates - probably three, although negotiators are still working out details.
"The debates are very important because this will be the first opportunity that the two candidates stand side by side and answer questions and talk about their visions," said Dowd.
Last week, both camps were trying to manage expectations, each side portraying the opposing candidate as the better debater.
Campaign officials acknowledge that however hard they try, something unexpected can interrupt the best of plans. Dowd calls it the "intervening event" - sudden bad news or good news about the economy, something in Iraq, a bobble in the debates, a gaffe on the campaign trial, a terrorist attack.
Last month in Boston, former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern recalled how, in 1972, his only hope against Richard Nixon was that George Wallace's upstart candidacy would siphon sufficient votes from the Republican incumbent.
"When Wallace got shot, that was it," he said, recalling his race long ago as he sat in the Harvard Bookstore. "When that happened, 10 million votes went over to Nixon."
Sometimes, he said, the tacticians lay the best of plans, only to be undone by uncontrollable events. The event that could decide the 2004 race, he said, might not even have happened yet.
© 2004, The Dallas Morning News.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 04, 2004
Court lets Yucca ruling stand
Appeal denied on radiation safety guideline
By Steve Tetreault
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- A federal court ruling that struck a blow against the Yucca Mountain Project will become effective on Wednesday after judges this week refused to take a second look at the case.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said it will not reconsider the Yucca matter on appeal from the Nuclear Energy Institute.
The ruling formalizes a significant action the court took in July. A three-judge panel threw out a key 10,000-year radiation safety guideline for the nuclear waste repository that the Energy Department proposes to build in Nevada.
The July 9 court decision has thrown the Yucca project into uncertainty just months before DOE plans to file a repository license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The appeals court issued a pair of one-sentence orders Wednesday denying the NEI appeal. They came as little surprise as court officials had signaled such motions to reconsider are rarely granted.
For the same reason, the latest legal development also will have little practical impact, said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
"The court already ruled that the radiation standards for Yucca established under (President) Bush are not based on science and will not protect Nevada families, and this only validates that decision," Berkley said.
The judicial panel said in July that its decision would become effective seven days after it disposed of appeals.
The NEI, the government relations arm of the nuclear industry, is considering whether to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, spokeswoman Melanie Lyons said Friday. The deadline for an appeal is Nov. 29.
Berkley renewed a call for Bush to halt the Yucca project, invoking a pledge he made in Las Vegas on Aug. 12 to "stand by the decisions of the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
"Now is the time for President Bush to live up to his promise to obey any court decision on Yucca and order the Energy Department to stop its work on a license for a nuclear dump in Nevada," she said.
The appeals court issued a series of rulings July 9, most of them upholding the repository. But the judges declared the project's 10,000 year radiation protection standard invalid. As possible remedies, the court suggested a new guideline might be formed or Congress might pass a law to solve the problem.
The Bush administration declined to appeal the court ruling. Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said DOE will work to meet new radiation standards that will to comply with the court ruling.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 04, 2004
In Brief
Yucca Mountain Fight
Citizen Alert takes to the road again
After 29 years of raising environmental awareness in Nevada, Citizen Alert is hitting the road again in an effort to garner support for the group and bolster its campaign against the government's plan to bury nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain.
The group will haul its 20-foot mock nuclear waste cask to Rachel in rural Lincoln County on Monday in what will be the first of 25 stops in the state to increase membership, enlist volunteers and secure donations.
Called "Back to Our Routes," the tour is patterned after the 1975 journey of Susan Orr and Katherine Hale who went town-to-town to warn Nevadans about the dangers of nuclear waste.
This year's final destination will be Las Vegas on Oct. 22.
"We want to make sure that people understand that Yucca Mountain is not a done deal," said Peggy Maze Johnson, Citizen Alert's executive director.
"We're doing it because ... we thought it was time to start rebuilding our organization. We've been so focused on surviving that we haven't gotten out and gotten back to our roots," she said.
Maze Johnson said the tour and associated mailings and advertisements is being financed primarily through a $70,000 grant from the Media Action Fund, a private foundation in Washington, D.C., and Boston.
The 2,500-mile tour, she said, has been on the drawing board for a long time.
The various stops are posted on the group's Web site: citizenalert.org.
"We want everyone in the state to know that every single community is important and has a voice in this," she said.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 04, 2004
Letter: Texas dump
To the editor:
I saw in the paper that the national GOP platform includes a plank officially endorsed a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain. The party also wants to build even more nuclear plants so we here in Nevada will have even more nuclear waste.
We will only be safe from this travesty when a nuclear waste repository is approved for a certain ranch in Crawford, Texas. Texas has more land and more open spaces. Put the dump there, or require each state that benefits from nuclear power to keep its own waste.
Sonia J. Church
Las Vegas
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 04, 2004
Letter: Yucca Democrats
To the editor:
Jim Day's Aug. 18 editorial cartoon was the lowest shot I've ever seen.
Georgia peanut farmer Jimmy Carter assured power company execs that if they built nuclear power plants the federal government would assume responsibility for disposing of the spent fuel rods.
A Louisiana crawfish farmer wrote the "Screw Nevada bill." Northeast power plant honchos were delighted with the arrangement.
Democrats anyone?
As the majority of nuclear plants were in the northeast, the pols of that area -- Sen. John Kerry included -- were also delighted.
To believe that now, with Nevada's five electoral votes up for grabs, he would change his position stretches credulity. Then again, anything Sen. Kerry says stretches credulity.
Leon Abadie
Las Vegas
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
September 04, 2004
Cheney gets warm welcome
Vice president's criticism of Kerry fires up faithful during Las Vegas visit
By Henry Brean
Review-Journal
On his first campaign swing since the Republican National Convention, Vice President Dick Cheney stopped in Las Vegas Friday to fire up local supporters and continue his attack on Sen. John Kerry's record.
In a 30-minute speech before enthusiastic supporters at Cashman Center, Cheney touched on taxes, the economy and the war on terrorism, painting Kerry along the way as indecisive and disingenuous.
Nearly every mention of the Massachusetts Democrat was met with chants of "flip-flop" from the crowd.
Cheney even drew the chant -- and cheers for President Bush -- when he mentioned the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
After insisting that Bush used "sound science" when he approved the repository site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Cheney attacked what he called Kerry's back-and-forth voting record on the project.
"Nevada deserves a leader who makes decisions based on the facts É not election-year politics," Cheney said.
He did not take questions from news media.
Event organizers estimated the number of people inside Cashman Center at between 2,300 and 2,400, but the crowd appeared to be somewhat smaller than that.
Although tickets for the event, dubbed a "Victory 2004 Rally," were given out to registered voters who claimed to support Bush, at least one protester managed to make it inside.
As Cheney told the crowd to expect more campaign visits to Nevada between now and the election, a man began shouting at the vice president. He was grabbed by four men in civilian clothes and dragged out of the building on his back.
It was unknown whether the man was taken into custody.
Later, outside the center, about 100 protesters chanted "No more Bush" at those leaving the speech, and they held up signs decrying the Bush administration's position on everything from abortion to Yucca Mountain.
Some speech attendees had parked across the street and had to walk through a gantlet of protesters to get to their cars at the Sawyer Building. "Shame on you," the protesters shouted.
"Communist bastards," one Bush supporter yelled as he crossed the street. "Why don't you go to Russia?"
Many protesters simply held their signs and cheered at passing cars.
"The man in there is just not doing his job," said Kerry supporter Raymond Vercillo, who dressed in a George Bush mask and giant cowboy hat so he'd get noticed.
"Bottom line, I'm here because we need a change," he said.
Most of the people at Cashman Center did not share that view. At times, the rally seemed more like a rock concert, with Cheney performing his greatest hits. A large portion of his remarks were lifted directly from the speech he delivered at the national convention Wednesday.
Mesquite resident Al Ross didn't mind a bit.
"You can't have a new speech every time," he said as he wandered through the parking lot wearing a T-shirt that read, "Save America: Spay or neuter a liberal."
Ross said he and his wife, Betty, stood in the front row of the rally and got to shake hands with the Cheneys. Ross said he was most impressed "by the enthusiasm of the crowd."
So were lifelong Republicans Arch and Nancy McCulloch. "I think he (Bush) is going to win the state," Nancy McCulloch said as the two left Cashman Center.
Arch McCulloch said he was most impressed by Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, who along with North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon helped stir up the crowd before the Cheneys arrived. "I hope she runs for governor," he said.
Air Force Two touched down on schedule Friday afternoon on an isolated runway on the west end of McCarran International Airport.
The Cheneys waved to 10 applauding supporters, known to campaign staffers as Victory Volunteers '04, as they exited the plane. The couple shook hands and spoke with the supporters for about one minute before ducking into a black limousine.
The vehicle led a single-file motorcade off the tarmac that included another limousine, 11 minivans and sport-utility vehicles, several squad cars from Las Vegas police and the Nevada Highway Patrol and one paramedic truck from the Clark County Fire Department.
When the Cheneys arrived on stage at Cashman Center, Lynne Cheney praised Bush's tax cuts and tweaked Democrats who were bothered by some of the speeches in New York this week.
"They got a little mad last night because we've been talking about their record," she said before introducing her husband.
The vice president was greeted at the podium by a chant of "four more years."
"I accept," Cheney said with a smile.
Many in the crowd waived the signs and flags that were handed out by the campaign. Others brought their own. One hand-painted sign read, "Vote Bush. Don't be a girly man." Another read, "NV wants a leader, not a liar."
At the end of the speech, the crowd was showered with balloons and confetti.
Cheney's visit to Las Vegas was part of a two-day swing through three battleground states expected to figured prominently in the November election.
The vice president started his day at a campaign rally in Pendleton, Ore., a town of about 16,000 people in the northeast part of the state.
After spending Friday night in Las Vegas, he was scheduled to fly to New Mexico for a rally in Roswell.
This was Cheney's fourth visit to Nevada in three months. In August, he made a rare campaign stop in Elko, and in July he stumped in Reno.
His previous trip to Southern Nevada was in June, when he touted the administration's economic policies during a campaign event in Henderson.
Review-Journal writers Richard Lake and Frank Geary contributed to this report.
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KLAS
September 04, 2004
Gary Waddell Asks Kerry About Yucca Mt.
While Dick Cheney campaigned here in Nevada, John Kerry was making the rounds in several battleground states by satellite from Ohio. One of his stops was Las Vegas.
It was the economy that was part of the campaign message being put out by Bush's Democratic opponent. Senator Kerry took issue with the President who says the economy is on the right track.
"I am going to put America back to work creating the kinds of high paying jobs that America is used to, not the kind that George W. Bush has been satisfied with that pay $9,000 less then the jobs we are losing overseas. George Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to have lost jobs during his presidency."
Anchor Gary Waddell got a chance to talk with the Senator about one of the major issues in the presidential race here in Nevada --Yucca Mountain. Although Gary didn't have as much time to talk, as he would have liked, he started right off with the hot topic. Kerry talked about why he's opposed to Yucca Mountain and exactly how he'll stop it.
With just 60 days to the election, we'll probably see a lot more of John Kerry and President Bush along with Vice President Dick Cheney and John Edwards in Nevada. This is a very important state with 5 electoral votes still up for grabs.
You can hear Gary Waddell's three-minute interview with Senator Kerry in the attached video clip.
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Lexington Herald Leader
September 04, 2004
TVA has little room left to store nuclear waste
Millions Spent While Awaiting Permanent Site Planned in Nevada
By Duncan Mansfield
Associated Press
KNOXVILLE - The Tennessee Valley Authority, its nuclear-waste storage pools overflowing or nearing capacity, is spending millions storing spent fuel at its reactor sites while waiting for the Department of Energy to open a permanent repository.
The nation's largest public utility, though not alone in its dilemma, has more than 2,260 metric tons of spent fuel on its hands with no plans to slow down its nuclear program.
The storage pool at the Sequoyah station near Chattanooga, Tenn., is full and the pool at the Browns Ferry station in Athens, Ala., is expected to reach capacity next year.
Already, TVA has spent more than $25 million building additional dry-cask storage space at Sequoyah. Some 44.6 metric tons of waste were moved out of the storage pool to the above-ground casks in June.
Similar storage costing more than $22 million is being built at Browns Ferry, where TVA has two operating reactors and is spending $1.8 billion to restart a long-shuttered third reactor in 2007.
TVA provides electricity to 8.5 million people in Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
TVA officials say dozens of other nuclear utilities are similarly hamstrung by DOE delays in opening a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
TVA recently won a U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruling that could lead to recovery of storage costs on grounds that DOE breached a 1983 contract to dispose of TVA's nuclear waste beginning in 2002.
Meanwhile, TVA says the dry-cask interim storage option is a proven technology already used or planned at 38 nuclear plants.
"I think our first consideration is ensuring the safety of our employees and the safety of the communities where we operate," TVA director Skila Harris said.
"We have invested in the technology and the security measures at those sites that would protect safety. So in terms of safety, I don't consider that an issue."
Beyond that, she said, the nuclear industry "has long anticipated that there might be delays in completion of a permanent repository."
With the support of the White House and Congress, DOE hopes to have Yucca Mountain operating in 2010.
But Nevada is waging a court battle, and a federal court in Washington declared in July that even a 10,000-year radiation safety standard proposed by the government was insufficient for the site.
"This is a reflection of poor planning by the nuclear industry," said Steve Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "They have continued to generate this waste even though they don't have a long-term storage operation for it."
"This is sort of the birds coming home to roost ... on the banks of the Tennessee River," he said, noting that all three TVA nuclear stations, TVA's touted alternatives to smog-causing coal-fired power plants, are located along the river.
Harris, who as an energy consultant studied the finite nuclear waste storage issue as early as the late 1970s, said Yucca Mountain "is ultimately a political issue more than it is a technological issue."
Smith disagreed. Ensuring the safe storage of material that will remain radioactive "for longer than recorded history is a real scientific and technical challenge. It is something that sort of pales human ingenuity."
TVA, meanwhile, is studying the possibility of building a next-generation nuclear plant at its unfinished Bellefonte site in Alabama. TVA's third operating nuclear plant at Watts Bar in Tennessee, which came on line in 1995, has adequate space in its spent fuel pool until 2018.
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 03, 2004
Fate of Yucca project shrouded in doubt
Energy Department Database 'Mishandled' Claims Nuclear Licensing Board on Tuesday
By Steve Tetreault
PVT Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - The Energy Department was dealt a new blow on Tuesday when a nuclear licensing board ruled DOE mishandled a public database that is supposed to contain all documents for the planned Nevada nuclear waste repository.
The ruling is likely to force an undetermined delay in the Yucca Mountain Project while the Energy Department fixes problems and gets its work re-certified, according to attorneys for Nevada and environmental activists.
Federal rules require DOE's documents on the Internet database, known as the Licensing Support Network, to be certified as complete and available electronically to the public for six months before a license application can be docketed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"They will have to certify again after they get their act together, either in a month or if ever, maybe sometime after the first of the year," said Martin Malsch, a former NRC attorney who now represents the state of Nevada in Yucca Mountain cases.
Malsch called the ruling a major setback for the Yucca program, which already faces myriad uncertainties stemming from budget shortfalls and a court ruling this summer that threw out a key radiation safety guideline.
Joe Davis, a DOE spokesman, said the department has continued to work on the database and could be ready to seek re-certification in about a month.
Davis said he could not say how the ruling might affect the DOE's timetables. Department officials had set an internal deadline to submit a repository license application to the NRC by the end of the year.
"The attorneys are going to look at this," Davis said. "Our goal is to have this repository open in 2010 and that remains our goal."
The department issued its database certification on June 30, six months in advance of its year-end goal.
DOE said it had made available 1.2 million documents totaling 5.6 million pages of technical reports, studies and e-mails chronicling years of DOE's repository effort.
Attorneys for the state of Nevada challenged the database, saying DOE rushed an incomplete job to stay on deadline. They argued 30 million pages of documents and more than four million emails were missing, while access to documents on key issues like repository canister corrosion was blocked by being improperly classified for secrecy.
A three-judge Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel assembled by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed with the state in a 54-page ruling released Tuesday that struck down DOE's certification.
The department "did not satisfy its obligation to make, in good faith, all of its documentary material available," the judges stated, even though DOE had 15 years to organize the material and the funding might of the federal government to pay for the effort.
"It does not appear that it will take DOE a significant amount of time to complete its processing of the outstanding documents prior to being able to make a re-certification," the judges said.
Federal rules require DOE to place all its documents on the database, and to share them electronically with the public and parties that will be involved in Yucca Mountain licensing.
The idea, officials have said, is to make all pertinent information available up front, to avoid delays in an NRC licensing process that resembles a courtroom trial.
Staff members at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have completed loading all their Yucca documents onto the database. The judges' ruling allows Nevada and others to delay posting their documents until DOE's contributions are re-certified.
The safety board's ruling was a victory for open government, said Wenonah Hauter, director of the Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.
"Posting all relevant Yucca Mountain documents online allows the public to review the materials and participate effectively in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceedings," Hauter said.
"It was obvious the White House was so anxious to keep the licensing process for Yucca Mountain on track that they cut corners," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.
Rep. Jon Porter, D-Nev., said the ruling was "a wake-up call for the DOE to be forthcoming with public documents, and prepare the material in such a way that is accessible and user friendly to the general public."
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KESQ
September 03, 2004
Federal appeals court won't reconsider Yucca Mountain ruling
LAS VEGAS It might be up to Congress to set crucial radiation limits for a nuclear repository in Nevada.
That's what an industry lobbyist says after a federal appeals court in Washington decided not to reconsider an order telling the E-P-A to dramatically strengthen radiation rules for the Yucca Mountain project.
But the Nuclear Energy Institute official adds there's been no formal lobbying yet.
Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley the nuclear industry has friends in the White House and in control in Congress -- and she's certain they'll try to change the rules.
The appeals court ruled in July that the E-P-A should have taken the advice of the National Academy of Science and set a radiation standard for hundreds of thousands of years -- instead of 10-thousand years.
The trouble now is that the Energy Department designed the Yucca project to meet the 10-thousand year standard.
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The State
September 03, 2004
Cheney Says Kerry Doesn't Understand West
Liz Sidoti
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS - Vice President Dick Cheney portrayed Democrat John Kerry as a flip-flopper from the Northeast who doesn't understand the needs of the West. "It's not only wildfires that shift with the wind," Cheney told supporters Friday.
"As westerners, the president and I understand the challenges that you face here in Nevada, especially when it comes to protecting residents from wildfire," Cheney said during his first post-convention campaign swing.
But Cheney said Kerry has a different view. "He says he's in touch with the West," the Republican said with a smile before delivering the punch line. "He must mean western Massachusetts." The president's home is Texas. Cheney is from Wyoming.
A day after the Republican convention in New York, Cheney and his wife, Lynne, headed West to Oregon, won by Al Gore in 2000, and Nevada, which Bush captured four years ago.
Focusing on a divisive issue in Nevada, Cheney defended Bush's support of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and accused the president's Democratic opponents of changing their minds on the issue. "That's their right. It's also their habit," Cheney said to cheers.
Bush approved Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear dump site after winning the presidency, even though many scientific studies remained unfinished. Kerry has voted for some measures that included provisions allowing nuclear dumps there. But every time he has faced the simple choice of voting whether or not to send waste to Yucca, Kerry has voted against it.
In both states, Cheney emphasized Bush's environmental efforts, telling supporters that Bush helped enact "a good bipartisan law that is keeping forests healthier and communities safer."
Cheney then said Kerry didn't support the Healthy Forests Restoration Act when it was up for a vote. "Senator Kerry even said that thinning underbrush to prevent wildfires was the equivalent of taking a chain saw to the public forest," the vice president said.
Neither Kerry nor running mate John Edwards were present for the vote. Bush signed the measure into law in December.
Now, when Kerry campaigns in the West, Cheney said, the Democrat "turns his position around" and says he likes "a lot of the parts of the law."
"That makes one thing clear," Cheney said. "It's not only wildfires that shift with the wind."
The Kerry campaign accused the Bush administration of failing to fully fund the law.
"They left firefighters out to dry this summer," said Laura Capps, a Kerry-Edwards spokeswoman. She said the Democrats worked with governors of Western states to put together a forest-management plan that emphasized protecting communities.
Critics say Bush's forest law favors the timber industry, leaving old-growth trees and remote, roadless areas of forests at risk of logging, in the name of clearing brush to prevent wildfires.
At his two events Friday, Cheney ignored Kerry's criticism of the vice president and the president as avoiding service in Vietnam and being "unfit to lead the nation."
Responding to the comment, Anne Womack, Cheney's spokeswoman, said: "The Republicans just came out of a really exciting positive convention in which President Bush laid out an aggressive agenda for next four years. Senator Kerry's only response is to lash out and make personal attacks about the past. We think this election is about the future."
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 3, 2004
Hollis hopes to aid county in monetary independence
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
Gary Hollis has lived in Pahrump "off and on" since 1969, he said, as well as in Amargosa Valley and Tonopah. Now he's running for District III Nye County commissioner against four other contenders.
Hollis's work and life history has been in mining and ranching, "in the old days," he said. He retired in 1998. Married for four and a half years, he has three sons from a previous marriage. His mother, father, two sisters and a brother live in Pahrump, also. Another brother recently passed away.
Hollis was elected to the Pahrump Town Board in 1996 and served a four-year term. For two of those years he was chairman. Among the accomplishments he counts as important was a trip to Washington, D.C., to consult with Nevada's congressional delegation on Nye County's fairgrounds. He initiated the talks with the Nevada representatives, he said, and was successful in acquiring 427 acres from the federal government, deeded to the town for that purpose. Four other board members and the town manager also supported the project, Hollis said.
"The public supported the idea," Hollis said, "and that was the reason we were able to do it." While in the nation's capital Hollis said he also talked to Nevada's delegation about flood control. Hollis takes responsibility for getting the Army Corps of Engineers "to come in and do flood control" at Wheeler Wash, where a levy is to be built in a joint federal-county partnership.
However, he said he also "took a strong position we would not concede one drop of water to the federal government or its agencies."
Hollis's big issue is that the county is too dependent on PETT funds, the Federal Payments Equal to Taxes that is used for capital expenditures and stopgap budget remedies. "One of these days Congress is going to quit signing the checks, and we have to stop taking the funds to supplement the general fund," he said. "We need to be really strong on keeping the budget in line."
Another issue Hollis feels is important for voters to realize is the federal government's unfunded mandates passed on to the states. These are federal projects or mandates for compliance with the law that come without federal funds attached. Local governments must foot the bills. An example Hollis cites is the recent dust control order of the Environmental Protection Agency, based on the Clean Air Act of Congress.
"I'm a strong believer that if they're going to mandate us to do something then they should have to pay for it, because local government has only two alternatives: either to raise taxes or to reduce services to pay for the mandate," Hollis said.
"The third alternative is not to do anything," Hollis added. However, that alternative would lead to the state of Nevada's Bureau of Air Quality issuing a Nye County "non-attainment" report to the EPA. The agency would then come down hard on the county for refusing to comply with the mandate to clean up its documented violations of monitored air quality.
Economic development of the Pahrump Valley would suffer as a result of stringent EPA control measures put into effect to pay for air quality improvements.
On another front, Hollis said, "I'm a strong supporter of juvenile courtrooms in Nye County." Right now, he said, justice and district courts are the only courts available. "Juveniles need to know that the hands of justice are going to be weighing on their shoulders. Those juveniles need to know that the letter of the law is going to come down on them.
"I think that when a young person goes into a courtroom, he sees that courtroom, and has to testify. He knows he is in a courtroom and the law is fixing to be administered to him."
On Yucca Mountain, Hollis said health, human safety and the welfare of the public are his first concerns. "Yucca Mountain will be forced on us and we need a contingency plan on how to handle the waste coming through our valley." The county should be prepared for accidents with adequate training for emergency services and first responders "to make sure they handle the job," he said.
Hollis also has a novel idea about how to provide for the safety of Nye County citizens from any nuclear accident.
"I think the Department of Energy needs to have an office in Pahrump and their employees should (be required to) live in the Pahrump Valley," he said. "If they are living here they will be sure it is safe."
Having spent five days visiting the DOE's nuclear waste storage facility in Carlsbad, N.M., this past June as a member of the Nye County Federal Impact Advisory Board, Hollis said he was advised by people of that city, "'You need a DOE presence in your community.'"
"The citizens (in Carlsbad) are really pro to the idea of storing that waste there," he said. "I think there was strong support for it."
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 3, 2004
Bass ready to step up to commission plate
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
"I'm running for the people of Nye County to replace Henry Neth," says Sheldon Bass, 69, a current commissioner on the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission.
Bass makes no bones about the main target of his campaign.
"What Henry does sometimes ... (is) turn turtle and flop, taking the opposite position," says Bass of the incumbent county commission chairman.
"Henry has tried to take credit for everything that occurs through the board of commissioners, and nothing occurs that doesn't have a majority vote of the board. At the senior center political meeting, he took full credit for the new ordinance requiring a licensed manager to certify septic tank leech-field tests."
Bass says, "I will be a commissioner of Nye County, not of a little hole down here in Pahrump, just because we have district elections.
"I live in Pahrump, by God! This is a big issue. I own my own house.
"I am qualified to run for county commissioner because I am in my second term as regional planning commissioner. I'm vice chairman of the commission. I'm chairman of the development review committee, in my third year. (The review committee is a three-person committee of the planning commission that "kicks dirt," according to Bass, in initial site reviews in building permit applications.)
Bass is also an RPC task force member, assigned to fashion an ordinance for adoption by the county commissioners that would lay the groundwork for development agreements with sub-dividers and developers.
Additionally, Bass is a member of the State Land Use Planning Advisory Council (SLUPAC), appointed by the governor with responsibility for all of Nye County.
Bass says he regularly attends all county commission meetings and is ready to step up to the plate as a commissioner.
"I have been totally active in being up to speed on everything in this county that has been available to me. I am the only person contesting Mr. Neth's seat - the only person.
I am retired. I have no day job. I put a lot of hours per week in what I do. I receive no pay and contribute to the betterment of the community. I have no commitments to any land developer, broker or business commitments to anybody.
"I put no signs out promoting my candidacy because I think it's clutter, and a candidate should be elected based on what (he or she) can do, what they're committed to doing and what they've shown they're capable of doing in the past - not how many billboards they can print up and litter the streets with.
"I believe that this entire county administration has got to be brought together to work together as one cohesive unit. We cannot get anything done if we don't put it all together."
Bass admits to being in favor of moving the county seat to Pahrump.
"There's a big controversial one." But in the long run he says the change "will provide a more cohesive, interactive government.
"We have good people on both ends of the county, and we need to bring them all together in one place. We need to utilize their talents where they can be best utilized." If the county seat is moved to the population center, he says, "we will affect some superior savings in the operation of county government."
No jobs will be lost, says Bass. "We have some really good people but some are not being properly utilized. If we get them in the right place we can properly utilize them."
Bass says he has been keeping up with the federal Department of Energy on Yucca Mountain and the Caliente railroad to transport nuclear waste to the proposed site. Bass advocates the railroad, but wants to see it also become a common carrier of passengers and freight when not in use hauling canisters of waste.
He has suggested running a spur into Tonopah's airport, another spur into Goldfield's old railroad depot and one into Beatty as well. Beatty, as the gateway to Rhyolite, Death Valley National Park and Scotty's Castle, would be well served, Bass said.
Bass says he's suggested to DOE and the Bureau of Land Management extending the four-lane Highway 95 from Mercury 150 miles north to Tonopah and 50 miles beyond that. "This would be the only four-lane, north-south highway in the entire state of Nevada," he said.
Widening the highway would give it a measure of safety, he says, if and when heavy trucks hauling nuclear canisters begin using it. On the present highway, he says, "There's no hard shoulders" for trucks to pull over in case of a breakdown or flat tire.
"If one of those things goes sideways that highway is plugged and nothing is going to get around it."
Widening the highway to four lanes, he says, "would totally assist in economic development in the four towns of Nye County along the way. They would greatly enhance economic development across the western border of the state and throughout most of Nye County with truck stops, motels, restaurants, RV parks, whatever."
On the county's budget problems, Bass says, "We've been sucking out of PETT funds for more than just this year." (PETT is the federal Payments Equal to Taxes paid to the county for the Yucca Mountain project as reimbursement for property taxes that otherwise would be collected.)
Bass says he believes the county has used in excess of $7 million in the past three years to effectively balance the budget. The money is supposed to go for non-recurring expenses.
"Henry Neth believes that within the next two to three years, when all these new subdivisions start coming on stream, that the income from property taxes on these houses will allow us to balance the budget," Bass says. "Residential property taxes do not put enough money into the general fund to balance the budget as well as to pay for the expansion of services required by this increased residential growth.
"The only way to balance the budget is to create redevelopment districts in order to enhance the usage of our commercial and industrial-zoned properties. By doing so, we can attract outside business and light industry, and they will bring with them high paying jobs. And the taxes and the fees and the licenses will produce the revenue, allowing us to put in the infrastructure and balance the budget."
For over four years Bass says he's watched the situation develop in the Pahrump Valley, and at the Bob Ruud Community Center. "I've been buried in this stuff," he says.
On another political front he says, "I am in favor of brothels. I have spent more time arguing about Mr. Richards and his gentlemen's club.
"We have no control over that." But Bass is asking voters to claim control of who best to put on their commission from District III.
"I'm the best qualified person out here, and it's time for Henry to leave."
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 3, 2004
Elefante shows devotion to the county commission
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
A former Southern California banking officer for 15 years and an emergency rescue worker with political, planning and organizing experience is running for the District III Nye County Commission seat currently held by Henry Neth.
Paula J. Elefante is a four-year resident of Pahrump who recently resigned from the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission in order to devote herself to her campaign and to avoid any suggestion of a conflict of interest.
Elefante has been married for 40 years to a retired Los Angeles police officer and an eight-year Air Force veteran. They have three children and three grandchildren.
A member of EDEN, Economic Development authority for Esmeralda and Nye County, and a founding member of the Pahrump Valley Community Action Team, as well as the High Desert Red Hats - Elefante believes she presents a visible profile of public involvement.
"I've been really involved in community service," she said. Trained by the fire department and actively involved with the Los Angeles Community Emergency Response Team for 10 years, Elefante said she was awarded a certificate of commendation for her organizing and helping skills following the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
On the January day of the tremor that killed 61 people, Elefante said she ensured that medical personnel and supplies got to lower-income Hispanic neighborhoods that were badly hit by the quake. Together with her team, she said she set up MASH units in various places to provide first-aid and other assistance to displaced persons.
Afterwards, Elefante worked for six years as a field deputy for a Los Angeles city councilman. In that position she served as liaison to various city departments: building and safety, fire and rescue, parks and recreation, animal control, utility companies and cultural arts.
She also worked with the councilman's constituents to rebuild their homes lost in the earthquake, and said she expedited government application processes for many.
"I worked with government agencies at all levels," she says. "I see that that experience has prepared me to pursue working with the state (of Nevada) on our public lands, with our Legislature, to address issues critical to Nye County and to its communities."
More recently, Elefante served for three years on the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission, where she was chairwoman for two of those years.
"It's been a wonderful learning process," she says. Her biggest project during that time was helping to complete the Pahrump Regional Planning District Master Plan.
"I'm so grateful for the way (county consultant) Tri-Core Engineering handled the process with all the meetings for community input," said Elefante. She said she deliberately stayed away from those meetings to avoid the perception of any wrongful influence she might have wielded.
Elefante says there are basically three areas she would focus on as county commissioner. "An important issue to me is, first and foremost, fire and rescue, in the county and in Pahrump. The hospital is taking too long to get here. And I worry about my fellow seniors, who may need emergency services and (fire and rescue may not) arrive on the scene in a timely manner. They are stretched to the limit."
Elefante suggests that because the towns of Nye County are unincorporated and can't legally apply for emergency services grants, the county has a fiduciary and moral responsibility to do that for them. "We should be doing more in that respect," she says.
A second area of concern is Yucca Mountain; the federal project Elefante says is "at Pahrump's front door," in comparison to Clark County's backdoor.
"I recently had the privilege of visiting (the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in) Carlsbad, N.M., where they store transuranic waste at a federal facility run by the Department of Energy." She says she spoke to townspeople there instrumental in bringing the facility to their area.
"It generated numerous jobs for the people in that community," Elefante says, suggesting the same approach could be used in Nye County, through vocational training and educational programs. These efforts could prepare workers for jobs at the Yucca Mountain repository or with the project's contractors.
As an example she cited a metal shop in Carlsbad that manufactures the 12-foot diameter, 200-ton steel casks in which the highly radioactive plutonium wastes are stored and transported on trucks to the site. A mini-industry in town has grown up with the federal government's facility.
Finally, she said, "I believe it's critical that we get a handle on our budget." As a former banking operations branch specialist, Elefante said it's "mind-boggling to me" that that hasn't been done yet. "If I were commissioner I would want quarterly accounting presented to the commission by the budget director so we can stay on top of our expenses and income.
"I believe that the commission position is a full-time position, and I do have that time and that energy to bring to it. I'm not related to anyone who works in this county. I'm not related to any developer, builder or Realtor, and I do not work for them. I feel that puts me in a good position to make unbiased decisions in the best interests of the community.
"There's a lot of work to do and I'm ready to do it," said Elefante. "I also plan to keep office hours where people can come by and discuss issues and concerns that are important to them."
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 3, 2004
Neth fights to keep his spot on county board
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
Henry Neth, current chairman of the Nye County Commission and candidate for reelection, is for some the man to beat.
A 40-year resident of Pahrump, Neth graduated from Pahrump Valley High School, second in his class, in 1976. He is married with two children. He went to the Universal Technical Institute in Phoenix, Ariz., to train in mechanics. For 15 years he worked at the Nevada Test Site as an operating engineer and was involved with the union there.
A 20-year member of the Masonic Lodge and a third-degree Mason, Neth was a heavy equipment mechanic until 1997. Then, he got his real estate license and went into business with his sister-in-law at Provenza Realty. With another business partner Neth recently bought Subway Sandwiches in Pahrump. He has a side-business with his wife, Tlaquepaque Frame Shop, next-door to his real estate office. Neth also has a couple of small investment companies.
"Tlaquepaque" is a Mexican place name for "the best of everything," a reasonably good campaign slogan for a politician who wants to make the center hold.
"My firm belief is that we all have to work together in Nye County. If that means making compromises, if that means embracing the change that is coming, then that's what I can be counted on for."
Neth was elected to the Nye County Commission in 2000. For the last two years he has been chairman of the board.
In the past couple of years at the helm of the commission Neth says he's learned that the board of commissioners by themselves can accomplish very little.
"In order to be an effective commissioner you have to be a good communicator, and you have to be great in relationships," Neth says. "I've also learned the county has some fantastic employees and they do everything they can to assist the board of commissioners in being effective."
Neth says his focus in the next four years, if reelected, will be catching up Pahrump, the town, with Pahrump, the people who have moved here and who continue to move here. In a word, it's a race for infrastructure.
"Everyone talks about economic development, but there can be no economic development unless you have infrastructure first. You have to have something to offer (business) people to come here before they'll ever come here."
Another thing Neth hopes to focus on is putting into place county government mechanisms, through its departments, for generating revenue on an on-going basis, allowing general fund revenues to come in higher than expenditures. The objective is to avoid using PETT funds as a bailout at budget time, a tactic the commissioners have had to resort to for the past several years, ever since taxes failed to cover the expenses brought on by an onslaught of growth.
PETT fund money is federal Payments Equal to Taxes, paid to the county for lost property taxes due to the Yucca Mountain project at the Nevada Test Site. But Neth appears to be a driven optimist.
"I'm jazzed about what's going on in Nye County," he says. "My position on growth is, you're not going to stop it, so we have to be responsible about it." Being responsible means "having the plans in place - such as the master plan, the zoning ordinance, the adequate public facilities plan and the water resources plan.
"Having these plans in place as growth occurs will provide the vision (for the town) of what it's going to look like (at build out), so we can provide the appropriate infrastructure.
"One of the things about growth in the Pahrump Valley is (that) it's self-limiting, (because of limits on water availability, by reason of state law and of nature), which makes maintaining our rural lifestyle a reality.
"This is explained by the number of water rights available for high density development. With about 400 square miles in the Pahrump Valley and only 7,000 or 8,000 acres ... (zoned) for high density development, that leaves a lot of wide-open rural space," he says. Neth estimates such living space at around 12 to 14 total square miles scattered throughout the valley.
"In the next seven-to-eight years, we'll experience a tremendous growth spurt," he says. "Then, as available agricultural water rights disappear, high-density development will cease and the growth will go back to available vacant parcels."
As to one of the spurs of regional growth, Yucca Mountain, Neth says he's always been a strong proponent of the federal project.
"I believe that the nuclear industry is Nye County's and Nevada's destiny. I base that on the thousands of detonations underground on the Nevada Test Site over the last 50 years, and that never seemed to dampen the growth economically or otherwise. I believe it will just increase the opportunity for young people to find good paying jobs and will invite more ancillary businesses related to that industry.
"When people go to the polls I would ask them to study the issues very closely," says Neth. "I would ask them to consider my record over the last four years." That record includes:
€ "I was the lead negotiator, with Commissioner Joni Eastley, on obtaining from the federal Department of Energy over $54 million in PETT funds for the coming five years.
€ "I've been a strong supporter of the Nye County School District. I voted for over $2 million for infrastructure and other student needs.
€ "I've been a strong advocate for higher education in Nye County, for the Two-Plus-Two program with the Community College of Southern Nevada. I voted to appropriate $1.5 million for that program.
€ "I've been the liaison for the Board of Commissioners with the senior citizens for all four years in office."
Neth says he wants to thank the other commissioners on the board and the county staff for their support, "because without them none of this would have been possible."
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 3, 2004
Community Viewpoint: Still in the county running
By Butch Pierce
To the citizens and voters of Nye County:
This is an apology and explanation for my lack of participation in the various debates and political activities I have been invited to in Pahrump.
It is no small thing for me to travel from Gabbs to Pahrump. I am a retired disabled veteran on a fixed income. At the start of my candidacy for county commissioner I decided that I would take no donations or contributions. Travel expenses - gas, food, lodging - are items that can quickly outstrip my budget. And with the exception of a motorcycle, all of my vehicles have well over 100 thousand miles on them.
I read with some humor and aplomb that the Pahrump Valley Times Aug. 27 edition decided, since I did not return a phone call, that I was dropping out of the commissioners' race for District I. Quite a leap to a conclusion! Perhaps the PVT can get "conclusion leaping" in the next Olympics!
And to the citizens of Nye County I offer these ideas:
1. Nye County should be the richest county in the USA. The price for being the nuclear landfill for the country should be 1 percent of all property taxes paid in the U.S. Think Alaska and the North Slope oil leases! Alaskans get paid to live there.
2. Pahrump should incorporate and form its own financial base. It should have its own infrastructure, i.e., police, fire, hospital and road department, paid for by the citizens of the "City of Pahrump." Let the citizens of the "City of Pahrump" pass levies and sell municipal bonds to pay for the services they want.
3. Wherever the county seat is (and it has a history of moving around in Nye County) a regionalization (sic) plan should be implemented so all citizens of the county have equal access to county resources. Even in the age of nearly instantaneous transmission of information, "face to face" is still the best management / customer service model.
4. My bio: Born and raised in a small timber town in western Oregon; graduated from Willamina High School; Naval service from 1971-1975 (Vietnam era vet), honorable discharge; Chemeketa Community College 1976-1977 (machine shop technology); Caterpillar Tractor 1977-1981 (machine tool operator); Oregon Police Academy, 1981; Deputy, Yamhill County Sheriff's Department 1981-1984; Sergeant, Amity Police Department, Amity Oregon, 1984-1985; Naval Service 1986-2002, law enforcement / physical security (Gulf War service); retired in 2002; resident of Gabbs, 2002 - present.
Sincerely yours,
Editor's note: Mr. Pierce was given every opportunity for an interview. When he failed to return telephone messages or appear at any candidate night events in Pahrump, the town where 60 percent of the District I constituency resides, we believed he wasn't committed to the campaign. Thus, in the Aug. 27 edition of the Pahrump Valley Times, we advised readers Mr. Pierce "apparently" bowed out of the race. Our apologies.
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Pahrump Valley Times
September 3, 2004
Crooks looks to balance budget, find extra monies
By Phillip Gomez
PVT
With over 20 years of management experience in the corporate world, Claudette Crooks believes she would make a better county commissioner for District III.
"I have a vested interest as a homeowner and taxpayer, and I'm just not happy with what I've seen happening in the last five years," she says.
Born in the Salt Lake City area of Utah, Crooks moved to Las Vegas in 1960. She started working in the hotel industry, but took courses in her free time in computer programming, systems analysis and design at the Community College of Southern Nevada UNLV. She became information systems manager for Harrah's Casino, working at the job for 10 years before moving to the Tropicana Hotel and Casino, where she worked for another decade. In between those employment stints, Crooks worked for a brief time at Whamo Manufacturing Corp. as a systems analyst.
Crooks also obtained and held a gaming license for 13 years, owning and operating a Las Vegas bar and restaurant with slot machines.
Since being in Pahrump for the past five years, she has been involved in many activities of Pahrump Senior Citizens Inc., having volunteered to serve on its board of directors. For the past three and a half years she has been the board's president.
Crooks also served as secretary of the Pahrump Valley Community Action Team (PVCAT). Additionally, she is involved with the Golden Monarch Committee, raising money for the Nathan Adelson Hospice.
Among Crook's issues with the way the county is being run are the following:
• "I'd like to see a balanced budget, and I think I can see that happen."
• I think we can bring additional monies into Nye County through additional federal grants. We don't take enough opportunities to do that."
• "We have a very serious problem in Nye County and the state of Nevada with the growth of the senior population. If we don't start doing something about this before the baby boomers get to age 70 we're going to have a (more) serious problem."
• "We need to bring in some vocational education for the valley's youth; actually, Nye County's youth."
• "I'm totally against high-density growth. I don't want to see the same mistakes made here that Las Vegas has made."
• "We need to balance economic growth with maintaining a rural atmosphere."
• "The county needs to support the town of Pahrump's Fire and Rescue Service through various federal grants." Crooks said that in her work on the board of directors of the senior center, she has become aware of available grants at the county level.
• "We need to quit operating on the county level of managing by crisis instead of being proactive. We should have had all this stuff in place a long time ago. The impact fees (recently passed) by the board of commissioners are still confused. I have a lot of compassion for builders as to what is required of them."
• "We need to have a more responsive government."
• "We need to have a new senior center. We have a lot of seniors (in Pahrump), and the present center is not functional. We need to bring in more state services, not only for seniors, but for families (as well). Developmentally disabled adults are falling through the cracks. We really don't have anything like that."
• On Yucca Mountain Crooks says, "As far as I'm concerned (it) is a done deal. We need to get as much money out of it as we can. The Department of Energy was talking about building a huge science lab in the area," which she supports. Crooks doesn't thing presidential candidate John Kerry will be able to stop Yucca Mountain from going forward if he is elected president. "Since the 1960s, with Area 51 the government has been discussing putting nuclear waste here."
• On moving the county seat from Tonopah to Pahrump, Crooks says, "Absolutely it has to be moved here. We can't keep running two separate county seats." She said that in talking to a state official in Carson City she was told it would be appropriate to reconfigure the county lines at Goldfield and "let Tonopah be the county seat of Esmeralda (County)."
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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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