Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
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Yucca Mountain Update
October 12, 2004
DOE Failed to Alert Workers to Disease Risk
Editor´s note:The following story is reprinted with permission from the August 5, 2004 issue of the Las Vegas SUN newspaper.
WASHINGTON – The Energy Department was warned of the dangers of silica at Yucca Mountain years before it told workers of the threat, department documents show.
Memos and e-mails sent over several years show that key managers were told there was silica dust, which can lead to the fatal lung disease silicosis, in the mountain's tunnels during and after the main tunnel of the proposed nuclear waste repository was dug.
The documents, which are public and part of the department's material supporting its license application to build the repository, show that the department failed to follow up on plans to protect workers.
And, the documents show, the department waited almost three years to notify workers after being warned that it needed to do so.
Feds Knew of Silica Dangers in Yucca Tunnels for Years
"The Department of Energy sent their workers into that mountain knowing full well of the presence of silica and knowing full well that exposure to silica can cause death," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. "DOE also knew that exposure is 100 percent preventable, but did nothing that would have protected these workers."
Reid held a Senate subcommittee field hearing in Las Vegas earlier this year. Workers now ill from their time in the mountain talked about their experiences.
"The fact that the DOE withheld this information from the workers at the Yucca Mountain site is completely irresponsible and further proves the reckless fashion in which this project is being handled," Reid said.
The Energy Department did not respond to several requests for comment. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., called the attitude shown in the document "the height of arrogance."
"Rather than just a case of negligence or carelessness, these documents indicate that DOE knew its actions were wrong and that workers should have been told years earlier about the dangers created by tunneling work without proper protection," she said.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said the Energy Department chose to "ignore the danger and put their employees at risk in order to keep the Yucca Mountain Project on schedule."
"If the Department of Energy has such blatant disregard for the life, health and safety of their own employees, how can we trust they will protect the health and safety of the American public by storing 77,000 tons of high level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain?" he said.
Several Energy Department contractors are facing a class-action lawsuit filed in District Court earlier this year. The lawsuit is led by former Yucca Mountain employee Gene Griego, who worked at Yucca Mountain from 1993 to 2002, during the research phase, and was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease last year.
The department said it created its screening program after employees, like Griego, raised concerns about their exposure in September 2003. It acknowledged worker protections were not strongly enforced during times workers could be exposed, and documents show it knew of the potential health risk to the workers but still did not notify them until this year.
An April 2001 memo shows the department knew the severity of keeping the exposure a secret as well as the importance of getting workers tests for disease.
"An issue concerning silica exposures will become more visible as time goes by," according to an April 4, 2001, memo labeled "sensitive" from department Industrial Hygienist Phillip Boehme to Suzanne Mellington, assistant manager of the office of project execution. "Workers in the early days of Yucca Mountain were exposed to silica without respiratory protection. It is advisable to medically monitor them through the rest of their lives."
He recommended that "all exposed employees from the early years must be identified" and contacted, even if they no longer work for the department.
Boehme even said the program "may become newsworthy" and "illnesses may become subject of lawsuits, even class action."
"We should begin a coordinated effort," he wrote. "Lawsuits, public affairs and medical surveillance will be shared problems."
Three different memos, two from 2001 and one from 2002, from Wilbert Townsend, an engineering specialist, show raised silica levels long after the drilling stopped and that the limits the department was using were outdated or lab reports were wrong.
On Feb. 13, 2002, Townsend monitored levels inside the mountain and found that people working in certain areas at that time would be overexposed in about four hours without appropriate protection.
"This is still dangerous," said attorney Joe Egan. "This is years after the digging."
After examining the documents, Egan, of Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch and Cynkar, one of the law firms representing Griego and the other plaintiffs in the class-action suit, said he has found similar ones showing the department delayed getting the message to workers.
"These show they anticipated it, yet still did not have the courtesy to tell these people they should be going to the doctor," Egan said. "DOE (the Energy Department) actually set up procedures and requirements but the contractors said no."
Egan also represents the state in its battle against the Yucca project, but the state is not a party to the silicosis case.
The documents essentially paint a chronology of the Energy Department's knowledge of the problems with silica and show that the department was slow to act despite warnings.
Glenn Milligan, manager of the Safety and Health Complication Department, sent a letter to project manager Carl Gertz outlining a silica sampling plan for the project in July 1992, four months before the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health issued a nationwide alert about silicosis to any workers involved in rock drilling.
However, an evaluation of training and tunnel operations from July 18, 1994, to Aug. 12, 1994, found there was no safety training for supervisors who specifically worked with the tunnel boring machine.
The project also had problems equipping workers with safety equipment to protect against silicosis.
In August 1994 Wendy Dixon, the project's assistant manager for environment, safety and health, wrote Daniel Koss, the technical project officer for the site characterization office, that those working in the tunnel "must use appropriate respiratory protection" and the appropriate sampling should occur to monitor the exposure.
Margaret Chu, the project's current director, told Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in February that dust masks were available but more advanced respiratory protection was not available -- or their use enforced -- until 1996.
In March 1996 Dixon told L. Dale Foust, technical project officer for the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office, that disposable respirators did not satisfy the required protection needed, so a better plan and stronger respirators were needed.
The documents also show a pattern of warnings, concerns and issues with silica:
• On April 15, 1996, four Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors were denied access to the site after a complaint.
• In May 1996, Dixon's name appears on an "informal memorandum" sent from Russell Baumeister, a safety and occupational health specialist on the project, saying certain activities like tunnel drilling and mining, labeled "dust producers," should be shut down for at least two hours prior to a visit by members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
"Visitors exposed to these operations may exceed the exposure levels for silica," Baumeister wrote. "Visitors should have the capability to don respirators during their visit."
• A May 1996 memo from Robert Hull, a health and safety coordinator, said that silica levels in at least six of the 10 researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory who visited the site that month exceeded the enforcement levels. Hull recommended the employees be given respiratory protection and said the lab should perform its own monitoring.
• A Sept. 5, 1996, "informal memorandum" from Dr. Fred Kissell of the department's Pittsburgh Research Center wrote that it was "not feasible to clean up the entire tunnel."
"There are too many sources of dust, the cost is unreasonable and the implementation time is too long," Kissell wrote. "It has been suggested that new ventilation lines be established to remove dusty air from the alcoves. This many help a little but suffers from cost and implementation time problems."
• J. Davitt McAteer, assistant secretary for mine safety and health, wrote the department in October 1996 after an assessment had been done in April 1996.
"If (the Mine Safety and Health Administration) had inspected the Yucca Mountain project as a regular mine, the 10 Compliance Assistance Visit notices given to the Department of Energy representatives would have been citations and a time limit for abatement would have been set," McAteer wrote.
All contents copyright 2004 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
Denial of State and County Oversight Funds –
A New Low Even For DOE
Just when you thought there´s no way for DOE to be more outrageous when it comes to the Yucca Mountain program, the Department manages to come up with ever more outlandish and heavy-handed decisions.
The latest is a decision attempting to severely limit how the state and local governments can use specially earmarked federal Yucca Mountain oversight funds. DOE told a meeting of affected units of government in August that they will no longer be permitted to use such funds to oversee DOE´s license application process, participate in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission´s licensing proceedings, or engage in any planning or oversight related to the transportation of waste to the proposed repository.
Outrageous? You bet. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 as amended clearly intended for Nevada and its affected counties to be provided with funds to oversee DOE Yucca Mountain activities and to participate in the program until two years after DOE had received a license to begin bringing waste to the facility. Today, the most important DOE activities requiring oversight are DOE´s efforts to plan for and implement a transportation program for getting waste to Yucca Mountain and DOE´s work related to the preparation and submission of a license application the NRC.
Yet these are precisely the areas where DOE wants to deny affected jurisdictions the use of federal oversight monies.
Attempts to restrict the use of nuclear waste oversight funds are not new. As early as 1984, DOE attempted to prevent the State of Nevada from using federal funds for overseeing the Department´s technical work at Yucca Mountain after state researchers began to focus on fundamental flaws with the site that DOE was ignoring. The state was forced to go to court to compel DOE to comply with the law.
Later, in the 1980s, DOE sought to put a halt to the state´s socioeconomic impact assessment work when findings from those studies were beginning to reveal significant negative effects from the proposed repository project. A pattern emerged over the years whereby DOE, either directly or through its supporters in Congress, would seek to restrict Nevada´s use of funds for those activities that were producing findings not in sync with the DOE´s party line on Yucca Mountain.
In the 1990s, DOE unilaterally withheld all funds for the state´s oversight program at a time when crucial site characterization work was underway and findings strongly questioning the Yucca site´s suitability were coming out.
Despite clear language in the 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requiring DOE to provide funds to affected units of local government, DOE initially sought to deny such funds to affected Nevada counties. The counties actually had to file a lawsuit (which they won) to force DOE to comply with the law. Over a decade later, however, DOE is still thumbing its nose at the law and continuing to play politics with oversight monies.
Why has DOE been so consistently and adamantly opposed to carrying out the clear intent of federal law that the State of Nevada and formally designated affected units of government be provided with adequate funds to oversee the Yucca Mountain program? The answer seems obvious. DOE simply cannot operate under the glare of real, legitimate oversight.
From the beginning, DOE has sought to cover up shoddy science, horrendous mis-management, and wasteful spending at Yucca Mountain. Now that cover-up is continuing with respect to how DOE is approaching transportation planning and the NRC licensing process.
At the same time DOE is denying legitimate oversight funds to the state and counties, the Department is coddling favor with certain "friendly" local governments by making monies available outside the established process for oversight funds. While denying funds for transportation studies to Clark County (arguably the Nevada county most potentially affected by shipments of deadly nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain) and other counties, DOE is lavishing discretionary funds through so-called "cooperative agreements" on three counties that it counts as allies.
In spite of – or perhaps because of – DOE´s ongoing attempts to shield itself from meaningful oversight, the Yucca Mountain program is on the verge of collapse. Nevada´s recent legal victory (in which the court ruled that Yucca Mountain must be able to meet stringent waste isolation standards that the site is incapable of meeting) is likely the death knell for the program. But the court really did nothing more than validate what the state´s oversight program has been telling DOE for years that Yucca Mountain simply won´t cut it.
This latest attempt to discourage meaningful oversight of its Yucca Mountain activities should be seen for what it is – a last ditch attempt by a bankrupt and dying program to hide fundamental flaws and incompetence.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 12, 2004
Appeals court denies Yucca radiation request
State: Without standard, application would be worthless
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court has denied a request to keep the Yucca Mountain radiation standards in place until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear the case.
With just under three months to go before the Energy Department plans to submit a license application for the planned nuclear waste dump, the court's original decision to throw out the radiation standard will take effect in a week or less.
In a one-page order issued Friday, the court denied the request by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, but gave no explanation of its decision.
The department has insisted it would meet its self-imposed deadline of Dec. 30 to file the license application, but Deputy Secretary of Energy Kyle McSlarrow said last month that goal may not be met.
State officials say that without a radiation standard any application the department would submit this year would be worthless because all the science and data in it would be based on a protection standard that no longer exists.
"It's a free country and you can mail packages to whomever you want but that doesn't mean it has any effect in the real world," said Joe Egan, an attorney hired by the state to handle Yucca issues.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the Environmental Protection Agency will develop an appropriate regulatory response to the court's decision.
"We have a whole lot of unanswered questions affecting the program right now, including a decision by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) on the (document database), a regulatory standard yet to be determined and that is several months away, and the budget for the program."
The Energy Department has received other setbacks this year. The federal budget has not been passed and so far the project has been slated to receive less money than it hoped for to continue the work on the waste dump. The NRC also found it had not met a deadline to turn in a database of backup documents for its application -- a decision that could push the project timeline back.
Davis did not say whether the department still could meet the Dec. 30 deadline for the license application.
In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out the 10,000 year radiation compliance period for the proposed nuclear waste storage project at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, had to meet. The court found the Environmental Protection Agency did not follow recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, as outlined in a federal energy law. The academy saw no reason to use a 10,000-year standard but wanted the site to be able to hold radiation in through the peak dose period, which would come several hundred thousand years into the future.
The court also threw out the NRC's licensing rule using the radiation standard until Congress changed the law requiring the EPA to follow the academy's recommendation, or the EPA came up with a new standard. This means the commission could not evaluate that portion of the license until a new compliance standard was in place.
The radiation standard stayed in place for several months because the Nuclear Energy Institute asked the court to rehear the case, which was denied, and then asked the court to keep the standard in place until the Supreme Court could decide to take up the case.
The Department of Justice's Office of Solicitor General has said the federal government will not take the case to the Supreme Court.
Egan said the state also will not pursue the matter in the Supreme Court. He said by taking out the radiation standard, the state has removed the "constitutional defect" it argued wrongfully singled out the state.
The court ruling did not outright stop the project, but may delay it because a new standard could take at least two years to complete, especially if the academy is asked to provide comment on it, Egan said.
The department aims to open the repository by 2010.
NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes said the group's senior staff is evaluating what this decision means and what its next steps will be.
NRC spokesman David McIntyre said if and when the commission receives a license application, it will review it for technical information to see it if can be accepted and the court's decision will be weighed at that time.
"The 10,000 year question will be part of that review," McIntyre said.
Calls to the Environmental Protection Agency were not returned.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 12, 2004
AG warns Yucca board about open meeting law violations
By Stephen Curran
Las Vegas Sun
Members of a board created to study the proposed rail line from Caliente to Yucca Mountain may have knowingly violated Nevada's open meeting laws when it closed its doors to local residents and media, according an attorney general's legal opinion released Monday.
In the opinion, Deputy Attorney General Neil Rombardo wrote that the Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group, which includes members of the Caliente City Council and the Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln county commissions, fit the state's definition as a "public body" and, as such, was bound by open meeting laws.
The opinion comes in response to a complaint that was originally made in April by the Sun and joined by the Nevada Press Association.
The working group, which uses federal money for Yucca Mountain oversight, was formed earlier this year to allow the governments to cooperate in their dealings with the Energy Department. It came under fire in April after members allowed Pahrump residents Sally Devlin and Grant Hudlow to address the board when it met at the Pahrump Community Library, then asked them to leave.
Devlin and Hudlow are members of Citizen Alert, an anti-Yucca advocacy group. A reporter from the Pahrump Valley Times was also asked to leave.
The opinion states that "the pattern of deception, privacy, exclusion and non-disclosure by the members of the (working group) strongly suggests the level of intent necessary for a criminal violation of the Open Meeting Law."
The advisory opinion does not entail civil or criminal charges for the group's members because it was issued after the 120-day statute of limitations ran out, Rombardo said.
It does, however, include a proposed settlement agreement between the attorney general's office and the working group that requires the board reconsider all past items discussed in the private meetings. The agreement would bar the group from considering new items until the old ones had been revisited in public.
The group still needs to sign off on the deal.
"If they violate it again, that's when we consider whether to litigate," Rombardo said. "We do stand ready and willing to litigate this case."
Future complaints could effectively nullify each of the working group's decisions and could mean misdemeanor charges for its members, he said.
Lincoln County Commission Chairman Spencer Hafen, a working group member who in previous meetings has been designated a main contact between the counties and the Energy Department, said the working group will comply with the opinion.
"I can live with it," he said. "I have no problems with it. We'll carry on with the same goals in mind. We'll just have to make sure it's open to the public."
Hafen and other members had previously told the Sun they did not believe the meetings were subject to the law because the members does not represent a quorum and does not vote on policy.
He said he still does not think the closed meetings broke the open meeting law.
"I felt it was a working group," Hafen said. "It was just a group of people getting together to hammer out issues. I don't really feel there was anything wrong done, but if the attorney general says so we will open them up."
The proposed 318-mile rail line to Yucca Mountain has created a division between bustling Clark County and the rural counties that would be home to the railroad. Government officials in Nye, Lincoln and Esmeralda counties have long touted the project as a potential boon for their flagging economies.
The Nye County Commission in July approved a resolution "constructively and energetically " supporting the development of the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
Kent Lauer, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, applauded the opinion, calling the members' defense "nonsense."
"Their excuse that they didn't have to obey the open meeting law because they were an informal group was nonsense," Lauer said. "They simply didn't want to conduct the public's business in public."
The open meeting law defines a public body as "any administrative, executive or legislative body of the state or a local government," which either spends or disburses taxpayer money or advises a government body that does.
A judge in 1987 ordered that meetings stay open unless there is a specific exemption in the law to allow the public body to hold a closed meeting.
Lincoln County Commissioner Tommy Rowe, a working group member, defended the decision to close the meetings, saying that open meetings would prevent members from having "a decent discussion" without being interrupted.
After the complaint was filed, Rowe said he urged working group members to post meeting agendas, although those meetings continued to exclude the public.
"The main reason is that they (the meetings) involve Yucca Mountain," Rowe said. "It's such a controversial issue that there are always the radical people. You couldn't have a decent discussion without people objecting to everything that's said."
Devlin praised the opinion but wished it had come sooner.
"I want open meetings, and I want accountability," she said. "The public doesn't know what's going on. There's too much secret stuff. There's all kinds of hanky panky going on."
Hafen, meanwhile, said he did not believe opening the meetings would drastically slow the process.
Future meetings, including one tentatively scheduled for early November in Lincoln County, will continue, he said.
"It will be a little more difficult," Hafen said. "But we'll just have to make sure everything is posted and timely. I think, overall, what we're trying to accomplish will still get done."
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Las Vegas SUN
October 12, 2004
Editorial: 5 percent looms large
Results last week from a poll partially sponsored by the Las Vegas Sun revealed that 56 percent of Nevadans most likely to vote "strongly oppose" Yucca Mountain. Another 10 percent said they were "somewhat opposed" to the nuclear waste dump the federal government is planning to open in six years 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. And 36 percent of the voters said Yucca Mountain was among the most important issues for them.
An additional 5 percent felt that Yucca Mountain was the most important issue. This should not be discounted as miniscule. Ralph Nader, and the Libertarian Party candidate, Michael Badnarik, for example, will very likely not get 5 percent between them.
John Kerry has guaranteed Nevadans that "Yucca Mountain is not going to happen" if he's elected. In a close race, those 5 percent of voters could carry the state for Kerry, who deserves their votes. From that perspective, they loom large indeed.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 12, 2004
UNLV profs: Yucca won't be key issue in race
Political experts discuss key elements of campaigns
By Dan Kulin
<dan@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas Sun
With Las Vegas on the verge of a presidential-candidate filled couple of days, some of the top political scientists at UNLV gathered for an on-campus forum Monday night to talk about the coming election.
The panel of six academics agreed the war in Iraq is the biggest issue in the campaign, but some said that issue might be overshadowed in key states.
"In some key battleground states the economy may overpower terrorism or Iraq," said Kenneth Fernandez, whose expertise is in public policy and American politics.
While the debate over turning Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste dump might energize some voters, panel members said it doesn't appear the issue will play a large role in the election.
"It won't turn Republicans to Democrats or vice-versa, but it may well turn nonvoters into voters," political science Professor Ted Jelen said.
Overall there was agreement that President George Bush and Sen. John Kerry are locked in a close race.
The first debate "rendered the contest competitive," assistant professor Michele Kuenzi said.
Jelen agreed it could go to the wire. "The evidence suggests we're heading toward another all-nighter if not another all-monther."
About 50 people attended the forum, which was held at the Richard Tam Alumni Center at UNLV and was hosted by Las Vegas ONE anchor Jeff Gillan. The forum was held as Las Vegas readies for the expected arrival of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Wednesday, and then Kerry and Bush on Thursday.
The forum also touched on the congressional race between incumbent Republican Jon Porter and Democrat Tom Gallagher.
David Fott, who specializes in American government and politics, said Gallagher would likely need a big boost from the Kerry camp to beat the incumbent. He also said it is unusual for candidates with a sizable lead, such as Porter, to turn to negative campaigning, and others agreed.
"Porter is running as if he's four points behind, and not like someone with a double-digit lead," Jelen said.
The panel also weighed in on the explosion of ballot initiatives. Clark County residents will see at least 10 on the ballot.
Assistant professor David Damore said the original intent of ballot initiatives was that they would be a grass-roots effort from the voters. However, they are instead tools of special interests that use the initiative process to work around state Legislatures.
Kuenzi said ballot initiatives are bad for democracy because they remove consensus-building from the political process.
The forum also discussed the Electoral College.
Ann Ward, an expert in ancient political philosophy, said the Electoral College has certainly affected the choice of presidential candidates. For example, Kerry's running mate John Edwards was picked at least in part because he is from North Carolina and is expected to help win Southern votes.
Likewise, Bush hails from the electoral-vote-rich state of Texas, she said.
Damore added that the Electoral College creates a disincentive to campaigning across the country, because candidates are best served by focusing on the states where the races will be close.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
October 12, 2004
Candidates differ on Yucca positions
Assembly races: Environmental issues discussed at main library.
Alison Bath
Reno Gazette-Journal
Nevada Assembly candidates don´t differ much on their positions about area environmental concerns except when it comes to storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
A majority of candidates participating in Monday night´s Environmental Leadership “Meet the Candidates Night’ at the Washoe County main library agreed taking money in negotiations with the U.S. Department of Energy regarding the nuclear waste dump proposed for the desert near Las Vegas was a bad idea.
But Randi Thompson, the Republican candidate in District 31, said the idea might be tolerable.
Nevada should accept federal funds and use them to ensure the dump is safe and productive, Thompson said. State legislators also should consider ways Nevada could profit from accepting nuclear waste, she said.
“We should be looking at ways we can reprocess (nuclear waste),’ said Thompson, who noted she didn´t support the decision to put the nation´s nuclear waste dump in Nevada. “Let´s utilize it as a resource.’
Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, urged the audience to “stay the course’ and not assume the dump was inevitable.
“By negotiating, we are clearly undermining our position,’ said Leslie of District 27. “It is absolutely the wrong course (of action).’
Thompson and Leslie were among eight candidates who spoke to about 40 area residents attending the forum.
Other panel members were Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks; District 30 Democratic candidate Debbie Smith; District 25 Democratic candidate Dan Meyer; District 24 candidates Republican Brooks Holcomb and Democrat David Love; and District 26 Democratic candidate Paul Mozen.
The discussion, moderated by University of Nevada, Reno environmental sciences professor Nancy Markee, included topics such as as a coal-fired plant proposed near Gerlach, sales of local water rights to out-of-state companies, noxious weed control and encouraging alternative energy sources.
Anderson and most other panel members agreed with state initiatives to encourage the use of geothermal, solar and other alternative energy, saying those efforts also required providing incentives to producers and buyers.
“We need to encourage a partnership between renewable energy and utility companies and then go on from there,’ Anderson said.
But Meyer said those efforts would fall flat if consumers weren´t encouraged to use alternative energy.
“We need also to provide incentives to homeowners to jump on the band wagon,’ he said.
Reno resident Lisa Kornze, 29, said listening to Meyer´s and other candidates´ positions on local environmental issues would influence her vote.
“If they are not going to be (for) preserving our environment within limits that benefit Nevadans, then I´m not going to support them,’ Kornze said.
Karen Fontaine of Reno said she was impressed with the panel´s knowledge of environmental issues and relieved to know many didn´t support the coal plant.
“I was reassured (to find out) that they were working to prevent it,’ said the 57-year-old who works at Truckee Meadows Community College.
Forum coordinator Sonya Hem said the turnout of residents such as Kornze and Fontaine shows a growing voter concern over ecological problems.
“Environmental issues are very close to the surface,’ said Hem, Environmental Leadership executive director. “People are becoming more and more aware.’
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Reno Gazette-Journal
October 12, 2004
The Contest for Nevada
Visits increase as Bush and Kerry stake claim to state´s valuable electoral votes
Anjeanette Damon
Reno Gazette-Journal
When Scott Blair and his friends tried to go to the Reno Hilton to play video games one night last month, the vice president of the United States got in the way.
Traffic gridlock surrounded the hotel-casino as Vice President Dick Cheney´s motorcade arrived that night.
“You couldn´t get around,’ said Blair, a 21-year-old Reno security guard who said he doesn´t vote because “it´s not up to us’ who wins.
Cheney´s visit was one of 11 that he, President Bush and first lady Laura Bush have made to Nevada this year to woo voters in a state that could swing the presidential election. U.S. Sen. John Kerry, his running mate U.S. Sen. John Edwards and their family members have made 10 campaign stops in Nevada this year.
The unprecedented attention has many voters wondering what happened to Nevada´s position as an “afterthought’ in national politics.
“We´re seeing multiple presidential visits, vice presidential visits, their wives, major military figures, political figures, Michael Moore,’ said state archivist Guy Rocha. “We´re getting attention like we´ve never seen.’
As the Nov. 2 election draws nearer, the attention isn´t likely to diminish.
Bush and Kerry remain locked in a head-to-head dual for Nevada´s five electoral votes. All year, statewide polls have remained split between the two major candidates.
On Thursday, Bush and his wife and Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, will be campaigning in Nevada. They will be taking advantage of valuable face time with Nevada voters, as well as the local media blitz their arrival creates.
“In the final 23 days, Nevadans can expect to see and hear a lot from the Bush-Cheney campaign,’ said Tracey Schmitt, the Bush-Cheney campaign´s Nevada spokeswoman. “We intend to flood the zone.’
Nevada´s battleground status could have some long-term effects. As Las Vegas grows, it is becoming a fertile ground for campaign donations.
And the presidential race has put a spotlight on some state issues, such as the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
“John Kerry says, ‘If I´m elected there will be no Yucca Mountain,´’ Rocha said. “That would be a tremendous outcome if, in fact, it were to come to pass.’
But in all likelihood, Nevada´s national glory will be fleeting, Rocha said. If the political dynamics change next year, the Silver State and its electoral votes may return to “afterthought’ status.
“Nevada should enjoy the attention it´s got right now,’ Rocha said. “We´re not guaranteed on getting this attention in the rest of the 21st century.’
With eight Nevada campaign stops, Bush and Cheney have been to the state three more times than Kerry and Edwards.
The discrepancy is even greater in how many times each candidate has visited Reno, with stops by Bush, Cheney and their wives outnumbering Kerry-Edwards visits to Northern Nevada two-to-one. Kerry has not been to Reno at all, but has promised to make it to Northern Nevada before Election Day.
The campaigns rely on visits as a way for voters to see in person who they may be choosing to lead the country.
Although candidates have delivered only their standard stump speeches in Reno — the same remarks repeat at campaign stops across the country — they often take time to shake hands and kiss babies.
Brian Fletcher, a political analyst and instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, said candidate visits can be more valuable than television commercials.
“Local visits, on a dollar-per-vote basis, are more effective than national advertising,’ Fletcher said.
While campaign visits often attract people who already support the candidate, they also generate front-page headlines and top-of-the-broadcast news stories that sometimes run for days, Fletcher said.
And with national studies indicating more voters learn about candidates from their local television news than from national news programs, campaigns are motivated to exploit the venue.
On that front, the Kerry-Edwards campaign has provided more access to local reporters than the Bush-Cheney campaign.
In their eight visits to Nevada this year, Bush and Cheney have not granted any interviews with local reporters.
Each time Kerry has visited Las Vegas, he has spent time with Nevada reporters. Elizabeth Edwards spoke with Reno reporters during her visit to the University of Nevada, Reno, including a reporter from the campus newspaper.
Her husband, however, was not available to local reporters during his visit. Instead, John Edwards used his extra time in Reno to run on a treadmill at the Reno Hilton.
Although Bush and Cheney have visited Reno more than Kerry and Edwards, Smith said the campaign is not ceding Northern Nevada to the Republicans. Instead, he thinks the number of Bush-Cheney visits signals the campaign is worried about its momentum here.
The Kerry-Edwards campaign has kept up a steady stream of surrogate visits. Supporters stumping for Kerry in Reno have included television stars, politicians, veterans who served with Kerry and mothers of soldiers serving in Iraq.
“These are people who are putting their lives on hold in some form or another and traveling, not because they are seeking votes, but because they believe so strongly in the candidate,’ Smith said.
Shirl Moore-Byas, chairwoman of the Washoe County Black Democratic Caucus, said candidate visits reach people in ways television sound bites cannot.
But she said she prefers townhall-style visits, where audience members can ask their own questions, to campaign rallies featuring 15-minute stump speeches.
“It´s always better for the people to not have such a structured environment,’ she said.
Beyond encouraging votes, the visits have disrupted traffic, shopping trips and club meetings. For many people, the closest they´ve come to seeing a candidate rally was being stuck in the traffic jam outside the event venue.
“We were on our way to Burlington (coat factory) when the president was here,’ said Edrick Bay, a 22-year-old University of Nevada, Reno student. “There was a lot of pandemonium.’
Nevada´s importance to the presidential election is intriguing for Brian Wilkerson and his wife, Rosemary Wilkerson. The Republican couple live in Susanville, Calif., a state traditionally ignored by presidential candidates because of its historic tendency to side with the Democratic candidate.
“I think it´s a neat opportunity,’ Rosemary Wilkerson said. “I´d love to see the first lady. But with the traffic and problems it seems like it´s really disruptive to your community and a lot of added expense.’
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Reno Gazette-Journal
October 12, 2004
Letters to the Editor for Oct. 12, 2004
A President Kerry can stop nuke dump
Your recent editorial on Yucca Mountain [Oct. 7] underestimates the power of the president in deciding the fate of the project. The president has significant influence over budget priorities, and, without money, the project would wither on the vine. The Department of Energy must have the green light from the president before applying for any license to operate Yucca Mountain. If scientific concerns are raised, the president can decide whether to heed or ignore them and whether to enforce or disregard our environmental laws. Lastly, as we so clearly saw in 2000 when President Clinton prevented Congress from shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, the president has veto power.
That makes the major differences between George W. Bush and John Kerry on the issue of Yucca all the more relevant. Bush is determined to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain by the end of the decade regardless of the safety issues, violating his own promise to heed the advice of scientists. Kerry has spent more than a decade working alongside the Nevada delegation to block Yucca, and he has said in no uncertain terms that he would use all of his power as president to stop the project from happening.
Patricia Jones
Reno
Sierra Club
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Salt Lake Tribune
October 12, 2004
Bishop engages new strategy in attempt to derail N-waste storage
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
WASHINGTON - There still may be life left in efforts by Utah's congressional delegation to block storage of high-level nuclear waste in the state, despite suffering a major setback this week.
“The issue is still alive,’ said Rep. Rob Bishop. “As long as there are still days in this session there are still cards left to play.’
Bishop's bill, which seeks to establish a wilderness area in Utah's west desert, and in the process block a rail line needed to deliver waste to the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, was quietly tacked onto an innocuous package of land bills this week.
The measure is the best option left to block the waste from coming to the state, since key senators objected to including the provision in a defense spending bill passed Friday.
It is unclear when the Senate might consider the package of bills sent to them by the House. Congressional leaders are moving quickly to try to finish work and return home before the election. There are plans to return following the election, but with a limited agenda.
The sprawling range is used by the Air Force for training missions and missile tests. Storing the nuclear waste so near the range could severely limit its usefulness, Bishop said, because of the risk a stray missile or plane could smash into the casks containing the waste and release radiation.
Losing the range would hurt the state's case when the Defense Department begins its upcoming round of base closures. Wilderness status would prevent the BLM from licensing a rail line across the land.
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Twin Falls Times-News
October 12, 2004
Some view nuke waste bill suspiciously ... Anti-nuclear interests remain worried about precedent it sets
The Associated Press
BOISE -- Nuclear waste critics believe Idaho dodged, at least or now, attempts to weaken cleanup efforts at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
But they worry that the cleanup plan could still be attacked in Congress.
"We're lucky that we got what we got, and that's thanks in part to the folks at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality keeping their eye on the ball," Snake River Alliance Director Jeremy Maxand said on Monday. "Our concern is the process. It shut the public and interest groups out in the cold."
Legislation won final congressional approval last weekend to reverse a July 2003 federal court ruling that the Energy Department cannot unilaterally reclassify radioactive sludge from nuclear bomb production as low-level waste that does not have to removed to the nation's nuclear waste dump, now slated for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The entire issue was handled without hearings or public involvement and that's what should worry state officials, Maxand said.
"So we got out of this, so the state of Idaho fought for some regulatory oversights and got them," Maxand said. "But that doesn't mean that the Department of Energy won't pull something like this to our state's detriment in the future.
"This is not how you should make policy," he said. "This is not how you build bridges. This isn't how you build relationships with communities."
The department lobbied hard for the legislation following the court ruling in Idaho, ignoring warnings that failing to completely clean out the tanks would affect water supplies. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the new law will accelerate waste cleanup projects and save $16 billion.
The legislation awaiting President Bush's signature applies only to sludge in the 51 underground tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. It keeps the 10 remaining tanks at INEEL under 1990s court-enforced cleanup agreements with the Department of Energy while specifically excluding the 177 tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington.
The government contends its plans for the South Carolina tanks protect the environment. The sludge, the final 1,000 gallons of material at the bottom of the tanks, will be mixed with grout to stabilize it and then concrete will be poured in until the entire tank is filled.
South Carolina leaders supported the plan and won the backing of Idaho lawmakers once the bill excluded material at INEEL from the reclassification provision.
"This bill now lays out a process of using the standards of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- and the regulatory control of the state of Idaho -- to force DOE into the cleanup that we intended to extract from them all along," Republican U.S. Sen. Larry Craig said.
GOP Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and his Democratic and Republican predecessors all criticized the attempt to legalize the reclassification of the South Carolina sludge, warning that it jeopardized Idaho's cleanup plans. But Kempthorne dropped his opposition with the addition of the provision protecting Idaho.
The governor agreed with Maxand and others that slipping the issue into a compromise defense bill without going through normal legislative processes was not his preferred way to make policy, but said the bill "protects our legal agreements, relies on publicly vetted radiation standards and provides for independent oversight and judicial review."
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San Antonio Express
October 12, 2004
Carlos Guerra: Last presidential debate could be pivotal to election outcome
When President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry meet for the ultimate job interview Wednesday, a large percentage of their closely divided bosses will watch.
Historically, the first debate draws the largest audience but, with Bush's poll lead growing, expectations for this year's opener weren't great. Surprisingly, it drew a whopping 62.5 million viewers as the race's momentum changed.
In its wake, the vice-presidential debate — usually a low-key affair that very few watch — pulled 44 million viewers, as many as the Oscars. And Friday's second presidential debate drew 46.7 million viewers, compared with 37.6 million who watched the second presidential debate in 2000.
Now, few will handicap Wednesday's Tempest in Tempe, which supposedly will be devoted entirely to domestic and economic policies. That being Kerry's strong suit, many expect that the discussion will also drift to the war.
"The debates have been contentious but they haven't been substantive," says St. Mary's political science professor Larry Hufford. Many disagree, but few doubt that the final debate could be pivotal.
"John Kerry has to be very forceful about what's wrong with the economy and what he's going to do," Hufford says. "He can't say, 'I have a plan.' He has got to be specific because this is where Bush is most vulnerable.
"George Bush is going to try to take attention away from the economy by focusing on social issues (such as) gay marriage, abortion," he says. "That will shore up his base among social conservatives."
But I also expect that the untimely death of Christopher Reeve, whom Kerry mentioned in the second debate, will prompt discussion about stem cell research.
Chances also seem good that other domestic and economic issues already visited, such as joblessness, tax cuts and tax incentives for firms that create jobs abroad will get more attention.
We are also likely to hear more about the federal government's role in providing good public education, Hufford believes, while several readers believe we should hear more about tax credits for children and to offset health care insurance and college tuition.
Since the final debate will be in the battleground state of Arizona, and close to New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado — also toss-ups — Bush and Kerry may address some issues about which they have said little, such as immigration and international trade.
Another regional issue is the Yucca Mountain Project, a high-level nuclear waste dump that has become politically contentious in Nevada.
"There needs to be concrete proposals about the 44 million men and women whose families don't have health insurance," Hufford says. "And are you going to privatize Social Security and if so, how?
"And what's the responsibility of the government going to be if you place a lot of that into the stock market and the market goes under for even a few years?"
In the meantime, Editor & Publisher magazine reports that 15 major newspapers won't wait until Wednesday to make endorsements.
"The current official E&P count stands at 10 papers for Kerry and five for Bush," that publication's Web site reported Monday, "with Kerry holding about a 5-1 advantage in the circulation of the newspapers backing him."
If I were Kerry, I wouldn't start making the invitation lists for the inaugural parties just yet.
To leave a message for Carlos Guerra, call (210) 250-3545 or e-mail cguerra@express-news.net.
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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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