Yucca Mountain News Clips
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
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Las Vegas SUN
June 14, 2005
Reid praises nuke industry, but pushes Yucca alternative
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, offered rare -- if lukewarm -- words of praise for the nuclear industry Monday.
Reid said there is likely to be a continued "movement" toward constructing more U.S. nuclear power plants, which the nuclear industry has been advocating in recent years.
Even environmentalists have acknowledged that "if it's done right" nuclear power can help protect the environment, Reid said at a Capitol press conference on energy issues.
Reid said that for years he has opposed nuclear power for one reason -- because the nation's plan for dealing with high-level nuclear waste was to permanently bury it at Yucca Mountain, which Nevada officials oppose. Reid has said Yucca will never become a reality, however. The program has long suffered budgetary, regulatory and legal setbacks.
"Yucca Mountain certainly isn't dead, but it's on a breathing machine," Reid said.
Reid said he will continue to push for an alternative to Yucca: leaving waste stored where it is on-site at nuclear plants, although nuclear industry officials say that plan is unacceptable.
"Yucca Mountain has been set back for decades, so I think we'll have to start looking for a different direction as far as nuclear waste goes," Reid said.
Reid has not changed his longtime stance on nuclear power, aides said. Reid has not been an advocate for nuclear power, but he has not opposed nuclear power in general -- just Yucca Mountain, Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.
Reid made his remarks as the Senate was preparing to begin two weeks of debate today on an $11 billion energy bill. It lays out a comprehensive national plan aimed at raising domestic oil production, improving the electric grid and constructing a new generation of nuclear power plants.
Reid said Democrats intend to pursue legislation aimed at the goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent in 20 years. The goal can be met "without question," Reid said, although some Republicans have been skeptical. House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, has questioned which segment of the U.S. economy was going to give up that much oil.
Reid said Democrats were planning to push for an amendment that offers permanent tax credits for renewable energy resources. The legislation would offer a 1.8 cent tax credit for every kilowatt hour of energy produced by solar and geothermal energy sources, which can be developed in Nevada, Reid noted. The credit is already available to wind energy development.
Critics of Democratic energy plans have said the nation needs a strong focus on oil, coal and gas production and cannot rely on conservation efforts, hybrid fuel cars and renewable energy sources alone to meet soaring energy needs.
The House approved an energy plan bill in April. Skirmishes are expected between the chambers on a number of issues, including offshore oil drilling, drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and over lawsuit protections for companies that make the MTBE gasoline additive.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 14, 2005
First subpoena to be issued in Yucca e-mail investigation
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Geological Survey scientist Joe Hevesi is to be subpoenaed today to appear at a June 29 congressional subcommittee hearing to discuss his involvement with possibly falsified scientific research used to support the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump.
This marks the first subpoena issued in the House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee's investigation into e-mails written or seen by at least 10 different people that imply -- or sometimes plainly say -- how they worked around the project's quality assurance program, which is designed to show the site's science is sound.
The subpoena was necessary because "Mr. Hevesi has, to date, refused to cooperate with the subcommittee in its congressional investigation," according to the subcommittee announcement.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., chairman of the House subcommittee, said he has asked Hevesi to appear before the committee 23 times, including 17 requests to Hevesi's lawyer. He will ask the Energy Department one more time to comply with a document request, this time by June 29, he added.
The congressman said he will take whatever steps are necessary for the department to comply.
"Today's action shows I am serious," Porter said.
Porter said he wants to make sure "the science the White House used to make its decision was not science fiction."
Lawyer Joe Egan, who represents Nevada on Yucca issues, said a subpoena is a "powerful device" to order someone to appear before Congress. Anyone who violates such a subpoena can be fined or even jailed. An individual still can refuse to talk under the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, Egan said.
Hevesi, reached at his office late Monday, referred questions to USGS spokeswoman A.B. Wade. He said only that he had unofficially heard about the subpoena, but would answer no other questions.
Wade said Hevesi has retained his own lawyer and the government will not be representing him.
The latest Yucca controversy erupted in March when the Energy Department announced it had discovered e-mails written between May 1998 and March 2000 while reviewing documents in the project's database. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced that the messages indicate scientists falsified their data on the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Porter had first identified Hevesi as one of the scientists involved in the e-mail scandal in an April 10 letter asking him and fellow USGS employees Alan L. Flint and Lorraine E. Flint to meet with subcommittee staff and appear before the House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee. The hearing was eventually canceled at the last minute when the three employees refused to attend.
Wade said the subcommittee has now met with the Flints.
It was also discovered that Hevesi completed 40 hours of work worth $4,900 on the Yucca Mountain project while he was under investigation for possibly falsifying documents. The Energy Department rehired him briefly in March to help find computer files he helped create.
Wade said USGS handed over 3,000 pages of documents to the subcommittee on May 23, including a stack specifically on Hevesi that was about four inches high. The agency had given the documents on a CD earlier in May, but the subcommittee wanted printed copies.
The Interior and Energy Department inspectors general have ongoing investigations into the falsifications along with the FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Las Vegas. The Energy Department is conducting an additional investigation to see if the science was actually compromised.
Wade said the investigations are still ongoing and she was not sure when they would be done.
Porter, who was named chairman of the subcommittee in February, held a hearing in April with Energy and Interior Department officials, Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval and other witnesses. The subcommittee staff has its own ongoing investigation and is releasing information to the public as it can.
It released 93 pages of redacted e-mails and additional department documents in April. In one message, the author said he keeps two sets of files "the ones that will keep QA (quality assurance) happy and the ones that were actually used" while others talk about making stuff up and urge readers to delete the messages. The names had been redacted from the pages so it is not clear which messages Hevesi wrote.
Porter previously had referred to issuing a subpoena as a "last resort" early in his subcommittee's investigation, saying once one was on the table, it would change the nature of the whole investigation. House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., will issue the subpoena.
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Las Vegas SUN
June 14, 2005
Senate panel rebuffs House call for interim nuclear waste storage
By Erica Werner
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate spending panel on Tuesday rebuffed a House call to establish temporary storage sites for nuclear waste as a back-up to the delayed Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada.
A leading Yucca Mountain supporter, Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico, joined with a leading critic, Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, to criticize the House plan. Domenici called it "totally inadequate" and Reid said it was "half-baked."
The House measure, passed last month as part of a spending bill, called on the Energy Department to produce a plan for aboveground storage for spent reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants within four months at one or more federal sites, and to begin accepting waste by October 2006. It provided $10 million for the program.
The Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds energy and water projects passed a $31 billion spending bill on a voice vote Tuesday with no money for interim storage. Domenici chairs the panel and Reid is the top-ranking Democrat.
The bill funds the Yucca Mountain project at $577 million for 2006, which is the same as the 2005 level but less than President Bush's budget request of $651 million, which the House met.
"We have kept it going," Domenici said of the project.
He told reporters later that while he supports looking for new solutions for nuclear waste disposal, he doesn't like the plan championed by Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations energy subcommittee.
"It's totally inadequate. You can't start a program of that importance with $10 million and a paragraph," Domenici said.
"I'm willing to look at a whole new policy which could involve interim storage, but not this way," he said.
Reid, who supports leaving commercial nuclear waste at the reactor sites where it now sits in more than 30 states, voiced similar criticism.
"All the House has done has been to stir up members in an unproductive way," he said.
Some lawmakers worry that temporary storage could become permanent, and opposition in the House came from lawmakers representing sites mentioned in a report accompanying the House bill. Those included the Hanford complex in Washington state and the Idaho National Laboratory.
Also Tuesday, House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., issued a subpoena for testimony from one of the U.S. Geological Survey employees who wrote e-mails from 1998 to 2000 suggesting he and other Yucca workers falsified documents. The subpoena was issued at the request of Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who chairs a Government Reform subcommittee.
Porter said at a press conference that the scientist, Joseph Hevesi, has not cooperated with his subcommittee's investigation despite at least 23 requests for an interview.
"I believe that we have taken every step to be fair and reasonable in our request to meet with him voluntarily," Porter said. The subpoena, for Hevesi to testify at a committee hearing June 29 and bring documents related to his work on Yucca, was being delivered to Hevesi by U.S. marshals in Sacramento, Calif., where he lives and continues to work for USGS.
Porter also suggested more subpoenas for testimony or documents could be coming, saying the Energy Department has not cooperated with his subcommittee's document requests and has been given one final chance to do so before the hearing.
A message left late Tuesday for Hevesi's attorney, Scott Treadway, was not immediately returned.
The e-mail controversy was just the latest setback for Yucca Mountain, planned as a national repository for 77,000 tons of defense and commercial nuclear waste, to be buried for 10,000 years and beyond in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Among other problems, a federal appeals court rejected the proposed radiation protection plans for the Yucca facility. The completion date has been pushed to 2012 at earliest.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 14, 2005
Ex-Yucca scientist to face subpoena
House committee investigating e-mails wants his testimony
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- A House committee today plans to subpoena a former Yucca Mountain scientist to testify later this month about e-mail messages that discuss document falsification on the nuclear waste project.
The Government Reform Committee will seek to compel Joseph A. Hevesi to appear and bring relevant documents to a June 29 hearing before a federal work force subcommittee headed by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.
Porter, who announced the impending subpoena, said the scientist has not responded to requests to be interviewed about the e-mails.
"This is the first subpoena being issued," Porter said. "We had hoped it would not be necessary."
The subpoena and scheduled hearing could breathe new public life into a matter that has been taking place mostly behind the scenes as Porter, a Yucca opponent, seeks to ferret out flaws that might throw sand into the project.
Energy Department official John Arthur said last week that DOE is nearing the end of an internal probe and has tentatively concluded the e-mails have not compromised the project, although the work in question will be redone.
Hevesi, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, did not immediately respond to a message left on his home phone Monday evening.
Hevesi has been identified as a principal author of e-mails written between 1998 and 2000 that discuss making up names and dates, keeping two sets of books and using "fudge factors" in documenting quality assurance on their research.
Disclosure of the provocative messages threw a new wrench into the government program that is seeking to develop Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, into a repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.
Porter, a critic of the Yucca project along with most other Nevada elected leaders, initiated an investigation through the House federal work force and agency organization subcommittee he took over this year.
Two other USGS hydrologists who have been identified as e-mail authors, Alan L. Flint and Lorraine E. Flint, have been interviewed in person by subcommittee investigators, according to agency spokeswoman A.B. Wade.
Porter said he does not plan to summon the Flints to the June 29 public hearing. He declined to say whether the couple has been interviewed or to discuss other aspects of the investigation.
Inspectors general for the Energy Department and the Interior Department also are conducting ongoing investigations with help from the FBI. DOE managers are attempting to identify whether any of their decisions based on repository science may have been affected by shortcomings raised in the e-mails.
Other potential witnesses for the hearing have not yet been set, Porter said. He said the Energy Department and the USGS have yet to provide all documents the subcommittee requested for its probe.
Porter and the Energy Department have been unable to agree on a timetable for documents to be produced.
Wade said Monday that USGS on May 16 turned over 766 documents accounting for 2,878 pages on a compact disc. Asked for hard copies, Wade said the agency complied on May 23.
The subcommittee had requested all documents and records, including e-mails, "relating to, identifying, or discussing the falsification and-or fabrication of documents or records" by anyone associated with the repository.
"We have attempted to be responsive," Wade said. "USGS would be willing to provide whatever documents is being requested if we become aware of the specific document or group of documents."
Alan and Lorraine Flint and Hevesi are assigned to the USGS office in Sacramento, Calif. All worked at Yucca Mountain for periods of the 1990s, contributing research and data for computer models that predict how water might infiltrate mountain cracks and pores under varying climate conditions.
Although USGS officials have declined to describe their current projects, Wade said they are not taking part in any work related to Yucca Mountain or any other USGS activities in Nevada.
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Guardian
June 14, 2005
House Panel to Subpoena Yucca Mtn. Worker
Erica Werner
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - A congressional committee will subpoena a former worker on the Yucca Mountain project who is at the center of a controversy over document falsification at the proposed nuclear waste dump.
The House Government Reform Committee will issue a subpoena Tuesday demanding a committee appearance and documents from Joseph Hevesi, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist in Sacramento, Calif., according to an announcement late Monday from Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.
``Mr. Hevesi has, to date, refused to cooperate with the subcommittee in its congressional investigation,'' said a statement from the House Government Reform subcommittee on the federal work force, which Porter chairs.
Hevesi, a hydrologist, was a principal author of e-mails written between 1998 and 2000 by scientists studying how water moved through the proposed waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
In the e-mails to colleagues, Hevesi discussed making up facts, deleting inconvenient data and keeping two sets of files - ``the ones that will keep (quality assurance) happy and the ones that were actually used.''
The e-mails were made public by the Energy Department in March, and the inspectors general of the Energy and Interior departments have been investigating. No conclusions have been announced.
Hevesi did not immediately respond Monday to phone messages left at his office and home.
Hevesi is still a USGS hydrologist, but he no longer workers on Energy Department or Yucca Mountain projects.
The subpoena will require Hevesi's appearance at a subcommittee hearing June 29, along with all documents in his possession related to Yucca Mountain.
The e-mail controversy has contributed to delays on the project, which is planned as a national repository for 77,000 tons of high-level commercial and defense nuclear waste, to be buried for 10,000 years and beyond in the Nevada desert.
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National Catholic Reporter
June 14, 2005
Goshute Indians face atomic age alone
Over protests, a Utah reservation is slated to become a nuclear dumpling ground
By Kevin Kamps
Standing between the Stansbury and Cedar Mountains in the middle of Skull Valley, Utah, outsiders might see only a desolate wasteland. If so, then they don´t know how to be still and listen, Margene Bullcreek would say. She is a woman who has spent all her life appreciating the peace, tranquility and sacredness of her Native Goshute land. The reservation is where Ms. Bullcreek has cut willow branches to cradle her babies as her mother and grandmother did before her. It is a place where her ancestors´ bones are buried. And it is the only land she and her tribe have left after the U.S. government appropriated the country from its first people.
Now, the Skull Valley Goshutes, some of whom still speak their traditional language, face the final insult to what little they can still hold dear. The two-dozen reservation inhabitants have been offered the atomic age equivalent of the smallpox blanket. A private consortium of seven electric utilities known as Private Fuel Storage wants to dump what amounts to 80 percent of the current high-level radioactive waste inventory from the country´s 103 commercial nuclear reactors onto Ms. Bullcreek´s reservation. To get the deal done, Private Fuel Storage dangled an enticing price tag, rumored to be as much as tens of millions of dollars, in front of the tribe. Without his members´ consent, disputed tribal chairman Leon Bear accepted the deal. He is currently under federal indictment for allegedly pocketing most of the money and refusing to share it with tribal members who oppose the dump. Indeed, several opponents have alleged being harassed, intimidated, even shot at.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already rejected scores of contentions including appeals from tribal members and the state of Utah. Any day now, the commissioners will decide whether to award the final license to Private Fuel Storage. The agency has dismissed claims of environmental racism, citing the huge payoff the tribe is supposed to reap. Tribal opponents are arguing this contention since, apart from the reality that few will likely see the money at all, it sets an alarming precedent. The message the regulatory commission is sending is that federal agencies would henceforth be justified in licensing toxic dumps in impoverished communities provided the polluting corporation “compensates’ the victims financially.
As much as 44,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste is targeted at Skull Valley, a plan that would launch an unprecedented 4,000 shipments by train -- 200 shipments per year for 20 years rolling past millions of homes across America. The casks holding the waste have never undergone full-scale testing and could be shipped on the same trains as flammables and explosives, a potentially catastrophic risk should the train meet with a severe accident or attack. Each cask contains more than 200 times the long-lasting radioactivity released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Upon arrival, the casks would sit side by side in plain view on the reservation, just 45 miles upwind from Salt Lake City.
Even more alarmingly, the country´s most active bombing range -- the Utah Test and Training Range, where crashes and misfires have occurred as recently as last September -- is located right next door. Just last month, however, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Nils Diaz casually downplayed such dangers, stating that even if a jet fighter crashed into the facility, radiation leakage would not extend beyond two miles. But of course, that is exactly where Margene Bullcreek and other Skull Valley Goshutes live.
Private Fuel Storage is earmarked for “interim’ storage while the designated permanent site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., continues to face scrutiny for scientific flaws and data falsification as well as lawsuits from the state of Nevada, which vehemently opposes it. Neither dump, or the unimaginable risks associated with transporting the waste, would solve anything: Irradiated fuel will continue to be stored on site where it is generated for many decades to come, so long as reactors keep operating. Instead, in authorizing the Utah dump, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and federal government would be plunging the country back into its ugly pattern of victimization of indigenous peoples, pitting family against family as the tempting panacea of instant riches is dangled before one of the most destitute communities in the country.
In the 1950s, the U.S. government decided to open its nuclear weapons testing site upwind of Utah because it regarded the Mormons and Native Americans there as a “low-use segment of the population.’ Nuclear utilities apparently view Margene Bullcreek´s reservation the same way. It would be hard to find a community more economically and politically vulnerable than the Skull Valley Goshutes. That of course is precisely why they have been targeted. And it is precisely why this shameful practice should be rejected.
Kevin Kamps is a nuclear waste specialist at Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington.
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Asbury Park Press
June 14, 2005
Toxic nuclear byproducts still accumulate at plants
The federal government is encouraging the construction of a new round of nuclear plants throughout the country and will subsidize them with federal funding. In anticipation of new reactors, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has adopted licensing procedures that will help reduce construction costs and the time it takes to approve a plant.
Meanwhile, existing plants are still accumulating and producing the highly toxic waste byproduct. The proposed Nevada Yucca Mountain disposal site, tied up in a federal lawsuit, has been rife with concerns that it might not be an adequate solution for the safe disposal of this waste.
The National Academy of Sciences estimates that the peak radiation doses from some of the isotopes would be most dangerous for up to 300,000 years. With this in mind, is it responsible to breed a new generation of these plants? And to encourage them with the gift of taxpayer money and expedited procedures?
Why isn't safe disposal the first priority of our leaders? Why weren't the questions of location permits and construction approved before spending billions of taxpayers' dollars?
Sadly, it appears that the political influence of the boiler industry, an industry that has blanketed the world with nuclear plants and polluting garbage burners, is guiding the rational thought process of this issue.
Thomas J. Cervasio
Envirowatch
Berkeley
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U.S. Newswire
June 14, 2005
Water, Air Quality, and Cultural Treasures at Risk in Desert Parks; Conservation Group's New Study Cites Regional Growth, Development Projects, and Insufficient Funding as Reasons
To: Environment Reporter
Contact: Howard Gross, 760-366-3035 or 760-219-4916 (cell); Kelli Holsendolph, 202-454-3311, both of the National Parks Conservation Association
WASHINGTON, June 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- While the California Desert Protection Act in 1994 provided a critical step toward better desert conservation, a little more than a decade later resources such as water, air quality, and the desert's heritage are threatened, according to a new National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) State of the Parks(r) report released today. The NPCA assessment of Joshua Tree National Park, Death Valley National Park, and Mojave National Preserve points to rapid regional population growth, development of surrounding lands, and insufficient park funding as central causes.
The California desert parks lie between two major metropolitan regions-southern California and southern Nevada-that have grown considerably in recent decades. Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which encompass Joshua Tree National Park, are two of the fastest growing counties in the country. With a population of 1.7 million, Clark County, home of Las Vegas, continues to grow at a rate of 5,000 people each month.
"Skyrocketing population growth in and around the desert region has meant increased demands on the region's most precious commodity-water," said Howard Gross, NPCA California desert program manager. "More people have also meant more cars and trucks. This growth is a leading threat to the parks' water resources and air quality."
According to NPCA's new report, potential land development also threatens resources in the parks. Joshua Tree faces the possibility of becoming neighbor to the world's largest garbage dump-the Eagle Mountain Landfill-with railroad cars and trucks delivering 20,000 tons of garbage each day to the site for 117 years, if built. The proposed Ivanpah airport just north of Mojave, along with associated development, represents significant threats to the park's naturally quiet soundscapes and dark night skies. The potential for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, just 50 miles northeast of Death Valley's border with Nevada could further deplete groundwater resources and introduce a myriad of unknown threats. Developers are likewise proposing new cities of 60,000 housing units east of Death Valley and 15,000 units south of Joshua Tree that would further strain the desert region's water supply. This proposal would also fragment Joshua Tree from nearby wilderness areas.
"Parks are not islands unto themselves," noted NPCA State of Parks Vice President Jim Nations. "The developments and activities adjacent to them often impact the resources within them."
Despite the best efforts of park staff, insufficient budgets hinder the parks' ability to protect their resources. As noted in the NPCA study, limited funding and staffing shortages in the desert parks prevent sufficient understanding of the impact of groundwater withdrawals. Current funding levels at Mojave and Death Valley, in particular, do not provide for staffing to collect air quality data consistently over time. Presently, there are no air-quality monitoring stations at Mojave.
"California's parks lack the funds needed to adequately monitor, manage, and protect their resources," said Gross. "While external factors like growing populations and land development strain resources in the parks, internal factors like budget constraints leave resources vulnerable."
Budget constraints similarly jeopardize the desert's rich heritage. Artifacts are susceptible to theft and vandalism because current funding allows the parks to do only a fraction of what is needed to understand, preserve, interpret, and protect cultural relics and historic structures. Historic structures at Joshua Tree are threatened by vandalism and looting, as well as fire and weathering. Death Valley has more than 200 historic structures but does not have the staff needed to adequately assess the condition of most of these structures. Mojave has never had any staff to care for its museum or archival collections. As a result, none of the collection items have been catalogued.
NPCA launched the landmark State of the Parks(r) program in 2000 to assess the health of national parks across the country. The full California Desert Parks report and fact sheet are available at http://www.npca.org/across_the_nation/park_pulse/californiadesert/ and for more information on the State of the Parks(r) program visit http://www.npca.org/stateoftheparks.
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Deseret News
June 13, 2005
Huntsman to press N-fight
He'll co-sponsor anti-dump measure at governors meet
By Lisa Riley Roche
BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. will co-sponsor at least two resolutions at the annual meeting here of the Western Governors' Association, including one he hopes furthers his fight against a high-level nuclear waste dump in Utah.
The resolution, which won't be made public until it is voted on at the end of the three-day meeting Tuesday, asks the federal government to keep the states involved as storage sites are considered.
Huntsman is opposed to a temporary high-level nuclear storage facility on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County and is raising concerns about the safety of transporting waste as an argument against it.
The resolution stops short of endorsing an effort by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to force the facilities that generate nuclear waste to store it on site rather than transporting it to Utah or to the proposed Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
Still, Huntsman was pleased with the progress.
"This really was an attempt to craft something that all the governors could get their arms around," Huntsman said shortly after arriving at this ski resort early Sunday evening. "Even if it's a first step, it's an important one."
He said President Bush, a former governor himself, will take notice of the resolution because it comes from the WGA. Huntsman should have a chance during the meeting to lobby U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who is scheduled to address the governors Tuesday.
Another resolution that Huntsman is co-sponsoring deals with economic competitiveness. He declined to provide details Sunday but said his co-sponsor will be a prominent Democrat — New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
Huntsman is attending the meeting without his top economic development adviser, Chris Roybal; and his chief of staff, Jason Chaffetz, had already returned to Salt Lake City after several days of staff meetings.
Huntsman missed Sunday's afternoon session on the Western economy and economic growth. Futurist Joel Kotkin told the three governors at the session that the West must build on its "fundamentally urban" tradition.
"You have this kind of 'Marlboro Man' image, but the West is very urbanized," Kotkin, a New Yorker who lives in Los Angeles, said. He said the region's cities must be nurtured, in part, through encouraging the sacred.
He said that meant "things that tie people spiritually to a place," including, but not limited to, churches. After the session, he told a reporter that Salt Lake City, home to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a good example.
"You look at Utah, the whole Mormon corridor, the fact that you've got all those kids who are really well-behaved, who go on missions, all of whom have a high school education if not better, it's an enormous resource," Kotkin said.
Utah should see itself as "ground zero for on-shoring," he said, referring to what he predicts will be the reversal of the "off-shoring" of jobs to countries like India, where wages are much lower.
"Companies . . . may find they save a little bit of money going to India at first, but you pay for it" when your customers get upset, he said.
"Utah needs to really work on this question of on-shoring and to begin to identify that as an area of growth for the economy," Kotkin said in an interview.
Huntsman said he wasn't sure Utah's religious roots "need to be an overt part of selling the community." And he said the state is focused on creating jobs in emerging industries, such as biotechnology, not on attracting jobs back to the United States from overseas.
"I'm talking about a whole different level," Utah's governor said.
The session raised questions about the value of universities to economic development.
"Universities have done a good job of selling governors," Kotkin said, citing a number of cities, like Boston, that have the greatest concentration of institutions of higher learning but faltering economies.
He said the focus of education should be on the basics to prepare young people for the work force. Now, though, Kotkin said, "There's much too much touchy-feely, much too much concern about self-esteem" in K-12.
Another speaker, Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, said job training at the community college level can be key to attracting new jobs. "We have to be very careful thinking there's one magic bullet."
Creating centers of excellence on Utah campuses is a big part of Huntsman's economic development effort. Lawmakers recently funded a program intended to attract new research to the University of Utah and Utah State University.
Huntsman said universities provide the research and development that the private sector can't afford. The state's role is in matching up that work with entrepreneurs who can turn research into viable products.
Protecting the environment is also important to economic development, Luther Propst of the Sonoran Institute told the session. Proximity "to the beauty and the heritage of the West is something we have to capitalize on," Propst said.
Eight governors from Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, plus the premiers of three western Canadian provinces, are expected to attend the three-day meeting, which ends Tuesday.
Among the states not represented is California, itself one of the world's leading economies. After the session, Kotkin said without California's participation, it would be difficult to have a serious discussion about the issues facing the region.
But the head of WGA, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, said serious discussions are taking place among the governors here during informal — and private — meetings.
Owens said the success of the meeting would not be measured in actions taken but in relationships built among the participants.
He said the region has a history of working well together on economic and other issues. With $320 billion in exports, Owens said the 18 states in the region make up the third-largest economy the world, behind the United States and Japan.
E-mail: lisa@desnews.com
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Salt Lake Tribune
June 13, 2005
Feds don't own it yet
I am replying to a column by Professor Nicole Haynes McCoy published in the Tribune June 4. I have no reaction toward relationships between the state and the Goshutes, although many of Professor McCoy's suggestions seem as though they are worth pursuing in all scenarios, whether the PFS project is built or not.
There was one point in the column that is not accurate. Professor McCoy said, “The federal government is required by law to take title and store nuclear waste.’ The Nuclear Waste Policy Act does require the government to take title and “dispose’ of spent nuclear fuel in a geologic repository (Yucca Mountain, if it is licensed).
Until the government is ready to dispose of the waste, it will not take title to it and thus it remains the responsibility of the commercial nuclear power plants to store nuclear waste. It was the delays in the government program that led some of the nuclear utilities to conceive and pursue the PFS venture and to partner with the Skull Valley band of the Goshutes.
Although the column makes a misstatement on the federal government aspect of the situation, it does not refer to it further, other than to suggest a degree of inevitability as one of the "strikes" against the state. Would that were so. Then the federal government would be well along on waste acceptance and disposal in the permanent repository which the NWPA mandated and for which the government signed contracts with the utilities to accept the spent fuel beginning in 1998.
Brian O'Connell
Director, Nuclear Waste Program Office
Washington, D.C.
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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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