Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, July 4, 2005
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San Francisco Chronicle
July 03, 2005
Nuclear waste: 1 plant, 48 tons a year
In an age of terrorism fears, no plan to dispose of society's most lethal toxin
Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times
Morris , Ill. -- Along the headwaters of the Illinois River, engineers at the Dresden nuclear power station have erected two dozen steel and concrete silos that rise 20 feet above the Midwest plain.
The gray structures are unremarkable except for what is loaded inside: Each contains roughly 13 tons of high-level nuclear waste that has been accumulating at the plant since the Eisenhower administration. With nowhere to go, the waste will most likely remain in place for decades.
Dresden's reactors have produced one of the largest stockpiles -- 1,347 tons -- of civilian nuclear waste in the nation. With the plant churning out nearly 48 tons more waste each year, engineers are preparing to double the size of the outdoor storage pad this summer.
The plant has the same problem as nearly all of the nation's 103 commercial reactors: They were never designed to store waste long-term and are now forced to deal with large quantities of spent uranium fuel rods that produce high levels of radiation.
The problem reflects decades of miscalculations and missteps by the federal government, which promised at the dawn of the nuclear age to accept ownership of the waste. The plan to build a waste repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert has faced so many political, legal and technical problems that it's impossible to project when -- or even if -- it will be built.
As a result, the most lethal waste product of industrial society is being handled outside any federal policy and without any road map for how it will be managed in the future, according to industry officials, nuclear waste experts, lawyers and academicians.
"It is a statement of reality," acknowledges Clay Sell, deputy secretary of energy. "Is it the right policy? No."
The deep storage pools traditionally used to keep nuclear waste are filling up at most plants. Utilities have turned to outdoor storage in so- called dry casks as the de facto standard for dealing with waste.
From California to South Carolina, utilities have loaded 700 of the steel and concrete casks, and scores of additional casks are scheduled to be filled this year.
It is a stopgap measure that has averted a shutdown of the nuclear power industry. But it means leaving all of the roughly 50,000 tons of civilian nuclear waste spread across the nation for the next half-century or more. And storing the waste at power plant sites is creating significant economic, environmental, legal and security challenges -- including the potential for it to become a terrorist target.
A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences found that the waste stored in pools was most vulnerable, but the outdoor casks also were potential targets. Such an attack could trigger an environmental catastrophe.
"These are the ultimate dirty bombs," said Bob Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former Energy Department official. "Let's not pretend the way we are storing this waste is safe and secure in an age of terrorism."
Utility executives and government officials sharply dispute such allegations, saying the plants have multiple layers of protection from any attack. Exelon Corp., the nation's largest nuclear utility, has erected heavy barriers and security towers at Dresden that are staffed round the clock by guards with automatic weapons.
Though the nuclear industry has a good record for preventing radiation leaks during normal operations and dry casks are widely regarded as safe, many outside experts say their biggest fear is that future generations might lack the willpower and financial capability to safeguard tons of radioactive waste dispersed across the nation. Waste is already stored in casks at five shuttered nuclear plant sites.
"We are muddling into an alternative plan by default," says Joe Egan, a longtime attorney for the nuclear industry who now represents Nevada in fighting Yucca Mountain.
Nuclear waste also has created a legal mess. The Energy Department is facing more than four dozen lawsuits by the utility industry for its failure to take the waste. Damages could reach $56 billion over the next three decades, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a powerful trade group for nuclear utilities.
At the Department of Energy, Sell argues that deep geologic storage of the waste at Yucca Mountain would be the best technical solution. He believes the project will eventually be completed. But the loss of a key court case last year and political resistance in Congress have put the dump at least 14 years behind schedule.
Without a dump, utilities have few options short of shutting down their reactors and eliminating 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supply that comes from nuclear power. And without a solution to the waste, the proposal by President Bush to start a new era of nuclear plant construction could go nowhere.
Indefinite storage of nuclear waste at reactor sites is a bitter pill for many politicians, particularly those from environmentally fragile areas such as Lake Michigan, which is ringed by nuclear plants.
"I want the waste off the shores of Lake Michigan," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., whose district includes two nuclear plants built on the lake's eastern boundary. "Ultimately, there is a safety problem."
Nuclear waste at power plants will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The fission of uranium inside reactors produces heat for electricity production. Afterward, the uranium fuel rods are far more radioactive than when they entered the reactor.
To maximize storage capacity for the spent fuel rods, the nuclear industry devised a way to pack them more closely in the 50-foot-deep storage pools than initially planned. Critics say this kind of dense packing poses a safety risk, however. If terrorists were to puncture the pool wall and drain the water, the rods could ignite and disperse lethal amounts of radiation, according to a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences.
Even with dense packing, the pools are running out of space. Twenty years ago, nuclear plants began removing the oldest fuel rods, which have radioactively decayed somewhat, and started storing them in huge outdoor storage casks like the ones at Dresden.
Officials at Nuclear Regulatory Commission "anticipate that there will be an increase in the number of casks being loaded over the next few years," said E. William Brach, director of the commission's spent fuel project office.
The logistics of nuclear waste ensure it will be around a long time. Even if the federal government gets a license to operate Yucca Mountain, the earliest it could accept waste shipments would be 2012. By that year, more than 60,000 tons of civilian nuclear waste would be spread across about three dozen states.
It would take about 50 years to work down the backlog, according to Frank von Hippel, a nuclear expert at Princeton University and former White House national security adviser. That's because under current plans Yucca could process a maximum of 3,000 tons of waste annually, while nuclear power plants would be generating 2,000 tons of waste each year. That means a net reduction of just 1,000 tons each year, he said.
"We have to assume that these casks will be around for a very long time," Von Hippel said. "It will take quite a while to move them, even if we had someplace to send them today."
In any case, "on the day Yucca Mountain opens" it would be too small to handle all the waste, said Sell, the Energy Department official. There is no Plan B. Under federal law, the department can pursue only Yucca Mountain.
Further complicating matters are the divided lines of authority between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department. The commission regulates waste at plant sites and authorizes dry cask storage but has no role in national policy for disposing of nuclear waste. That policy responsibility rests with the Energy Department, which has no voice or authority in the use of dry casks.
In the vacuum, a private consortium is planning to build an above-ground storage site for hundreds of casks on an Indian reservation in Utah. Despite state opposition, it is getting approval from the nuclear commission.
Meanwhile, utilities see dry cask storage as a cheap and safe, if not permanent, solution.
Holtec International, one of the leading suppliers, says its casks can safely store waste for at least 100 years without leaking, according to company marketing manager Joy Russell.
On the inside of the casks, the waste is so radioactive it would deliver a fatal dose in minutes, but the outside can be touched.
"An individual can stand right next to the cask," Brach said. "There is a dose, but it is a minimal dose."
Anti-nuclear groups, such as the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service and the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, say the casks should be better protected. In Germany, for example, the casks are inside fortified buildings.
Government tests at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland showed that a shoulder-fired missile could penetrate a cask wall, causing some radioactive fuel to disperse.
"We don't want this 10-pin bowling alley out in the open," said Dave Kraft, an anti-nuclear activist for more than 20 years. "Anybody with a shoulder-fired missile could hit one of these things from outside the plant."
Acceptance of cask storage worries experts who say that in the future the casks will become a poor permanent solution.
Kevin Crowley, a nuclear expert at the National Academy of Sciences who helped guide an investigation into the vulnerability of spent fuel storage, said the casks would become a risky legacy if left in place too long.
"The major uncertainty," he said, "is in the confidence that future societies will continue to monitor and maintain such facilities."
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Evansville Courier & Press
July 03, 2005
Very high risk; low return
By John Blair
Special to the Courier & Press
The Top 10 reasons to oppose nuclear energy.
1. Every 1,000-megawatt reactor creates enough plutonium each year to build 40 nuclear bombs. The half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years, and it takes a minimum of 10 half-lifes - 240,000 years - for it to decay to a safe level. Man has been on Earth some 60,000 years. I cannot help but think that if we were bent on producing such large volumes of plutonium, that some despot, perhaps in the not-so-distant future, would use some of it to initiate a nuclear conflagration that would destroy the world.
2. There is still no proven method of handling the massive, dangerous, high-level waste that results from the production of nuclear energy, peaceful or military.
3. All nuclear plants are and will continue to be on terrorists' radar screen. They are without much security and vulnerable to attack, which could devastate human life and ecosystems, affecting thousands of square miles.
4. Nuclear-generated electricity is by far more expensive than wind power, and even solar cells have become competitive in recent years. The existing plants charge more than 12 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with the 5 cents per kilowatt hour that coal plants around here charge. When Marble Hill was first announced in 1973, the cost was said to be $700 million. When construction was stopped in 1984, Public Service Indiana had already spent $2.8 billion, and the plant was only 20 percent complete. And it used to say that it would produce energy so inexpensively that it would be "too cheap to meter," but the lies persist.
5. The reason that President Bush wants taxpayers to foot the bill is because the capital markets will never support nukes again. The plants are simply too risky from a safety and investment standpoint.
6. Nuclear plants already have giant subsidies supporting them that would have to continue, probably into perpetuity, not only to fund their construction but also to severely limit the liability that the private operators would incur. That has been in place since the passage in 1954 of the Price Anderson Act, which limited liability to a mere $560 million, even as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged that a single accident could cause as much as $13 billion in private damage, and that was in 1978 dollars. Now, the level has risen but remains far short of the damage that could result from a significant accident.
7. The new technologies that are being proposed are not tested; they are no more than theories put forth by nuclear proponents who want to make big bucks by suckering ignorant taxpayers into paying the bills.
8. Name one community that wants a nuke in its back yard, and by community I mean within the impact zone of a possible accident. There already are at least five nukes in Illinois. Clinton, the closest to this area, is being proposed as a site for one of the new nukes. Does that make you feel safe? Sen. Frank Church of Idaho once said that the problems with nuclear energy and nuclear waste were not technical but political. My response is that people should not be forced to accept such facilities, as has occurred in Nevada, where almost no one in the state wants the waste to go to Yucca Mountain, which the feds are forcing upon them. That is anti-democratic.
9. Nuclear energy is counter to any energy future that is clean and efficient. It is highly centralized, needs to use massive economies of scale, and the building of power lines using "right of way" generally are taken through the use of tyrannical "eminent domain." Decentralized energy that accompanies big increases in end use and production efficiencies is much wiser use of dwindling resources.
10. Look at your homeowners or business insurance policy and find the "exclusion" that states that you will not be covered for any damages as a result of a nuclear accident. These exclusions were developed by actuaries whose business it is to assess levels of risk that their companies must cover. For nukes, they have found the risk too high to even consider.
John Blair is an environmental activist and head of Valley Watch
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Congressman Jon Porter (R-NV)
June 29, 2005
Press Release
Key USGS Scientist Testifies at Yucca Mountain Hearing
Chairman Porter vows to continue probe
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, at a hearing of the Government Reform Committee´s Subcommittee on Federal Workforce and Agency Oversight, Joseph Hevesi, a key figure in the Yucca Mountain investigation, responded to questions posed by Subcommittee Chairman Jon Porter (R-NV) and other Subcommittee members regarding the safety of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Mr. Hevesi, a United States Geological Survey (USGS) scientist, appeared before the Subcommittee under subpoena.
“I´m pleased that Mr. Hevesi chose to answer the Subcommittee´s questions rather than invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, and I appreciate his willingness to continue the dialog so that we can better understand the circumstances under which he was operating,’ said Porter. “However, the vagueness of many of his answers and his own assertion that the level of scrutiny surrounding the Yucca Mountain Project and his e-mails is ‘one hundred percent warranted´ confirms my belief that there is much more to learn with regards to whether or not the science behind the project is sound. The fact that Mr. Hevesi denied falsifying any data does not close the door on the investigation. As I´ve stated before, we will get to the bottom of this mess.’
At the core of the investigation are e-mails sent by Hevesi to other USGS scientists while they were testing the viability of Yucca Mountain as a storage facility for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. A number of the e-mails suggest that data used in the testing may have been falsified, which would put the safety of the entire project into question. After repeated attempts by Subcommittee investigators to speak with Hevesi about the e-mails were ignored, Chairman Porter was left with no choice but to subpoena Hevesi to appear at today´s hearing.
In addition to Hevesi´s lack of cooperation in the months leading up to his testimony today, officials at the Department of Energy (DOE) have not complied with numerous Subcommittee requests for documents, nor have they assisted in arranging interviews with DOE employees who may be able to contribute to the investigation. W. John Arthur, III, a DOE official with intimate knowledge of the Yucca Mountain project, testified at today´s hearing that DOE is currently in the process of re-evaluating the data that has come under question, but could not answer a number of the questions posed to him by the Subcommittee.
“Mr. Arthur´s reluctance or inability to provide the Subcommittee with solid answers to our questions simply won´t do, nor will the arrogance exhibited by his agency when refusing to comply with Subcommittee requests for key documents and access to individuals with knowledge of the Yucca Mountain project. Is DOE unable to provide information due to poor management, or, are they hiding something?’ Porter concluded.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 02, 2005
HEADED TO CONFERENCE COMMITTEE: Energy spending bill clears Senate
Measure contains $338 million for projects in Nevada
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Senate early Friday passed a bill that contains more than $300 million for energy research and water projects in Nevada. In addition, the bill sets Yucca Mountain spending next year at $577 million, which is less than President Bush requested.
The annual appropriations bill for the Energy Department, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers passed 92-3. Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., voted for it.
The $577 million allocation advances nuclear waste repository planning at Yucca Mountain during the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The amount is the same that Congress approved last year, but $74 million less than the president's requested budget.
The bill was sent to a conference committee where it will be negotiated against a corresponding House bill. The House approved $661 million for the nuclear project, including $10 million to develop temporary nuclear waste storage at government sites.
Senators rejected the idea of temporary nuclear waste storage, making it a point that would be subject to negotiations on a final bill.
Some lawmakers worry that temporary storage could become permanent and the House plan alarmed lawmakers representing sites such as the Hanford complex in Washington state that were mentioned in a report accompanying the House bill.
The $31.2 billion bill contains $338 million in Nevada earmarked spending for flood control, environmental management and energy research at the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
The Nevada Test Site was allocated almost $80 million in spending above its budgeted amount through the Department of Energy. Among the added improvements were $20 million for security and $15 million for road upgrades.
Research into the feasibility of a bunker-busting nuclear weapon also would be kept alive under the legislation. The bill contained $4 million for studies of the weapon, which would be aimed at penetrating underground enemy bunkers.
Administration officials have maintained that the country needs to try to develop a nuclear warhead that would be capable of destroying deeply buried targets including bunkers tunneled into solid rock.
But opponents said that its benefits are questionable and that such a warhead would cause extensive radiation fallout above ground killing thousands of people.
"A bunker buster cannot penetrate into the Earth deeply enough to avoid massive casualties and the spewing of millions of cubic feet of radioactive materials into the atmosphere," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
Critics also say the bunker buster may make it easier for a future president to decide to use the nuclear option instead of a conventional weapon. And they say the weapon is unworkable and that the development of a new nuclear weapon would be the wrong signal for the United States to send to countries such as North Korea while trying to persuade them to shelve their weapons programs.
The House measure contains no money for the bunker buster, officially known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.
Supporters of the weapon won a 53-43 Senate vote.
They said the funding was only for a feasibility study to see whether a new, sufficiently hardened casing can be developed for existing warheads to see whether it could penetrate the earth sufficiently to destroy reinforced underground bunkers.
Ensign voted for bunker-buster research. Reid voted to delete the funding.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Pahrump Valley Times
July 1, 2005
Death Valley future 'cloudy'
By Robin Flinchum
Special to The PVT
Sleeping out in the open under the desert sky, covered in a blanket of stars, is one of the things the old-timers often said drew them to Death Valley and kept them coming back. The prospectors loved that sky, the American Indian loved that sky, and today nearly a million people a year find their way into Death Valley National Park to stand under its broad expanse in awestruck silence.
But that affinity for twinkling stars and wide open spaces may not be enough to protect the desert sky from the many threats looming and lurking all around the edges of Death Valley National Park today, according to a recent State of the Parks report released by the National Parks Conservation Association.
Ongoing development in Pahrump, the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository, and clouds of pollution wafting in from Southern California and the Central Valley are converging on this fragile desert landscape with potentially disastrous results.
This year the air quality in Death Valley National Park was rated "fair´" according to the report, receiving a higher score than its beleaguered sister, the Mojave National Preserve, which rated "poor." The NPCA attributes these conditions to ever-increasing pollution emanating from nearby population centers such as Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Las Vegas - places with "some of the worst air quality in the nation."
But while the air is still in fair condition, that clear night sky, and the Death Valley National Park "soundscape" (its weighty and impressive silence) are threatened by the potential development of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository just 50 miles northeast of the park border in Nye County. But the night sky is, perhaps, one of the least concerns resulting from the development of Yucca Mountain. "A myriad of unknown threats associated with proximity to the disposal site itself" are also of concern to the NPCA.
And, of course, water ranks high on the list of worries. The park has more than 400 water sources within its boundaries but, "With growing populations demanding millions of gallons of water annually, groundwater levels are being depleted, which impacts desert springs, seeps, and oases," the NPCA reports. The water levels in Devil's Hole, a water-filled cavern housing the world's entire, endangered population of Devil's Hole pupfish in a park annex within the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge close to Pahrump, is being strained by "rapid regional growth."
"Myriad wells are already approved for withdrawing groundwater from adjacent lands, and applications continue to be filed," according to the report. These wells could result in the depletion of the carbonate aquifer underlying Death Valley, which feeds the many seeps and streams vital to the survival of its plant and animal life.
And if that weren't enough, the NPCA also reports that today there are still 146 inactive patented mining claims within the park boundaries, causing "some uncertainty over the future of lands and associated resources."
In addition, while the park scored far better than the Mojave National Preserve or Joshua Tree National Park in the preservation of cultural resources, the park is under-funded in resource management and its interpretive displays in the Furnace Creek Visitor Center are "woefully out of date." Because of federal budget cuts, 44 staff positions within Death Valley are currently unfilled, about a third of them in resource management, according to the report.
In terms of air quality, the park is sitting far above some other California parks, especially Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, rated among the top five most polluted parks in the nation. But as overall air quality declines; a recent poll funded by the NPCA also indicated that so would visitation in the parks. Some 68 percent of respondents surveyed said they would not visit a smoggy national park.
So how does a national park manage to get along in the face of such staggering odds? For Superintendent J.T. Reynolds, it's a matter of "putting things in perspective and prioritizing," he said. First, he said, "Death Valley National Park is not out here on an island. We have regional resources, we have entities we can call on for support."
And, perhaps most importantly, Reynolds adds that he is part of an organization called the Desert Managers Group that allows him to communicate regularly with representatives of some of the organizations posing the biggest threats to Death Valley. Members include federal, state, and county entities with jurisdiction over most of Southern California and Nevada.
"The key thing is if we can all get on the same page. Water is where we're placing a lot of emphasis. We're dealing with issues in Amargosa Valley, Pahrump Valley, Inyo County, Clark County. If we can bring all these entities together and share the science, there are a lot of lessons we all can learn."
The results, said Reynolds, are not always encouraging. "Economics plays a role. If Death Valley dries up (as the result of overuse of the aquifer that feeds the park), then things die. Even lowering the water table will have an impact. Sometimes we leave a meeting and realize they didn't get it, didn't want to get it and maybe we have to figure out how to say it with more vigor. I believe if we keep talking, maybe they will get it eventually."
All of the members of the Desert Managers Group at some point have lamented the way in which a neighbor's actions have impacted their ability to achieve their missions, Reynolds said. The trouble is that sometimes neighboring entities have conflicting missions, such as California Fish and Wildlife and the Department of Defense when it comes to desert tortoises at Fort Irwin; or, when it comes to Death Valley and neighboring counties that want water to support rapid growth.
But a water flow model, developed at the expense of millions of dollars to the Department of Energy as part of the Yucca Mountain studies, shows clearly that water pumped from the aquifer east of Death Valley is water that would otherwise have fed into the park. "We are managers who have to speak for the wildlife and the plants because they can't speak for themselves," Reynolds said. "Our mission is the protection of these resources, and I include the wildlife in that category."
The NPCA report outlines some daunting challenges for the park, Reynolds said. "That report, if anything, is understated." But most of the issues brought up in the report are ongoing items that Reynolds has been dealing with since becoming park superintendent.
Whether the National Park Service has enough clout to protect Death Valley against the encroachment of urban development and the nuclear waste storage dilemma remains to be seen, said Reynolds. The results of his actions today may not be apparent in his lifetime, "but what we have to think about now is, how do we set the table for the future managers?"
"If we worried about what we can't do," he said, "We'd all be basket cases. So we look back and see what we've accomplished and keep moving forward, working for solutions."
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Pahrump Valley Times
July 1, 2005
Impact fees board's top concern
Town Officials, Residents Grapple With Big Development
By Gina B. Good
PVT
The business stirring the most comment among board members and the public during Tuesday night's town board meeting concerned impact fees for the Mountain Falls subdivision in southern Pahrump.
This same issue was tabled at the June 14 meeting because a copy of the full development agreement was not available for review. Members and the public were concerned at that time because they were not able to review other issues - like land set aside for parks and recreation.
As it turns out, only section 5.2 of the America West Development Agreement, referencing fire services, is on the board's agenda - and open for discussion and action.
This perturbed the members, who think the town, not just the county, should be included in negotiations with developers.
Currently, this development agreement will be on the agenda at the next county commissioners meeting Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. via teleconference at the Bob Ruud Community Center.
Mountain Falls developers are offering a $200 payment at the time each building permit is issued for a residence. With 5,100 homes proposed, that would total $1,020,000 for the town coffers over the course of the build out - estimated to be 5-10 years. In addition, Mountain Falls' representative, Mark Dunford, came before the board with an offer of a one-time $15,000 fee earmarked for fire services - the same amount he offered two weeks ago.
The offer of a $200 impact payment for each residential unit is $40 above the recommendation in the Tischler-Bise fiscal impact report, adopted by the county. However, chairman Richard Billman and member Paul Willis strenuously objected to limiting the comparison to just section 5.2.
They say other fees must also be considered in order to judge the offer on the table from the Mountain Falls developers.
Member Laurayne Murray stated that developers in Las Vegas offer turnkey fire stations that include land and fully equipped facilities.
The board agreed that since the new community will add at least 10,000 residents to Pahrump, $15,000 is not enough to add professional staff or additional resources to the fire service.
Dunford pointed out that coming before the town board was a courtesy, as the Mountain Falls agreement was inherited from the original developer and contained neither the impact fee nor the $15,000 one-time payment.
He said the developers are proposing to donate these amounts and said that if the town did not accept the offer, the developers were under no obligation to pay anything. Willis said he remembered that the very first development agreement for Mountain Falls provided for a turnkey fire station and a sheriff's facility plus two school sites.
At the end of a frustrating impasse, with Dunford asking the board to accept or deny the offer on the table, Willis made a motion, which carried unanimously: "I move to recommend to the Board of Commissioners to amend, revise or renegotiate the America West Development Agreement to include the Town of Pahrump's proposal of: $1,000 per unit, 3/4 acre foot of water rights per three acres being developed, five acres dedicated for a fire station or other town facility at the town's discretion and $750,000 for construction of a fire station or other public facility at the town's discretion."
While Willis said he had no expectation of the figures being accepted by the commissioners or developer, he hoped to send a message to the county that they need to address the entire subject of developer agreements.
"Five thousand homes is a lot of impact," Willis said. "In the future, the town needs more consideration and involvement."
A second motion was made and passed, naming two board members - Ron Johnson and Paul Willis - to sit on a committee comprised of two county commissioners plus Town Manager Dave Richards and representatives of the Mountain. Falls development team for the purpose of clearing up the situation and with the goal of negotiating terms for impact fees that would truly reflect what is needed by the community.
Other town business included:
--The town will help sponsor the Pahrump Senior Olympics, to be held in November, by lending the town's name to the program and waving the deposit fees for park use.
--The 2004-2005 year-end budget augmentations were passed unanimously.
--Ron Johnson was appointed as liaison to three advisory boards: Emergency Management and Homeland Security, Nye County Joint Town Boards/Yucca Mountain Advisory Committee and Nye County Federal Impact.
--The town accepted a bid of $95,518 from Blaine Equipment to purchase a John Deere 410G backhoe.
--The position of town clerk was eliminated, with town manager Dave Richards taking responsibility or supervision of all tasks formerly assigned to the position.
--A motion carried to request that the county commissioners allow tax abatements to developers in exchange for water rights of equal value for the town.
--A $7 an hour, part time billing clerk position for the Pahrump Fire-Rescue Service was approved.
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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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