Discussions under way over rail routes to Yucca Mountain

Friday, Jan. 10, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Although federal scientists have not yet declared Yucca Mountain fit to keep the nation's radioactive waste safe for 10,000 years, Department of Energy contractors were meeting in Las Vegas this week to discuss rail routes leading there.

Two unidentified DOE contractors met with eight Bureau of Land Management officials Thursday about biological and cultural resources in Southern Nevada possibly affected by building tracks to the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

BLM landscape architect Robert Taylor confirmed the meeting, calling it "very preliminary," at the Las Vegas district office.

"They're on a fishing expedition to find out what's out there and what's available to them," Taylor said. The BLM will provide information and review the DOE's work as the process unfolds, he said.

There are no actual lines drawn on maps yet. But the areas under scrutiny match routes proposed by former Sen. Bennett Johnston, D-La., who introduced a bill in 1995 carving out a rail route through Las Vegas and across 18,000 acres considered for designation as BLM wilderness lands.

Johnston singled out Yucca Mountain in the 1980s as the only site for federal study as a radioactive waste dump. He resigned and left the Senate in December.

Routes proposed by the senator would bring the waste through Southern Nevada on existing tracks. No alternative routes were considered, but there is no rail line to either the Nevada Test Site or Yucca Mountain.

Some of the sensitive wilderness areas under study include the Quail Springs area northwest of Las Vegas and Nellis A, B and C for a total of 17,863 acres.

Lands examined by the BLM Thursday included routes north and west of the Test Site, one through the Test Site from the east, the route through Las Vegas and one through Pahrump, 65 miles west of Las Vegas.

An area near railroad tracks in Mesquite, about 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas, has a sensitive bird called the phainopepla, a fly-catcher about the size of a raven, BLM biologist Sid Sloan said.

The bird's habitat extends into Southern Nevada from Arizona and New Mexico. It eats mistletoe berries growing on mesquite and acacia trees, Sloan said.

The BLM and the Nevada Department of Wildlife are concerned about disrupting the phainopepla's habitat, he said. And there are plants and the Mojave Desert tortoise, which the DOE will have to consider in creating any rail route.

Taylor predicted the DOE study of possible rail routes will last a long time with plenty of public controversy.

"Just like the public, we'll sit back and wait and see," he said.