Committee blocks effort to kill nuke storage site

Paul Kane

Thursday, Oct. 9, 1997 | 11:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A House committee on Wednesday blocked an attempt to kill a nuclear waste storage site in Nevada, clearing the way for the full House to vote on the controversial legislation later this month.

The House Resources Committee sent the bill on with an "unfavorable report," but it was largely a symbolic rejection of the legislation.

Still, Reps. John Ensign and Jim Gibbons, both R-Nev., hope to seize on the "unfavorable" recommendation as they lobby fellow lawmakers in their efforts to kill the proposal.

"It increases pressure on the House leadership not to bring it up," said Nathan Potter, a spokesman for Gibbons.

The Resources Committee could not reject the proposal outright, because the House Commerce Committee had already approved it 42-3, which ensured the measure will go to a floor vote.

With some technicalities still to be worked out, and the House in recess next week, the earliest the full House could vote on the proposal is Oct. 22. Ensign and Gibbons, members of the Resources Committee, had wanted to hold the bill longer in committee, as a stalling tactic, but House Republican leaders forced the committee to move the bill.

"Sound science has been put aside for politics," Gibbons said at the start of Wednesday's sometimes-heated debate.

With President Clinton promising a veto, Gibbons and Ensign need to round up more than one-third of the House, 146 votes, to prevent a veto override. In the Senate, the measure fell two votes short of a two-thirds majority.

Gibbons and Ensign tried in vain to attach several amendments to the bill, most of which would have made it impossible for the House to approve the legislation. One such amendment would have prohibited nuclear waste from being hauled across federal lands to the Nevada Test Site, the interim high-level waste site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, unless the state's governor approves.

But the Resources Committee chairman, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, would not let the committee vote on the measure, or several similar measures Ensign offered, because the committee did not have jurisdiction over transportation issues. "The only jurisdiction we have over this is the public lands," Young said.

The committee did approve an amendment that allows landowners to recoup losses from declining property values as a result of legislation. If land loses at least 20 percent of its value because it is located near the nuclear dump, the federal government is required to reimburse the difference; a 50 percent loss, and the government must buy the land.

Supporters of the interim storage site at the Nevada Test Site, became irritated with Ensign and Gibbons, particularly when the Nevada lawmakers offered an amendment that would have allowed the Department of Energy to consider storing nuclear waste in the oceans. This had coastal lawmakers threatening to pull their support for the entire bill.

"This is nothing less than an amendment that will kill the bill," said Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J. Gibbons agreed to withdraw the amendment, saying he only wanted the coastal lawmakers to know how Nevadans feel. "I only wanted to make the point. ... This is politics, not science," Gibbons said.

As a show of support to Ensign and Gibbons, Young allowed the committee to deem the legislation "unfavorable" without polling the other lawmakers. It's unclear how the entire committee would have voted.