Editorial: A legislator embracing surrender

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1999 | noon

It was a shame that on the eve of Gov. Kenny Guinn's nuclear waste dump summit that Sen. Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas, questioned the need for the state to continue its fight against high-level nuclear waste coming to Nevada. The senator's comments came during a joint Assembly-Senate budget committee hearing on the budget for the state agency that acts as a watchdog over the federal government's investigation to determine whether Yucca Mountain is suitable to store high-level nuclear waste.

In the past, state money wasn't specifically earmarked for the state Nuclear Waste Projects Office since the federal government was responsible for funding the agency. But in 1996 a federal audit contended that the state was using part of the money for public relations' purposes, and funding was cut off, prompting the need for an infusion of funds from the state.

But O'Donnell argued Monday that the state has just a "snowball's chance" of stopping the dump from coming here. He suggested the money could be better spent elsewhere. "We've got kids homeless, we have children needing foster care and we're looking to spend $1 million on this," he said. Unfortunately he doesn't understand that a nuclear waste dump is the No. 1 environmental threat facing Nevada. Spending $1 million -- in a multibillion-dollar budget -- to fund the Nuclear Waste Projects Office is not too high a price to pay for the safety of this state's residents and its future generations.

Fortunately O'Donnell's thinking represents only a sliver of public opinion, with opposition to a dump overwhelming. The Nevada Poll released in January found that 77 percent of Southern Nevadans opposed a high-level nuclear waste dump while just 6 percent supported it. The bottom line is that had O'Donnell's defeatist view been accepted a decade ago, the dump would have been here by now. Only the state's steadfast stream of opposition has given Nevada a realistic hope of turning back the dump.