Nevada officials united against nuclear dump

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1999 | 11:23 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Gov. Kenny Guinn's summit on nuclear waste Tuesday produced a unified stand of top elected officials who have pledged to lobby Congress and enlist business and labor in the battle to keep the high-level radioactive materials out of Nevada.

"I feel we have made great progress," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., after a closed-door meeting of congressional and state leaders.

A bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives to use the Nevada Test Site for temporary storage of the nation's high-level nuclear waste until a permanent waste repository is ready. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only location being studied for such a repository.

President Clinton has promised to veto the temporary waste storage bill. But Nevadans must line up enough votes in the House and Senate to sustain the veto.

Reid said he was called by the president immediately after the impeachment vote and asked if he had the votes necessary to uphold the veto on the interim dump.

Calling the bill "a death sentence on Nevada," Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said 147 votes is the "magic bullet" in the House to sustain a veto. He and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., promised to pull out all the stops to reach that number. Last year, 123 House members supported Nevada.

The bill could come up for a final vote as early as next month. The strategy is to get enough votes in the House to sustain a veto so the legislation won't even be considered by the Senate.

The support of Guinn, a Republican, said Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., will "open some doors for us we have not been invited into," especially in lobbying the GOP-controlled House.

If 147 votes are garnered in the House, Reid said, "Nuclear storage is over with this year." If the votes are not gathered, however, he said that he thinks enough votes can be rounded up in the Senate to sustain a Clinton veto.