Judge asked to halt Yucca hearings

Friday, Nov. 12, 1999 | 11:13 a.m.

Rural Nevada officials are asking a District Court judge in Nye County today to stop state hearings on a Department of Energy request to use ground water while building and operating a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Attorneys for Nye County and Amargosa Valley residents asked for an emergency hearing and a temporary restraining order so the judge can consider whether State Engineer Michael Turnipseed should reinstate the county and the valley's water conservation district as participants in the hearings.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being considered to store the nation's 77,000 tons of waste from nuclear power plants and the military's weapons programs. The DOE must have the state's permission to use the ground water before it can get a license to build a repository, if the project passes scientific muster.

The legal action came two days after Turnipseed dismissed arguments made by Michael DeLee, a resident who represented both Nye County and Amargosa Valley farmers and ranchers who say there is not enough ground water to allow the DOE to use 430 acre-feet of ground water a year while building and operating a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

"We're not going to take this lying down," DeLee said as he met with attorneys on Thursday.

DeLee presented a half-hour of testimony on Wednesday about the concerns of the 1,200 residents, farmers and ranchers living in the shadow of Yucca Mountain.

The nearest Amargosa Valley farm is 12 miles south and downstream of Yucca Mountain. The Amargosa Valley would be the first area outside the repository that would be affected if radiation from leaking nuclear waste containers escapes Yucca Mountain.

In 1997 Nye County asked Turnipseed's office to delay the DOE water hearings until independent ground water studies by the rural county could be completed. The county is continuing studies of its ground water through eight wells dug in the area, but does not have an estimated completion date.

The last study of Nye County water was completed in 1970, and decisions on who receives the rights to ground water have been based on that report and an earlier one done in 1964, DeLee noted during the hearing. "The reports are old and sketchy at best," he said.

However, Turnipseed dismissed both the county and Amargosa Valley protests at the end of Wednesday's hearing, saying there was no "reasonable degree of certainty" to the information provided by DeLee.

Turnipseed had scheduled two weeks of hearings, which began last Monday in Las Vegas and were recessed Thursday for Veterans Day. They resume Monday in Carson City.

The DOE water request drew written protests from the state of Nevada, Nye County, Amargosa Valley and Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental watchdog group.

Before formal testimony began, Turnipseed announced that the state and the DOE agreed that the Amargosa Valley area had enough ground water to support the federal government's ground water request and that the request does not infringe on current uses of ground water -- ranching, farming and drinking water for residents.

But Nye County and Amargosa Valley residents did not join in that agreement.

If the hearing continues as scheduled, DOE water experts are expected to introduce new evidence about the amount of water available to the west and south of Yucca Mountain.