Nye County’s challenge to Yucca water remains alive

Thursday, Nov. 18, 1999 | 10:06 a.m.

A District Court judge in Tonopah has kept alive a challenge by Nye County and Amargosa Valley residents to a federal request for ground water to support a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

District Judge John Davis refused on Wednesday to dismiss the case brought by concerned ranchers and farmers living as close as 12 miles to Yucca Mountain, the proposed site of the world's only high-level nuclear waste repository.

If it is built at the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, it would hold 77,000 tons of spent fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants and radioactive defense waste.

The rural residents are contesting whether there is enough water for the area to continue growing in population and harvesting crops such as alfalfa, pistachio nuts, melons and other crops if the Yucca repository is built.

Davis said he will wait for State Engineer Michael Turnipseed to make a decision on the request from the U.S. Department of Energy to use 430 acre-feet of ground water a year before he rules on the case. An acre-foot of water is enough to support a family of four for one year.

The DOE needs the permanent rights to the ground water before it can request a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, something that is not expected to happen before 2002. It currently has temporary ground water rights.

Amargosa Valley resident Michael DeLee had represented the rural region during hearings on the request. Turnipseed dismissed DeLee's concerns at the end of the second day of hearings Nov. 9.

The state engineer asked Davis to dismiss DeLee's complaint at the Wednesday hearing. Davis refused, saying he would wait for the decision and then examine more than 40 legal exhibits submitted during the hearing.

Turnipseed is in the process of weighing the evidence and testimony from the hearings that ended Tuesday in Carson City. He is not expected to make a decision on DOE's request until next year.

Both the DOE and the state of Nevada, which opposes the repository, have vowed to take the decision to the Supreme Court if necessary. The state argued that giving the DOE the water is not in the public interest, one of the criteria used by the engineer to make a decision.

The DOE said that although it could need up to 910 acre-feet a year of ground water in the first six years of construction and operation, it will use whatever limited water the state approves, even if that means slowing the construction of the repository.