State legislators join outcry against DOE

Cy Ryan and Jeff German

Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2000 | 11:34 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Nevada lawmakers are condemning the Energy Department's behind-the-scenes efforts to promote Yucca Mountain as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump.

The state legislators join Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn and Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid in condemning the DOE. Documents obtained by the Sun earlier this month show the federal agency collaborated with the nuclear industry to recommend Yucca Mountain, even though a study of the Nevada site has not been completed.

The Legislative Commission, at the urging of Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, agreed Monday to write a letter to the DOE voicing its displeasure.

Titus said the letter would be "letting (DOE officials) know we don't appreciate their behavior."

On Friday Reid, asked the DOE's inspector general to investigate whether federal laws were violated by the DOE and its contractors in putting together documents pushing Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The documents are a 60-page draft overview that suggests Yucca Mountain is a safe site for a repository and a two-page reviewer's note that describes the overview as being designed to help DOE officials sell the Nevada site to Congress.

Guinn and members of Nevada's congressional delegation also have voiced outrage over the internal DOE documents.

Guinn last week said he would call a "summit" of top elected leaders to come up with a strategy to counter the DOE's bias against Nevada in the site-selection process.

On Monday, after Titus made her anti-DOE pitch to the Legislative Commission, Sen. Ann O'Connell, R-Las Vegas, the panel's chairwoman, said she would send the letter on behalf of her colleagues. The commission is responsible for carrying on the Legislature's affairs when it is not in session.

Titus said she also might introduce a strongly worded resolution ripping the DOE when the Legislature convenes next year.

"They (DOE) certainly ought to know we're not happy, and we think it's playing politics," Titus said.

Assembly Speaker-elect Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, has previously said he plans to introduce a similar resolution attacking the DOE in the lower house.

Reid's call for an federal investigation came in a letter to DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman.

"The decision on the suitability of Yucca Mountain, which will impact lives in Nevada and across our nation, should not be turned into an 'Alice in Wonderland'-like process of answers first, questions later," Reid said when he made the letter public.

The latest documents, he said, "clearly demonstrate a bias in favor of Yucca Mountain, and it serves as further fodder for those who believe as I do, that the Department of Energy has abandoned its responsibility to remain independent throughout this process."

Reid said the reviewer's note, which was prepared by DOE contractors, "appears to indicate that the DOE and those working on Yucca Mountain have already decided that the site is safe even though scientific tests have yet to be completed and no official recommendation on its suitability has been made."

"To put it simply," Reid said, "they are attempting to attach a seal of approval to this project before it is complete and that is absolutely wrong."

The Legislature, in several sessions, has indicated its opposition to putting the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.