State engineer turns down nuke dump water rights request

Brendan Riley

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2000 | 10:32 a.m.

CARSON CITY - A federal bid to pump groundwater for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain was turned down Wednesday by state Engineer Mike Turnipseed.

Turnipseed said the water use requested by the federal Department of Energy for the high-level waste dump "threatens to prove detrimental to the public interest."

His decision follows a hearing late last year where representatives of Citizen Alert and other public interest groups backed the state's argument that the dump would have an adverse economic impact on Nevada.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site the DOE is studying for storage of the nation's high-level nuclear waste. Its efforts have been heavily backed by the nuclear energy industry.

The DOE is using groundwater now on a temporary permit that expires in 2002. The agency said that if Turnipseed denied the application, work would be harder but would continue at the isolated desert location.

Turnipseed based his decision on a previous determination by Nevada lawmakers to ban storage of high-level nuclear waste in the state. He said he lacks authority to independently review the lawmakers' policy decision.

In the earlier hearings, Kaitlin Backlund of Citizen Alert and Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams, representing the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, said polls show Nevadans are strongly opposed to the dump, and its presence could scare off thousands of tourists, costing the Las Vegas economy millions of dollars.

Brent Kolvet, representing the DOE, argued that the agency's request for 430 acre-feet per year of Amargosa Valley water was well within what's available. Kolvet added that the water can be pumped for the project without harming neighbors' water supplies.

In his ruling, Turnipseed said the opponents' testimony showed "it may not be in the economic interests of Nevada to have a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, and that the siting ... at Yucca Mountain causes considerable public concern."