Lieberman vows to fight nuke dump plan

Friday, Oct. 27, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman reiterated his ticket's opposition to proposed interim nuclear waste storage in Nevada but said he was not convinced Republican presidential contender George Bush agreed.

Lieberman, a Connecticut senator running with Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore, said during a campaign stop at UNLV Thursday that he has consistently voted against interim storage of the nation's high-level nuclear waste in Nevada.

"The Nevada position is a very fair position, and it's one I'd be advocating if this was Connecticut," Lieberman said. "It's also right in terms of public health and safety.

"Basically there's a process going on for a permanent storage site. We'll wait and see where that leads. But to make an interim storage decision prejudges that process, and that's not fair. That's not due process."

Nevadans who support Bush, the Texas governor, and GOP running mate Dick Cheney have argued that their position on nuclear waste is similar to that of Gore and Lieberman. But Nevada Democrats have countered that the Republicans oppose allowing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set the standards for any nuclear waste storage.

Lieberman said he detected an "election eve" softening of the GOP ticket's position on the issue.

"As far as I can tell, the big difference between us, both tickets on this, is that the vice president has made very clear that he will veto an interim storage bill," Lieberman said. "Insofar as he and I will discuss such matters based on my strong and consistent record on this in the Senate, I would urge him to veto an interim storage bill that passed.

"Gov. Bush, I gather, has said that he would make a decision on a bill on interim storage based on the scientific evidence. I think that leaves a very large door open that should worry people here in Nevada. After all, these interim storage bills in their various manifestations have been getting more support in the Senate."

But during a roundtable discussion with local print reporters, Lieberman grew testy while defending a March 23, 1999, letter he co-signed with three fellow Democratic senators urging an "accelerated waste acceptance" timetable to ship waste from closed nuclear power plants once a permanent storage facility was established.

The only permanent storage location being considered by Congress is at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The letter, written to Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, did not mention Yucca Mountain or Nevada. But it did urge Murkowski that any comprehensive nuclear waste legislation must consider the "urgent needs" of closed nuclear power plants.

Lieberman and fellow Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut wrote that such policy would ensure that closed plants such as in their states did not suffer "additional and unnecessary" storage costs.

"A close reading of it will show that nothing was said about interim storage," Lieberman said when handed a copy of the letter.

He added that when a permanent waste facility was established, whether at Yucca Mountain or elsewhere, "then basically priorities should be given to nuclear waste from decommissioned plants. I think that's pretty self-evident."

When one reporter continued to ask whether he was referring to Yucca Mountain in the letter, Lieberman said: "I'm going to tell you one more time what I intended because it's my letter and these three guys (fellow co-signers) and not yours, and I'm telling you what I intended.

"This is a feisty press corps here. But I don't like it when people try to tell me what I thought."

As for other topics:

-- With Southern Nevada facing among the nation's highest gasoline prices, Lieberman said little could be done short-term to reverse the course because of the nation's heavy reliance on foreign oil. But he defended the Clinton administration's decision to dip into the nation's strategic petroleum reserve to increase consumer supply.

"It was at least a way to say in the short run we're not going to just roll over every time the oil producers and the big oil companies decide that they want to raise the prices," Lieberman said.

He also said there were clear differences on long-range oil policy between Gore and Bush.

"If there is a difference here between these two tickets on this it is that this is a very oil-centered ticket, the Republican ticket," Lieberman said. "Its answers to these problems tend to be to drill for more oil.

"We're for drilling for more oil where it can be done in a sensible way in this country and not destroy the environment. We're not for drilling in the Arctic Refuge."

-- Lieberman said he does not oppose gambling. He said he plays up to $50 in slot machines when he visits casinos. But he co-sponsored a bill that would ban college sports wagering in Nevada. He said some college coaches in his state, including University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun, wanted such wagering eliminated.

"There is a problem of illegal gambling, obviously," Lieberman said. "I bought the argument that the coaches made that when you have legal gambling on sports events it creates a different kind of problem. It gives a kind of legal sanction to it."

But he conceded that Gore disagrees with him on this issue because the vice president considers gambling a states' rights matter. Lieberman said that whatever Gore decides would be the administration's position.

-- The senator defended his demand that Hollywood make its product more family-friendly, arguing that what he was calling for was not censorship. But he and Gore have proposed that if the Federal Trade Commission is unable to step in and do something within six months, the new administration would push for legislation to give the commission that authority.

"My role has been to be an advocate and to basically speak for what I take to be millions of families in this country. I certainly keep meeting them in Connecticut, who feel as if they're in a competition with the entertainment industry to raise their kids and give them the values they want to give them," Lieberman said.

He said that legal authority is broader when it comes to dealing with content that comes over publicly regulated airwaves through television and radio than it is with movies, video games and records that are solely under the control of private industry.

"The legislation I've proposed has never been censorship. It has either been to require more information for consumers or to empower them to make choices themselves. The best example is the V-chip and the requirement for a rating system on the TV shows."

The roundtable discussion followed an outdoor campus rally in which Lieberman played up the economic successes of the Clinton administration and vows to continue that progress. He spoke of Gore as "a man who has a capacity to see over the horizon and the capacity to work with Americans and make that vision work."

Crowd estimates at the UNLV event ranged from 500 to 1,200, depending on who was doing the estimating.

Nevada is a swing state whose four electoral votes suddenly have become critical in a close battle leading up to the Nov. 7 general election.

Lieberman came to Las Vegas in the afternoon from New Mexico and left in the evening for Oregon. He is scheduled to meet up with Gore in the battleground state of Michigan on Sunday.

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