Columnist Jeff German: Nevadans dig in for Yucca war

Friday, Aug. 31, 2001 | 4:02 a.m.

Jeff German is the Sun's senior investigative reporter. He can be reached at (702) 259-4067 or by e-mail at german@lasvegassun.com.

NEVADA LEADERS have been waging a political war in the trenches this past week to put off key hearings on the safety of Yucca Mountain.

Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev., the rest of Nevada's congressional delegation and Gov. Kenny Guinn have been bombarding Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and his minions with letters all week hoping to find an opening to force a delay in the hearings.

Their well-coordinated campaign, however, has fallen short.

Undaunted by the rhetorical blitz, the Department of Energy is moving ahead with the hearings, which begin Wednesday in Las Vegas inside the barbed-wire confines of the Nuclear Security Administration building in North Las Vegas.

The hearings are regarded as the first step in what is expected to be Abraham's decision later this year to declare Yucca Mountain suitable to store 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste now being kept at power plants across the country.

Abraham is likely to make his recommendation despite polls that show 80 percent of Nevadans believe the $58 billion Yucca Mountain project, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will never be safe.

The overwhelming public opposition has kept alive the fighting spirit of Nevada's leaders in the trenches.

"We're digging in," says Reid's press secretary, Nathan Naylor. "They're going to have to fight tooth and nail to get past us."

Reid and company now have set their sights directly on Abraham.

Their goal is to pressure the energy secretary into flying here from Washington to face his enemies at Wednesday's hearing. Protestors from national environmental and public interest groups are expected to be on hand to support Nevada's cause. Things could get ugly.

"There is nothing more important to his job than Yucca Mountain, which is one of the largest and costliest public works projects ever," Naylor says. "What else does he have on his plate?"

With barbs flying all around, Abraham's DOE has been plotting its own wartime strategy.

It scheduled Wednesday's gathering, for example, on the very day that Reid, the Senate's No. 2 man, and his Nevada colleagues were to be back on Capitol Hill for the start of the fall session.

How transparent was that?

Delegation members now must address the hearing from afar, through a video hookup in Washington.

The nuclear industry, meanwhile, also has been getting battle-ready for Wednesday.

In an Aug. 21 letter to power company executives, Joe Colvin, the executive director of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's high-powered Washington lobby, says he has been arranging for pro-dump speakers to participate in the hearing.

"It is critical that NEI members and other interested parties, including local and state officials and members of Congress, provide comments to the Energy Department to ensure that the Yucca Mountain suitability decision is made on the basis of science, not politics," Colvin writes.

He suggests that "key governors and members of Congress," those beholden to the wealthy industry, may be flown to Las Vegas for Wednesday's crucial confrontation.

One industry ally expected to attend is former Nevada Gov. Bob List, who recently signed a lucrative contract to help the NEI push Yucca Mountain.

Colvin says List already has become an "effective voice in the state," managing to get "fair and accurate" coverage of the dump in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The battlefield assessment, however, is skewed for consumption on the homefront.

Colvin, you see, neglects to point out that List also has drawn much negative coverage in other newspapers, like the Las Vegas Sun.

In times of war, especially in the trenches, you'd expect to hear that kind of propaganda.