Friday, Dec. 14, 2001 | 4:49 a.m.
Last week two Cabinet secretaries from the Bush administration stopped by Las Vegas. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham each carry a considerable amount of political baggage, with neither being viewed as friends of the environment, an image that closely mirrors that of the administration they serve in. Despite the similarities between Norton and Abraham, their visits couldn't have been any more different.
Norton's trip to Las Vegas on Tuesday and Wednesday was well known in advance. As part of Norton's tour, she gave a speech at the 18th annual Governor's Conference on Tourism, dropped by a number of federal locations under her department's control -- the Red Rock National Conservation Area and Hoover Dam -- and took time to be interviewed by a Sun reporter. Actually, there wasn't anything remarkable about Norton's visit. Cabinet secretaries are expected to get out and be salesmen for the administration's policies, even when they're controversial.
What is remarkable was the stealth used by one of Norton's fellow Cabinet members. Abraham crept into Las Vegas on Wednesday as if he was on a secret mission for the CIA. Abraham didn't tell any officials from Nevada in advance that he would attend a public comment hearing that the Department of Energy was holding on the Yucca Mountain Project.
Abraham was criticized widely by Nevada officials for failing to attend the DOE's first Yucca Mountain hearing back in September, a meeting in North Las Vegas that attracted more than 500 people. But instead of going to the earlier meeting -- where Nevadans in overwhelming numbers voiced their objection to the burial of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- Abraham attended the last of the 50 public hearings on the Yucca Mountain Project, a lightly attended meeting made up mainly of nuclear power lobbyists and DOE officials. Arrogance could be one reason for refusing to disclose his travel plans in advance, but another possibility could be that he was afraid to face a large crowd of Nevadans opposed to the federal government's heavy-handed actions on Yucca Mountain. Whatever the reason, Abraham blew it.
Abraham didn't take questions from the public, but in a brief statement he pledged to keep an open mind on Nevada's concerns. But who does he think he is fooling? The reality is that the energy secretary couldn't care less about the threat posed to the health and safety of Nevadans by high-level nuclear waste. Abraham insists that the department will be ready to give the president a recommendation on Yucca Mountain by the end of this month despite the fact that scientific studies will not have been completed by then. Abraham's haste also is troubling since the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, has recommended that the DOE indefinitely suspend its work on Yucca Mountain because of its flawed scientific investigation. Abraham is hardly the paragon of impartiality on Yucca Mountain: Even when he was a U.S. senator from Michigan, he str ongly supported efforts to bury nuclear waste in Nevada.
During the presidential election campaign, George Bush and the GOP elected officials from Nevada assured the state's residents that Bush would treat the state fairly on Yucca Mountain if he won. Maybe Bush and Abraham should heed what Norton said last week about her department's relationship with Nevadans. "We have a responsibility to listen to the people of Nevada and involve local people in decision-making. That is a philosophy that I want our department employees to answer to," Norton said. "We don't have all the answers in Washington." Indeed.
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