Anti-Yucca campaign gathers strength in LV

Friday, Feb. 2, 2001 | 11:29 a.m.

A nonprofit corporation will be formed to help Nevada tell the rest of the country about the dangers of nuclear waste, a Strip executive said Thursday.

The corporation will spring from a consortium of Las Vegas businesses, which sent about 70 people to Thursday's meeting.

Stephen Cloobeck, president and CEO of Diamond Resorts International, told Thursday's gathering that he hopes to raise about $10 million for the effort. The money will be used to motivate people across America to oppose burial plans in Nevada, he said.

The Energy Department is preparing a report about whether to build a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Because the DOE is expected to recommend Yucca to Congress, local opposition is mounting.

In all, if the DOE's plan goes forward and receives presidential approval, the nuclear industry would send 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to the mountain over the next several decades.

In addition to $5 million Gov. Kenny Guinn has pledged in the battle against a Yucca Mountain repository, Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera said the county would contribute $1 million to the nonprofit corporation.

Representatives of the Southern Nevada Board of Realtors, public utilities and the Venetian hotel-casino were among those attending Thursday's meeting. Other major resorts have also contacted him, Cloobeck said.

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, for the first time, passed a resolution on Wednesday opposing nuclear waste storage in Nevada.

"I'm the glue trying to keep the state, the county and the cities together and make the rest of the country aware of what is going on," Cloobeck said after the meeting at the County Government Center.

Officials representing Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., attended. State Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, Herrera and County Commissioner Myrna Williams also participated.

Citizens not affiliated with major industry or government also pledged their help.

Guinn committed $5 million in state funds to battling nuclear waste, said Bob Loux, director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects. That money won't be available until after July 1, he said. The agency cannot use federal money to lobby against the nuclear dump.

What the new organization can do is help spread the word on the dangers facing communities along the transportation routes leading to a Yucca repository, Loux said. The Department of Energy proposes using federal highways through 43 states. More than 53 million people live within a mile of the routes.

"It's not an ad campaign," Loux said, explaining that the state's money won't go into the hands of an advertising company.

Instead, the funds will be used to distribute information to community and environmental groups across the country on the dangers from shipping the wastes to Yucca Mountain, he said.

Williams said Southern Nevada faces "some real danger" after former Michigan Sen. Spencer Abraham was confirmed as energy secretary.

In 1998, Williams noted, Abraham wrote a letter to former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in an effort to keep plutonium from nuclear weapons from flying over Michigan. But he favors sending nuclear wastes to Nevada, she said, even before the scientific studies at Yucca Mountain are complete.

County Nuclear Waste Division Director Dennis Bechtel said the DOE has not yet issued a formal transportation plan.

But without consulting the county or any of the cities, major transportation routes in Southern Nevada were chosen as part of DOE's environmental impact studies, Bechtel said.

The DOE's inspector general is investigating possible bias in the Yucca Mountain site selection process. A team of federal agents from Washington has been conducting interviews and poring over DOE documents in Las Vegas the past several weeks.

The investigation was requested by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in December after the Sun reported that it had obtained documents that appeared to show the DOE collaborating with its chief Yucca Mountain contractor to win approval for the Nevada site.

The Sun reported it had obtained a 60-page draft of a DOE overview on Yucca Mountain declaring the site suitable for nuclear waste storage, even though scientific studies haven't been completed.

Attached to the draft was a two-page memo suggesting the overview could be used to help the nuclear industry sell Yucca Mountain to Congress. Federal law prohibits the DOE from taking sides in the selection process.