Yucca project budget sliced

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Friday, July 13, 2001 | 11 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A Senate panel on Thursday slashed funding for the Yucca Mountain project, setting up a battle with pro-Yucca lawmakers.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $25.1 billion energy and water bill that included the smallest budget in six years for the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

The clout of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., led to the Yucca budget cuts. The No. 2 Senate Democrat wrote the funding details for the overall bill. He is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.

Reid leads the Nevada delegation in its battle against the proposed Yucca Mountain project, a federal plan to bury the nation's high-level nuclear waste in underground tombs beneath the desert ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

While the Bush administration asked for $445 million to complete studies at Yucca Mountain, the only site under study by the Department of Energy as a permanent burial ground for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, the Senate Appropriations Committee, at Reid's direction, sliced the request to $275 million.

"There are other priorities," Reid spokesman Nathan Naylor said. "When he looked around at all these competing requirements for renewable energy programs and water appropriations for the entire country, the funding for some of these Yucca Mountain initiatives were low on his list of priorities."

But the Yucca budget is hardly final -- the committee vote merely sets up a skirmish on project spending.

The House last month approved $443 million for Yucca, nearly what the DOE requested. After the full Senate approves the energy and water budget -- likely next week -- a "conference committee" panel of both House and Senate lawmakers would meet to iron out differences between the bills.

A number of pro-Yucca House and Senate lawmakers likely will fight to increase the project budget. Yucca has stalwart defenders in both chambers, among them Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House energy and air quality committee.

Barton "definitely" will fight to give the DOE the money it requested this year, Barton spokeswoman Samantha Jordan said today. Barton has served on previous energy and water conference committees.

Barton wants to take Yucca spending decisions from Congress altogether. Barton has said he is tired of Congress every year limiting the amount of money the DOE can spend out of the $10 billion national nuclear waste fund.

Barton is fighting for legislation to give the DOE free access to the whole fund to spend however and whenever DOE officials deem appropriate -- without being subject to annual spending limits set by Congress. Utility ratepayers who use electricity generated by nuclear power pay a special tax that feeds the fund.

Reid's slashing of the Yucca budget is another argument for taking Yucca spending decisions from Congress, Jordan said.

The DOE had no official comment on the proposed cuts. For now, Yucca projects continue. DOE spokeswoman Gayle Fisher said the agency is not yet changing its plans for completing studies and recommending the site later this year.

"(The budget) is not final," she said.

Reid also touted other pieces of the bill, which funnel $137 million to Nevada for energy and water projects. Projects include $1 million for the national Million Solar Roofs project and $5 million to establish a National Renewable Energy Laboratory site.

"I am especially pleased with the funding now available for alternative energy development," the senator said.

The largest project in Nevada's share of the funding earmarks $30 million to build flood control projects on the Flamingo and Tropicana washes west of Las Vegas.

Other significant funding for Southern Nevada projects includes $6.2 million for electric power, safety, communications and bus upgrades at the Nevada Test Site, $6 million for UNLV research into economic and environmentally sound ways to transform high-level nuclear waste into less harmful byproducts and $6 million for developing ways to manage nuclear worker medical records for the DOE.

Reid also authorized $6 million for oversight by 10 counties affected by a proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and $4 million to study ground water under the Nevada Test Site -- where more than 1,000 nuclear weapons were detonated from 1951 until 1992 -- and Yucca Mountain, adjacent to the site.