Columnist Susan Snyder: Waste issue more than pulp fiction

Friday, April 26, 2002 | 9:58 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Lilina and Analise Lucchese are getting quite the civics lesson.

The curriculum content is the kind that could keep adults awake at night.

Trains and trucks packed with nuclear waste barreling across the land of the free to a repository tucked inside Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Lucchese sisters learned of the proposal while reading the newspaper April 10. Lilina, 11, and Analise, 10, are home-schooled by their mother, Lisa Lucchese (pronounced as though it rhymes with "suitcase"), and reading the newspaper is part of their social-studies lessons. "Mostly we focus on local stuff. (Analise) is a fourth grader, and so we spend a lot of time on Nevada history," Lucchese said.

This month, however, they focused on Nevada history in the making. When the girls saw that the nuclear waste was not only going to be stored near their hometown but toted across the entire country, they decided to speak up.

They read that the Nevada Protection Fund was raising money to fight the repository, and they figured it was a good place to jump into the fight.

"We wanted to do something to support the fund because it (the waste) may spill, and it may get to us," Analise said.

Lilina said their Peccole Ranch neighborhood had a community garage sale that weekend, so they decided to set up an information booth about Yucca Mountain and sell lemonade for the cause.

They made fliers giving information for making donations to the protection fund. They made other fliers listing the names, address, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of Nevada's congressional delegation.

They cut out newspaper articles and printed proposed transportation routes off the Internet and mounted them on a presentation board. They spent about two hours a day doing research. On April 13, they were ready.

"Some people really got an education," Lucchese said.

Some people, the girls said, didn't have a clue as to what was happening even with all the recent publicity. The maps alone could scare a person.

"Some people didn't even know about it," Analise said.

"They didn't really understand it," Lilina added. "When we saw the routes, it showed that it goes through Indiana. We have relatives in Indiana."

"It goes through Oregon, too, and we have a grandma there," Analise said.

They sold $52 worth of lemonade, pitched in their combined monthly allowance of $40 and scraped up another $8 for a total fund donation of $100.

"Some people just gave money. They didn't even want lemonade," said Analise, who nonetheless sold about 7 gallons. "One guy even came up to me and said he wanted to give me a hug."

We'd all sleep easier if the most complicated subject Lilina and Analise had to research was what kind of hummingbird is building its nest on their front porch light. Nuclear waste accidents are scary brain fodder for 10- and 11-year-olds.

But it's good to learn how one decision here can make a difference over there. Some grown-ups never get it.

"I think they were surprised as to how far-reaching it is," Lucchese said. "And they wanted to know, 'How come we didn't have more of a say -- to say no?' "