Columnist Benjamin Grove: Yucca rhetoric is heating up on both sides

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Dec. 6, 2002 | 3:59 a.m.

FIVE MONTHS after Congress stamped its final approval on Yucca Mountain, the public relations battle over the nuclear waste dump project still simmers. Perhaps it has boiled over into your mailbox or e-mail.

As Gov. Kenny Guinn and other prominent Nevada politicians are committing to a lengthy legal challenge to the project, a Las Vegas-based group called Nevadans for Nuclear Safety and Benefits has been quietly pining for the dump (they prefer to call it a "highly sophisticated engineered facility"). The group has launched a statewide mailing campaign to convince people that Nevada should throw in the towel.

"Whether we approve or disapprove of Yucca, it's inevitable," said Rebecca Smith, a group spokeswoman from Pahrump. "At this point, it's time we should sit down with the federal government and find out what's in it for us."

One of the group's top messages: Tax Yucca, not Nevadans. The group, which is backed by money from the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute, says that instead of haggling over how to raise tax revenue in Nevada, officials should negotiate to tax the $58 billion Yucca project. (In its November mailing, the group specifically took aim at Sun Editor Brian Greenspun and the rest of Guinn's Task Force on Tax Policy just for mulling other new tax options.)

Smith said she is convinced that a majority of Nevadans -- especially in struggling rural counties -- now support abandoning the legal fight and negotiating for all kinds of benefits and terms. The grassroots group has a 15,000-member mailing list, Smith said.

In its latest mailing the group argued that:

Of course Nevada officials don't buy the arguments. They say the state has a solid chance of killing Yucca Mountain in court.

And to trumpet the message, Guinn's camp has a new communique of its own: "The Yucca Mountain Update," an e-mail newsletter unveiled last week, to be sent to media, environmentalists and other officials nationwide. In addition to dispatches from the legal battlefront, the e-letter also promises to "highlight previous transgressions and missteps by the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not only in Nevada, but throughout the country." The first edition outlined the state's "case in chief," the complex lawsuit filed last week in federal court that combines all the state's long-held arguments against the Energy Department's case for Yucca.

"This is just the opening salvo," Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa says in the briefing.

The state will send out a new edition of the Update once every few weeks, said Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. Loux said he launched the newsletter to keep interested parties up-to-speed on the state's complex legal proceedings. In addition to the Energy Department suit, the state has lawsuits pending against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency. Del Papa is contemplating a constitutional challenge.

"I can't think of a greater way to end my tenure as attorney general," Del Papa said. "I'm very proud of the work our team has done, and I think we will win."

And you thought Yucca rhetoric on both sides had faded with the debate in Congress.