Editorial: Why does this sound so familiar?

Friday, Feb. 8, 2002 | 4:55 a.m.

Gov. Kenny Guinn emerged from his meeting Thursday with President Bush in a more upbeat mood than when he first entered the Oval Office. Bush had invited Guinn to Washington to give Guinn a last opportunity to explain why the state of Nevada is opposed to a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. The president seemed to listen closely and indicated he wasn't going to rush a decision, Guinn told reporters later. "We felt much better coming out than we felt coming in," said the Republican governor, who was accompanied at the meeting by Sens. Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a Republican. "We got Nevada's side in," Guinn said. Reid had dreaded the meeting, but he said afterward that it went better than expected. Ensign said he believes that now "the president has doubts in his mind" about Yucca Mountain.

The Nevada officials' remarks, while cautious, still have a familiar ring. Nevada's top Republican politicians -- including Guinn, Ensign and Rep. Jim Gibbons -- assured us during the 2000 presidential campaign that George W. Bush would treat the state fairly when it came to Yucca Mountain. They even gave a ringing endorsement to a weak, bland statement Bush made on using "sound science, not politics" to decide Yucca Mountain's fate. In a letter to the editor to the Sun that was published earlier in the campaign, Gibbons defended Bush's views on nuclear waste storage, writing in March 2000 that "Nevadans can be assured that a Bush administration will ensure an open-door policy on each of the critical issues affecting our state." (In a bitter irony for Gibbons, he was shut out of the Thursday meeting with Bush. So much for that open door.)

The president so far hasn't lived up to the advance billing, praise that helped him secure in the 2000 election the four electoral votes of Nevada, one of a handful of toss-up states that decided the outcome of the presidential race. Bush, in contrast to Bill Clinton, has put the nuclear waste dump program on a fast track, seeking a 41 percent increase for the Yucca Mountain project over last year's budget. Add to that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's intention to recommend that Bush approve the storage of nuclear waste in Nevada, and it sure doesn't seem Nevada has the ear of this administration.

Still, there is a possibility -- slim as it may seem -- that Bush finally may realize that he's been fed bad information by the Department of Energy and his White House advisers. Maybe, just maybe, Bush finally is listening to Nevadans who have noted repeatedly the twin dangers of transporting nuclear waste and burying it in Nevada. But Nevadans shouldn't get their hopes up too high. We need to remember that while Guinn and Co. were received courteously by the president himself, White House sources told the Associated Press on Thursday that the president would approve a recommendation to build the nuclear waste dump. "He trusts the energy secretary's judgment," the source said. In addition, Bush administration officials and congressional sources said that the president wants to make a decision quickly so Nevada's congressional delegation has as little time as possible to persuade lawmakers to override a Bush recommendation.

Nevadans have seen two sides of George W. Bush: the campaigner who proclaimed science would rule the day on Yucca Mountain, and the president whose administration has dismissed scientific evidence showing how unsafe it would be to ship nuclear waste and bury it at Yucca Mountain. Now we'll just have to wait anxiously to see which side of the president prevails.