Editorial: So much for all the promises

Friday, Feb. 15, 2002 | 4:55 a.m.

It was a beautiful morning at Lake Tahoe on June 1, 2000, as George Bush made what turned out to be his only campaign stop in Nevada. Lake Tahoe was the place Bush chose to deliver a speech touting his environmental policies, an address intended to decrease apprehensions that many swing voters in the nation had about what they saw as his pro-business, anti-environmental record. Bush said officials should be "stewards" of the earth, and he added there should be less friction and more cooperation on environmental matters. Not surprisingly, because Lake Tahoe offered a spectacular backdrop with great visual images, the speech received considerable play on the television networks' evening newscasts.

Just as Bush started to leave following his speech at Lake Tahoe, a reporter asked him about a proposed nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, an issue he didn't touch on in his remarks. But Bush refused to elaborate: "You have my statement." Bush was referring to a statement he put out in May in which he wrote that he wouldn't sign legislation as president that "would send nuclear waste to any proposed site unless it's been deemed scientifically safe." But even nuclear power industry advocates claim "sound science" should decide Yucca Mountain's fate -- it is a meaningless phrase.

"You have my statement" were Bush's only spoken words about Yucca Mountain; the remainder of the campaign offered up a few other written statements about the need for "sound science" in deciding whether Yucca Mountain was suitable for nuclear waste. Bush's supporters said these statements were proof that we'd get a fair deal, despite the fact that he was the darling of the nuclear power industry, which loaded up his campaign with political contributions. Bush's determination to be vague paid off politically, though: He carried the state in the general election. On Friday, however, Bush confirmed the worst fears Nevadans had about him, as he gave his approval to the permanent burial of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

The dismissive attitude Bush displayed during his campaign stop in Nevada has become a hallmark of this administration's take on other environmental issues as well, a pattern that includes outright stonewalling. Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which recommended a renewed emphasis on nuclear power, deliberated in secret and Cheney still refuses to turn over to the General Accounting Office the list of power industry executives and lobbyists who met with the administration's energy task force.

Nevada voters were deceived by the assurances of Bush and his Republican political supporters here, the chief of whom was Gov. Kenny Guinn, regarding his true intentions about Yucca Mountain. But Congress, which ultimately will have the final say on the president's recommendation, should learn from our experience. Lawmakers should discount the president's assertion that everything is safe with Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is geologically unsuitable and the dangers inherent with transporting nuclear waste have been swept under the rug by the Department of Energy, which recommended that the president approve a nuclear waste dump in Nevada. Nuclear waste won't one day just magically appear all at once at Yucca Mountain; tens of thousands of shipments of nuclear waste will have to travel hundreds of miles, sometimes close to 3,000 miles, over our nation's hi ghways and railways to get here. Accidents or acts of terrorism would create disasters. Not only is Yucca Mountain bad for Nevada, but it also is bad for the nation.