Lawmakers, lobbyists gear for a long battle

Benjamin Grove

Monday, Feb. 18, 2002 | 9:13 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Lobbyists and lawmakers on both sides of the Yucca Mountain issue already are looking ahead to the showdown in Congress.

They figure they have roughly 150 days -- at most -- before legislative shootouts on the House and Senate floors.

"Clearly, this is going to be a tough fight," said Anna Aurilio, legislative director for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which opposes the Yucca project. "There's going to be a massive lobbying effort on this issue."

The clock is ticking: Now that President Bush has endorsed the controversial nuclear waste plan, Gov. Kenny Guinn plans to file a formal objection within 60 days. The House and Senate would vote within 90 days on whether to override the objection.

That gives Nevada lawmakers maybe five months to bend ears and twist arms. If they convince a majority of their colleagues to vote with them in either the House or Senate, the Yucca project would grind to a dramatic halt -- and America would essentially be back to the drawing board in a search for a solution to nuclear waste.

"This is a high-stakes game," said Michael O'Donovan, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

Few predict the House will support the Nevadans.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said the vote likely will be about what it was in early 2000, the last time the House voted on a Yucca-related issue. Just 167 of 435 lawmakers voted with the Nevadans against the bill.

"It think it is, and it always has been, an uphill battle for Nevada in Congress," Gibbons said.

The Senate vote could be closer. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said perhaps 40 senators are currently on his side. He needs a majority, 51.

Generally -- not always -- senators vote on Yucca issues based less on party allegiances and more on whether senators have nuclear power plants with waste piling up in their states.

In the coming months lobbyists will give extra attention to the Senate's 11 freshmen -- two Republicans, including Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and nine Democrats -- who have not yet voted on Yucca-related legislation. Seven freshmen have nuclear plants in their states.

Among the freshmen is Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., who likely will be heavily targeted. Missouri has no nuclear power plants. Waste bound for Nevada would be shipped across Missouri's midsection, through St. Louis and Kansas City. A Carnahan aide said she had not publicly announced her stance.

"We'll see how the debate goes," Carnahan spokesman Tony Wyche said. "She's very much opposed to having waste shipped through the state. That's the prism through which we will be watching the debate."

Unlike Yucca votes in the past decade, Nevada this year will have a Republican senator helping to round up votes.

"Baseball great Yogi Berra said, 'It ain't over 'til it's over' and it ain't over," Ensign said. "Nevada has earned its name and reputation as the 'Battle Born' state. Now the real battle will begin."

But the heavy lifting probably will fall to Reid, and close ally Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

Daschle vowed Friday to stand by Reid, his top lieutenant, calling Bush's decision "premature and irresponsible."

A Daschle aide said he and Reid were mulling strategies together.

"We're looking at our options, but we don't want to telegraph what we're going to do," Daschle spokeswoman Ranit Schmelzer said. Options are limited; filibusters will not be allowed on the Yucca vote.

Meanwhile, Yucca proponents in the Senate are gearing up for the vote, too.

Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, will lobby undecided senators one-on-one as the vote approaches, said David Woodruff, Murkowski's committee spokesman.

Murkowski will renew old arguments that Yucca Mountain is key to increasing nuclear power in America -- and to the nation's energy security, Woodruff said. Murkowski will argue that 20 years of intensive study have proved the Yucca site safe.

"President Bush and Secretary Abraham reached their decision using the sound and objective science that must guide all policy-makers through each step of this project," Murkowski said Friday.

Murkowski also will stress that Yucca Mountain is the best place to keep waste out of the reach of terrorists. Yucca foes argue that transporting waste from nuclear power plants and defense sites nationwide risks a terrorist strike.

Nuclear industry lobbyists will join Murkowski. The industry's top lobby group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, is organizing its own lobbyists, plus hiring others.

NEI spokesman Mitch Singer declined to disclose NEI's vote count.

"It doesn't behoove us to do it, and it's very difficult to estimate at this time anyway," Singer said.

A handful of national environmental groups in Washington will target lawmakers, too, and push the terrorism issue. The activists are fewer in number and most give no campaign contributions to lawmakers, they say.

"We're up against millions of dollars in nuclear industry contributions," Aurilio said.

Anti-Yucca forces will focus on several issues as they approach lawmakers, said Michael Marriote, of the Nuclear Energy and Resource Service, a Washington-based anti-nuclear group. They must convince the politicians that approving Yucca Mountain would not eradicate waste from their districts. As long as nuclear reactors produce electricity, the plants produce waste, Marriote said. There will always be some waste stored on-site at plants, he said.

Marriote said the nuclear industry often stresses that 3,000 shipments of high-level radioactive waste have been made safely in the last 35 years. But most of those shipments were over very short distances -- not cross-country to Nevada, Marriote said.

"And if this (Yucca) program is approved, there will be more shipments in the first year than they have made in the last 30," Marriote said.

Marriote said anti-Yucca forces remain optimistic about the Senate vote.

"This sounds naive and idealistic, but despite the money of the nuclear industry, the voice of the public can sway the day," Marriote said. "It has in the past and it can again. I don't think anyone here believes this is a lost cause."