Anti-Enron mood may boost Yucca fight

Erin Neff

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2002 | 11:08 a.m.

Yucca Mountain opponents are hoping anti-Enron sentiment and questions about the Bush administration's energy policy will bolster their fight against the nuclear waste repository.

On Monday Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., joined a General Accounting Office lawsuit seeking to get Vice President Dick Cheney to turn over information about his meetings with energy executives. He hopes to compel the release of data about meetings with nuclear industry officials.

It's more than just a political move as Nevada leaders want to draw the link between the administration policy and Yucca Mountain.

"We don't know what we're looking for, but we'll know it when we see it," Robert Loux, executive director of the Nuclear Nuclear Projects Office, said.

A similar probe led to discovery that the Energy Department's law firm, Winston & Strawn, had also represented nuclear industry clients. An Inspector General's report on the alleged conflict of interest gives Nevada a chance to challenge every document the law firm submitted throughout the project's history, Loux added.

"We think that could help us with our legal challenges," Loux added.

In the wake of the Enron scandal, the GAO has sued the White House to obtain records of the meetings Cheney had with energy executives as the administration drafted its national energy strategy, released in May 2001.

Reid said 14 notable Yucca Mountain proponents were on the 48-member energy task force led by Cheney. Reid wants to see if Yucca Mountain was discussed in the creation of the energy policy and whether the discussions influenced the president's decision.

Nuclear industry officials met with Cheney's task force in March 2001, and the administration's energy policy released two months later included tax breaks for nuclear power and a recommendation to "use the best science to provide a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste."

Reid said Bush may have changed his opinion about the dump after the meetings. When he was campaigning for president in Nevada in 2000, Bush pledged to make any Yucca Mountain decision on "sound science, not politics."

Environmental groups have long argued the Bush administration's energy policy was a political payoff to energy industry executives who donated generously to Bush's campaign.

They also are eager for the Bush administration to release energy meeting documents.

"The (Energy Secretary Spencer) Abraham and Bush decisions contradict their campaign promises about relying on safe science," said Bob Schaeffer, spokesman for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. "It's important for the public to know what other factors outweighed those considerations."

Electric utilities with significant nuclear divisions and other nuclear power interests gave Bush $290,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign money.

Erle Nye, a chief executive at TXU, a nuclear utility in Texas, was one of the Bush "pioneers" who each raised $100,000 for Bush's campaign. Nye himself gave Bush $20,000. Donations totaling $37,000 were also made by 17 of the 23 board members of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top trade group.

Irene Navis, who leads the county's Yucca Mountain strategy, said county officials are exploring whether the county can join Reid in joining the GAO lawsuit.

"We have standing as an effected unit of local government so we think we may be able to file an amicus brief," Navis said.

No sooner had Reid finished announcing his latest fight-the-dump tactic Sunday on Fox News than local officials began wondering if they, too, could raise the Enron spectre.

On Monday, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera held a hastily-scheduled press conference to say that they would like to join Reid's efforts.

The only problem is they don't know whether they have legal standing to file a "friend of the court" brief in the matter. As a result the press conference really announced nothing more than the officials' already-stated opposition to the dump and more anti-Bush rhetoric.

"We need the information about the meetings because it speaks also to the president's bias if he in fact took these energy executives' comments into consideration on the Yucca decision," Herrera said.

Goodman said government is supposed to be open and he expects the Bush administration to disclose whether Yucca Mountain was discussed in any of the meetings with nuclear energy representatives.

"We can't have guess work here," Goodman said, urging disclosure. "Show us what you have."