Final Yucca lobbying under way

Benjamin Grove

Monday, July 8, 2002 | 11:04 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- This week, the U.S. Senate is expected to take up the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, drawing years of congressional wrangling over the project to a close.

The Senate is expected to debate and vote on putting the waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, with the debate starting as soon as Tuesday, congressional sources said.

The Senate vote is the last congressional action required for approval. The House approved the site earlier this year after President Bush and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended the site.

In a last-minute flurry of lobbying, the Bush administration is expected to further pressure Utah's two Republican senators to support Yucca today in a White House meeting.

"This shows how close a vote the other side thinks it will be," said Traci Scott, spokeswoman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. "It's fourth and goal and we are not going to give up."

Ensign also spoke to Utah Sens. Robert Bennett and Orrin Hatch today, Scott said. But she would not disclose the content of the conversation or say how the Utah lawmakers are expected to vote.

Bennett and Hatch requested the afternoon meeting with White House chief of staff Andrew Card and Abraham, according to a Bennett press release.

In an attempt to rally a majority of the Senate against the repository, Nevada officials have been pressuring Bennett and Hatch, among others, to oppose the controversial dump project. The state paid for anti-Yucca television commercials that ran in Utah in May. A nuclear industry group, the Alliance for Sound Nuclear Policy, ran competing commercials.

Aides for the Utah senators were not available for comment today.

Nevada officials have been fighting the plan to make Yucca a national nuclear waste dump for years. They say it will endanger state residents, and those along waste transportation routes. Nuclear industry officials and other Yucca advocates say scientific study has proven the project safe.

"The plan would store the waste safely in the remote Nevada desert and get it out of our communities," said a pro-Yucca television commercial that ran in 13 states last week, paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "It's a common sense plan."

Senate Republican advocates of the dump today and tomorrow are outlining a strategy to bring the issue to the Senate floor as early as Tuesday, said Will Hart, spokesman for Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a leading Yucca supporter.

It's not clear yet which GOP senator will call for debate, Hart said today.

"We have several members who are interested in bringing it up," Hart said.

Most Congress-watchers expect the Senate to pass Yucca, but an exact vote count has been difficult to predict because a number of senators have not publicly stated how they intend to vote.

Craig and other Republicans have joined industry lobbyists -- and the president -- in urging GOP senators to support the project. They need 51 votes to approve it. They also need 51 votes to defeat a procedural maneuver planned by Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Ensign designed to block a vote from happening at all.

The Nevadans plan to argue that only Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has the right by tradition as the Senate agenda-setter to call for a vote on an issue. But Yucca advocates point to a provision in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that specifically allows any senator to call for action on Yucca.

Of course the Nevadans have been lobbying, too. One of their chief arguments in recent months has been that it would be dangerous to launch a massive waste shipping campaign, inviting accidents and terrorist attacks.

Yucca advocates in Congress and in the nuclear industry say high-level waste shipping is safe, proven by a history of nearly 3,000 high-level waste shipments nationwide since the 1960s, with few accidents and no radiation releases.

Waste is shipped by train and truck in robust steel containers and the chances of a radiation release are tiny, industry experts say. And given the abundance of attractive terrorist targets in America, it's highly unlikely terrorists would go to the trouble of attacking a waste shipment, they say.

But Nevada senators in the last two weeks won over at least two more allies using the transportation argument.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said she decided to oppose Yucca because it's possible waste could be transported on barges on Lake Michigan during its long trek from Michigan's shore-line nuclear plants to Nevada. Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., will oppose Yucca because much of the waste would travel through St. Louis and Kansas City.

The Senate vote is the final congressional hurdle for Yucca, the first project of its kind in the world. The House approved the project 306-117 on May 8.

Inside the Capitol, Yucca advocates led by Sens. Craig, Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., have matched the lobbying efforts of the Nevada senators. The Yucca backers have publicly and privately urged their colleagues to promptly approve Yucca.

Outside the Beltway, both pro- and anti-Yucca groups launched intensive public relations and lobbying campaigns.

The state of Nevada spent about $2 million on anti-Yucca advertising, running television commercials in Vermont, Utah, Wyoming, Iowa, Missouri, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Nevada officials also hired two high-profile lobbyists, former President Clinton adviser John Podesta, and former President Reagan adviser Ken Duberstein, to work on their behalf. Gaming industry groups are paying the bulk of their salaries.

The state is spending millions more on legal efforts to kill the project. Nevada officials have long acknowledged they had a better chance of derailing Yucca in the courts than in Congress.

Meanwhile environmental groups nationwide in recent months have energized their support bases, urging allies to email, phone and write letters to their senators, inundating some offices. Activists hauling mock nuclear waste containers cruised the nation's highways to trumpet the dangers of transporting waste from sites nationwide to Nevada.

Leading anti-Yucca group Public Citizen led many of the efforts, even enlisting the star power of Hollywood actors and musicians, a few of whom personally contacted senators. As recent as last week, rockers from the bands Midnight Oil, the B-52s and Indigo Girls urged people at an anti-Yucca rally in Chicago to pressure Illinois senators.

Pro-Yucca nuclear industry lobbyists, led by the influenctial Nuclear Energy Institute, spent millions to assure Yucca's passage.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce led by high-profile lobbyists Geraldine Ferraro and John Sununu also pressured lawmakers. The chamber also paid for week-long pro-Yucca radio commercial campaign in 13 states that ended today.

The industry group Alliance for Sound Nuclear Policy has nearly matched the Nevada television commercials, running pro-Yucca spots wherever anti-Yucca commericals were airing.