Protesters rip Yucca plan

Monday, July 8, 2002 | 9:39 a.m.

It was high noon at the Clark County Government Center amphitheater Sunday, and several community groups were taking what they called their last stand against Yucca Mountain before the U.S. Senate votes on the proposed nuclear waste dump this week.

"It is kind of a showdown," Sierra Club spokeswoman Leana Hildebrand said. "We are at an impasse at this point and we are not going to waver from our stand."

Leaders of the "This Land is Our Land -- It's Not a Waste Land" protest hoped that the 90-plus gathering of politicians, activists and concerned citizens, combined with similar protests across the nation, would be noticed in Washington. They also hoped that the rally would start a ripple effect of Nevadans calling friends and family in other states to encourage them to call their senators.

"We need to call other states and get help with other senators," Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, said. "Our senators are doing great."

The rally started and ended with a version of the American classic "This Land is Your Land," rewritten by Peter Ediger, a community activist for Pace e Bene Franciscan Non-Violence Center in Las Vegas. The song, with lyrics such as "We all say, 'No Way!' to the nuclear highway," focused the rally around the issue of transportation.

The protest, organized primarily by Citizen Alert, originally was going to take place on the Interstate 15 North on-ramp near Grand Central Parkway and Charleston Boulevard to demonstrate that the community organizations are willing block nuclear waste from coming onto Nevada freeways if the fight gets that far.

"What we're hoping is that it won't get anywhere near Nevada, that we can stop it at the gates of the (nuclear power plants)," Citizen Alert organizer Peggy Maze Johnson said.

The mood of the rally -- which featured county commissioner and congressional candidate Dario Herrera and Attorney General candidate John Hunt -- was that Nevadans have not yet begun to fight.

"People in Nevada need to know that this is not a done deal, it's not inevitable," Treichel said.

Both Treichel and Johnson said they hope Nevada can still win in the U.S. Senate, but Hunt said the state would continue to fight the waste site in court for as long as it takes.

The protesters cheered Jonathan Galaviz, who last month sued the Energy Department and President Bush to stop Yucca Mountain, claiming the transportation routes unfairly target minority groups.