Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Get behind dump fight

Friday, March 1, 2002 | 4:37 a.m.

NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV was wrong when he said that the Soviet Union would bury us. But that guy who said we would likely bury ourselves, now, he knew what he was talking about.

Am I the only person in this state who caught the irony on the front page of the Las Vegas Sun last Thursday? Surely there must be thousands of others who saw the two headlines: "Support lacking in Yucca fight" and just below that: "Fallout likely killed 15,000."

The 15,000 number is a minimum of deaths caused by nuclear testing during the Cold War explosions around the world, including the Nevada Test Site, less than 100 miles from Las Vegas and a stone's throw from Yucca Mountain, where President George W. Bush recently decided to send the nation's nuclear waste.

The story acknowledged tens of thousands of other cancer cases that may not yet have resulted in death. The one thing we all know about government estimates, especially with bad news, is that they are very, very conservative. Who knows the real death toll from all those tests and the resulting lies and cover-ups that emanated from the Department of Energy and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission? You know the lies, the ones that told us everything was safe?

So let's go back to that other story that reported on the lack of desire by many in the business community to get behind Gov. Kenny Guinn and the Nevada Resort Association's efforts to stop Bush's plan to shove the nation's radioactive garbage down our throats.

The NRA raised $750,000 the other day to start a fund to help defeat the Bush administration's plan to bury us beneath 77,000 tons of high-level waste. That, together with the $5 million the governor got from the legislature should last a month or so in this fight. In other words, we are going to need a lot more money to fund the legislative and legal fights that lie ahead. Those dollars need to come from the tourist industry and every man, woman and child who wants to live free and die in Nevada without the constant fear of environmental disaster that may result from Bush's decision.

That's the backdrop for the story which quotes many banking, utility, homebuilding and other industry spokesmen who basically say that this isn't their fight, and who cares anyway.

What was really surprising was Tim Snow's reaction. Tim runs the development company owned by the Thomas and Mack families, two generations of whom have helped build this community to a level that is the envy of the country and a third generation all set to continue the good that the patriarchs, Parry Thomas and Jerry Mack, have done.

Rather than step up with a contribution to the fight of a couple hundred thousand dollars -- which the families can easily afford -- he spoke for them by saying, "I don't feel there is a groundswell within commercial real estate to fervently support the opposition to Yucca Mountain."

Here's a hint, Tim. If you and the Thomas boys got out in front of this thing, there would be a groundswell. Now is the time for leadership, not a continued head-in-the-sand mentality.

There is work to be done and as powerful as Sen. Harry Reid is, he cannot do it alone. So many of the people in real estate, banking and utility industries are huge supporters of the Republican members of the U.S. Senate. We need at least a dozen of those senators to live up to their conservative leanings and support the concept of a state's right to decide for itself how it wants to live.

When Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoes Bush's decision -- which he should do at the very last moment to give us enough time to mount the best defense we can -- it should be the Republicans who stand up for Nevada. As it stands today, only two from the GOP have made that commitment. Reid needs help, guys, so rather than stick your heads in the sands of wasted time, get out front and lead for a change.

All of these businesses who are afraid to rock the boat will be packing their bags if those trucks start rolling our way and the worst happens. And don't think for a moment that they won't start rolling this year or next rather than the 10-year number being bandied about.

The Republican Congress tried three times in the 1990s to send that stuff out to Nevada on a temporary basis, and if it hadn't been for President Bill Clinton's veto and Harry Reid's and Dick Bryan's efforts to find 34 votes in the Senate, we would already be hip-deep in that which no one else in this country wants. It doesn't take a genius to realize that if we are unsuccessful this time that those bills for a temporary site will be passed fast and furiously and signed in the blink of an eye by the man who told us he wouldn't do to us exactly what he is now doing.

So come on, guys, it may take a while to prove the case, but it is a certainty that the government lies to us about bad things and the government kills innocent people when it thinks it needs to do so. Ask the downwinders in Utah if you don't believe me.

Do our children and grandchildren have to read similar headlines 50 years from now about how wrong the Bush administration was in 2002 and how many hundreds of thousands of deaths -- including the death of Las Vegas -- that governmental arrogance caused?

Instead of passing the buck like the business community always likes to do, why don't you folks step up to the plate and pass some big bucks into the kitty that will help fight our way out of this mess.

As the man says, you can pay now or you can pay so much more later. Assuming there is a later, that is.