DOE, Nevada lawmakers in war of words

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, March 28, 2002 | 10:59 a.m.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham never met with Nevada lawmakers before he recommended a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, and now Nevada lawmakers and DOE officials are engaged in a war of words over why.

Abraham made a good-faith offer to meet with the lawmakers in a Sept. 5 letter, Energy Department officials said.

In the letter Abraham told Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that he had dispatched his Under Secretary Robert Card to attend a public hearing on Yucca. He added, "I also would be happy to meet with you, the Governor, and the members of the Nevada Congressional Delegation to hear your and their views directly."

Nevada lawmakers never responded to the invitation and are now "backpedaling" as they try to explain why they never followed through with Abraham, DOE spokesman Joe Davis said.

"I would think that the Nevada delegation would take every opportunity to meet with a member of the Bush administration about this issue," Davis said.

Abraham's offer to meet was serious, Davis said.

"It's poor staff work for them to say that we did not take this seriously," Davis said. "This is a Cabinet member offering to meet with a U.S. senator."

Nevada lawmakers dismissed the claims, saying the offer was a flimsy line tossed into a letter about public hearings on Yucca Mountain.

"If the secretary ever wanted to meet with us about Yucca Mountain, we were just a phone call away," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said in a written statement Wednesday. But Abraham never followed up with staffers for Nevada lawmakers to set up a meeting, Ensign said. "We never got that phone call from Secretary Abraham."

The DOE and Nevada lawmakers are trading barbs at a time when the lawmakers are bracing for a critical vote in Congress on the Yucca project, a federal plan to bury the nation's highly radioactive nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, DOE officials are fending off criticism that they met mostly with energy company officials as they were drafting a national energy policy, which included an emphasis on nuclear power and called for a permanent waste repository.

Abraham knew well the reasons that Nevada lawmakers oppose the Yucca project, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said. The DOE's effort to stress that it reached out to the lawmakers misses the point, which is that the DOE has long been biased in favor of putting nuclear waste in the state and never had an open mind to the opinions of people in the state, Gibbons said.

"The Department of Energy is grasping at straws to prove that they have been fair, when they have been unfair all along," Gibbons said. "This is an effort to make us look like we are inconsistent."

The context of the letter is important, Reid spokesman Nathan Naylor said. At the time the letter was sent, Nevada lawmakers were urging Abraham to attend a public hearing in Nevada, which he later did. But at the time, the lawmakers were concerned that Abraham would consider a meeting with them to be an adequate substitute for attending a hearing in the state, Naylor said.

"It is 100 percent spin to say that this was a genuine request to meet with us," Naylor said. "This is him trying to duck out of meeting with Nevadans in the state."

That's "absolutely unbelievable" reasoning, Davis shot back. Davis added that Abraham heard plenty of input from Nevadans. In addition to the hearing he attended in Las Vegas, DOE officials attended 66 public hearings on Yucca Mountain during a four-month span late last year, Davis said. Abraham spoke to Gov. Kenny Guinn for an hour at Nellis Air Force Base on Jan. 7, and again for a brief, less formal meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington on Feb. 26.

"We had more contact with the governor than with the entire Nevada delegation," Davis said. "(Abraham) was impressed with the governor. He made a firm case."

Naylor said Nevada lawmakers did not have time to follow up a meeting with Abraham after he visited the state in mid-December. Shortly afterward -- on Jan. 10 -- Abraham recommended the Yucca site to President Bush, Naylor said.