Columnist Benjamin Grove: A mountain of problems for homeowners

Benjamin Grove

Friday, May 17, 2002 | 4:05 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- For a short time last August, Shawn Murphy and his wife must have been the only people in Nevada who had never heard of Yucca Mountain.

That quickly changed when a neighbor told them they had moved into the shadow of a mountain that may become the nation's nuclear waste dump.

"I feel that, in a way, we were swindled," Murphy said.

Murphy, 50, his wife Sue and their 13-year-old daughter moved to Amargosa Valley from Buckley, Wash., after searching Nevada and Arizona for a quiet spot to settle down with their six horses.

Murphy, a truck driver on disability, has arthritis. He wanted someplace dry.

They looked at properties in Winnemucca and Spring Creek. But when those deals didn't work out, they sought out Amargosa realtor Michael DeLee, who handles most of the properties in the 1,271-resident town. DeLee steered them to a 2 1/2-acre plot with nice trees. They quickly finalized the paperwork.

Not long after they set up house in a double-wide mobile home on the property, neighbors invited the Murphys over for barbeque. One prattled on about something called Yucca Mountain.

What is Yucca Mountain? Murphy asked. The neighbor was floored.

"He smiled and then he started laughing and said, 'Well, you're 12 miles from where they are going to bury the nation's nuclear waste,' " Murphy recalled.

"I said, 'Oh, really? Are you serious?' "

The Murphys had visited the Amargosa place before they bought it, and they did a little research. They contacted the school and the Amargosa Chamber of Commerce. Murphy had realtor DeLee send him three copies of the Las Vegas Review-Journal to peruse. The issues had no stories about Yucca Mountain, he said.

Murphy said DeLee never told him about the nuclear waste dump proposal, nor did anyone else.

Murphy would not have moved if he had known about Yucca, he said. But he doesn't plan to leave. He's invested in the new place and plans to pay it off in 2011, just about the time the Department of Energy plans to begin hauling waste to Yucca Mountain.

"Basically, we're stuck," he said.

Realtor DeLee contends he mentioned Yucca to Murphy before he sold the place.

But to avoid any more dissatisfied clients, DeLee last year began inserting a Yucca disclosure clause in his sale contracts.

The disclosure language DeLee uses is unique among Nevada realtors, he said: "BUYER is aware that a large dairy is located in the Amargosa Valley and that the Government Plans to build the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in the Amargosa Valley and has researched the possible impact of these and other regional factors in making the decision to purchase this land."

The disclosure hasn't cost him any sales, DeLee said.

"I have yet to hear someone say, 'I don't want to buy here because of Yucca Mountain,' " DeLee said.

Murphy and DeLee are grappling with a question that has yet to be answered in the broader debate over Yucca Mountain -- will the project send property values plummeting?

Clark County paid for one study completed late last year by Urban Environmental Research, LLC, of Arizona, that said Clark County homes within one mile of a waste transportation route would dip 3.5 percent on average -- a loss of up to $647 million. Values would tumble much further if an accident ever occurred.

Mayor Oscar Goodman and county officials filed a lawsuit in January in federal court alleging that Yucca would cause "immediate and irreparable harm" to the area, including lower property values.

But not everyone is convinced. DOE officials generally brush off the theory that their project will bring down the value of Southern Nevada.

And in Amargosa, DeLee predicts Yucca would actually increase property values. The project, among the biggest and most costly engineering projects in U.S. history, could bring house-shopping workers pouring into town, DeLee said.

"There is a perceived risk, no question about that," he said. "But any decreases created by perceived risks are going to more than be made up for by the reality of supply and demand. If anything, housing values are going to go up. It's just a question of how much."

A number of Amargosa residents tend to agree, and openly support Yucca.

But at least a vocal few are adamantly opposed to the project, including Shawn Murphy. A few hundred workers would be needed to operate Yucca, but Murphy doesn't buy the argument that they will settle in Amargosa.

He's worried about the stigma attached to nuclear waste, and about accidents.

"There are just too many unanswered questions for Yucca Mountain to drive property values up," Murphy said. "When you buy a place you say to yourself, 'When I'm ready to sell, will I be able to get a good deal?' Right now, I don't know."