Yucca a source of pride for Bush

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2002 | 11:03 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- In a draft document touting President Bush's environmental accomplishments, the White House says Yucca Mountain will protect public health and safety and "should be able to meet EPA's radiological protection standards."

The 32-page draft called "The Bush Administration's Environmental Accomplishments" is an update of a list released last spring that chronicles Bush's progress on lands, water and air quality issues, said a White House source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The earlier version was made public and distributed to reporters at a Senate hearing in March, the source said.

The document has not been formally released and is subject to change, the source said. It is designed to focus attention on Bush for positive environmental initiatives. When completed, it likely would be posted on the White House's website, the source said.

The document, stamped with "Draft -- Not for Distribution," is circulating among congressional offices this week and was obtained by the Sun.

"The designation of a site for a repository for this material is environmentally important because it is critical to our ability to clean up former defense sites around the country as well as to retaining nuclear power," the document says.

Nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases, and is a clean and reliable source of electricity, the document says.

More than 20 years and $4 billion in scientific study demostrate Yucca is "scientifically and technically suitable for development," the document says.

"Yucca Mountain is a geologically stable site, positioned in a closed groundwater basin, isolated on federally controlled land, housed approximately 800 feet underground, and located farther from any metropolitan area than the great majority of less secure temporary nuclear waste storage sites that exist today," the document says.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has led critics of Bush's environmental policies, laughed at the White House draft. Reid reasserted an old argument that waste will continue to pile up at power plants as long as plants operate; Yucca Mountain would merely become one more waste site.

"It's a joke," said Reid, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Every environmental group in America opposed Yucca."

Yucca Mountain, a site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the Energy Department plans to construct a national dump for America's most radioactive nuclear waste, is no victory for the environment, Nevada lawmakers said. They have long argued that factors including water flow inside the mountain, and earthquake and volcano risks, make the site unsuitable.

"If they are calling that part of their clean energy environmental policy, then it strikes me that if they really want to make it clean they need to deal with the waste more responsibly than dumping it in the desert," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said Bush has been a "fantasitic" president, but said he was "completely unimpressed" with Bush listing Yucca as an environmental accomplishment. The Energy Department used 20 years worth of bad science to mislead Bush into believing the site is safe, he said.

"I simply disagree with the president on this issue," Gibbons said.

In a historic milestone in Yucca Mountain's 20-year history, Bush in February approved the desert ridge as America's high-level waste burial ground.

Nevada Republican politicians have distanced themselves from the president on the issue. Careful not to lay harsh criticism on the president now, the state's two GOP congressional candidates firmly disagreed that Yucca Mountain is not good for the environment.

Lynette Boggs McDonald and Jon Porter say Bush's Yucca Mountain listing would not tarnish their campaigns.

"I think voters in the district understand that I've been fighting Yucca since 1985," Porter said.

Nevada politicians are on the same side when it comes to Yucca and always have been, said Porter spokesman Mike Slanker.

"It's only been rhetoric from the Democrats who have tried to cozy up local Republicans with (pro-Yucca) Republicans from other states. But people are way too educated in Nevada for it to have an effect on local candidates."

Boggs McDonald spokesman Jack Finn said, "When it comes to Yucca Mountain, voters know Lynette vehemently opposes it, she believes the fight is not over and she disagrees with the president."

It's simply not credible for Nevada Democrats to suggest GOP candidates in any way support Yucca, UNLV professor Ted Jelen said, adding that the Bush list won't hurt the Republicans.

"It might make them -- particularly Porter -- more circumspect about taking campaign contributions (from pro-Yucca Republicans)" Jelen said. "It might hurt them a little in fund raising."

As Election Day nears, voters overwhelmingly believe that it is Nevada versus the rest of the United States in the Yucca fight, said Pete Ernaut said, a longtime GOP adviser.

Bush likely considers Yucca a victory for the environment of the other 49 states, Ernaut added. "For us, it's terrible."

Nuclear plants produce about 20 percent of the nation's energy, less than greenhouse-gas emitting coal and gas-fired plants, and nuclear officials have long touted that clean-air benefit.

Approving Yucca Mountain was also a victory for the environment because the project seeks to consolidate waste piling up at sites nationwide in a single, secure repository, said Joe Colvin, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top lobby group.

But environmental groups scoff at Bush's record on the environment. Listing Yucca was "absurd," said Lisa Gue, policy analyst for Public Citizen.

"Let's be clear: Yucca Mountain is a plan to transport 77,000 tons of the most deadly material out there to an earthquake zone, and it is certain to contaminate the local drinking water supply," Gue said. "This is not an environmental record the Bush administration should be bragging about."