Editorial: No reason for delay of money

Wednesday, April 9, 2003 | 9:01 a.m.

President Bush and Congress have already written off the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as a lost world fit only for the storage of nuclear waste. But Nevada and its counties are not meekly acquiescing to this assessment. For more than 20 years, our state and local governments have fought against the plan to convert Yucca Mountain into a burial site for lethal waste from the nation's nuclear power plants. And with critical stages in the planning for Yucca just ahead, they have no plans to wilt now. That's why a Department of Energy decision to withhold money from Nevada and Clark County is inexcusable.

Because Nevada and its counties would be so extremely affected by the Yucca Mountain decision, Congress authorized annual stipends that would enable local officials to conduct independent studies of the site, review the federal studies and keep the public informed of their findings. For this year, the state was to receive $2.5 million and Clark County another $1.8 million. Additionally, $5.2 million was approved for eight other Nevada counties and Inyo County in California. The annual allocations are included in the Department of Energy's budget, but were clearly intended to be fully passed on to the state and counties.

The DOE, however, is holding up this year's funds for the state and Clark County, plus another $625,000 the state was to have received last year. One reason is that an audit is under way to see if past disbursements were spent properly. Another reason was given by Margaret Chu, director of the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. On Monday, she told the Sun's Washington correspondent, Benjamin Grove, that the DOE is studying whether Nevada still needs the money, now that Congress has approved the Yucca Mountain site.

The DOE should not be overriding the intent of Congress in authorizing the money. Beyond that, of course, is the incontrovertible fact that the need for the money exists as much now as ever. The DOE needs oversight as it prepares a plan for transporting nuclear waste across the country and through Southern Nevada. And it needs oversight as it seeks licenses before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- one for constructing the site at Yucca and another for actually depositing the waste underneath. As for the audit reason, that amounts to penalizing the state -- at a critical juncture -- for no discernible reason. The DOE has not produced any evidence of misspent money. Unless it does, the money should flow as Congress intended.