Sierra Club hoping Yucca issue will draw voters

Friday, Aug. 6, 2004 | 9:45 a.m.

On the same day that Interior Secretary Gale Norton received bipartisan praise for bringing money from federal land sales in Clark County back to Nevada, environmentalists sharply criticized both her boss and her party.

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope called upon Nevada's voters to go to the polls and send a message to Congress and the White House on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. A strong turnout -- favoring the Democrats, he suggested -- could kill the controversial dump that is already in trouble in the federal courts.

"We can stop it," Pope said. "It's going to be decided right here in Clark County on Nov. 2."

The Sierra Club on Thursday launched a voter education program in Clark County that will include door-to-door and phone bank efforts. Pope said similar voter education and "get out the vote" efforts are under way in Ohio and Michigan, and will soon begin in Colorado.

Nevada and the other three states are all critical battlegrounds for the presidential election, which now looks close between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee from Massachusetts. All four also have a stake in the Yucca Mountain dump -- Nevada as the site of the dump and Michigan, Ohio and Colorado because the high-level radioactive waste would travel through them.

Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency was wrong to set a 10,000-year radiation protection standard after a National Academy of Sciences study indicated the standard should be thousands of years longer. Some scientists argue that the standard cannot be met.

"They're going to have to go back to Congress with an honest statement that they cannot protect the waste for even 10,000 years," Pope predicted of the Bush administration, which is backing the dump. "If Nevada is still in the ring and going all out, that combined with transportation fears will stop Yucca Mountain.

"Nevada won't be alone," he said. "This is one of those cases where a battle that looked lost is suddenly very winnable. This is the time for everybody to really pull together."

The election "will send a message to Congress that this is a safe place to send nuclear waste or not."

Sen. John Ensign, a Republican who also is opposed to Yucca Mountain, has acknowledged that Kerry's position now parallels those in opposition to the dump. But the decision on the fate of the dump won't be made in the White House or Congress but in the courts, he said.

"Yucca Mountain is still going to be built unless we win in the courts," he said.

Ensign said his colleague in the Senate also supported Yucca Mountain, "and not just 15 years ago." In 1996, he said, Kerry voted against stronger environmental standards proposed by then Sen. Richard Bryan, a Democrat and former Nevada governor.

Ensign said that Nevada voters will look beyond the single issue of Yucca Mountain to support Bush, among them the war on terrorism, education and other issues.

"Yucca Mountain is an important issue but it is only one issue," he said.

Norton, who drove by protesters on her way to a ceremony releasing $493 million gathered through the sale of federal land in Clark County for use on conservation projects, also defended her administration's environmental record. Although environmental groups have said the Bush administration is opening up most federal land in the West for oil, natural gas and coal development, she said the actual pace of development has been the same over the past three years that it was during the last three years of the Democratic Clinton administration.

In areas administered by the federal government, "less than 2 percent is going for energy production," she said.

Pope agreed that a variety of issues will bring voters to the polls, but he said Yucca Mountain should top the list for voters in Nevada.

"When it comes to Yucca Mountain, Bush and Kerry's records are like night and day," he said. "President Bush has been one of Yucca Mountain's strongest proponents, ignoring the safety warnings of his own scientific advisory and putting Nevada's families at risk. Senator Kerry has a clear voting record against disposing waste at Yucca Mountain and has vowed to fight it as president."