For struggling rural county, Yucca route a tough call

Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2004 | 11:18 a.m.

CALIENTE -- On a slow Monday afternoon at the Knotty Pine Restaurant, co-owner Mel Robinson waits on two customers.

Asked about the Energy Department's recently announced preferred route that would bring trains carrying nuclear waste through the small town near the Utah border, Robinson says she believes that the federal government will win that fight and that folks need to accept it, as well as a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

"They (federal government officials) have to make it as safe as possible and hopefully we will get some benefits from the government such as an enhanced fire department and some good-paying jobs for people around here who really need them."

Besides, she says, "Maybe our businesses and others will have more customers."

Caliente's business district, 150 miles north of Las Vegas, is hurting. The street is full of closed stores -- Vasu Video, Carl's Burgers, the Nevada Club -- and buildings with boarded windows.

A few doors down from the Knotty Pine lives one of the town's most vocal anti-nuclear activists, Marge Detraz, whose frontyard fence is covered with bright red signs telling the world she has not accepted defeat in the battle to stop nuke trains from traveling through her community.

While others dined at the Knotty Pine, she prepared to go to the county seat, Pioche, to blast the Lincoln County Commission at its first meeting since the route was announced Dec. 23 for "selling out" to the federal government on the repository.

The Energy Department, which plans to open the high-level waste dump at Yucca by 2010, has chosen as its preferred route a yet-to-be-constructed, 319-mile rail line that would begin outside Caliente and wind north of the Nevada Test Site and west of the Nellis Air Force Range to its destination. The cost to build it is estimated at $881 million.

The agency's second choice would bring waste along Interstate 80 in Northern Nevada through Carlin, 50 miles east of Battle Mountain and south to Yucca Mountain along a rail line that would also need to be built.

Only 4.6 percent of the land along the route is in private ownership. The Bureau of Land Management owns 92 percent, the Air Force 5.3 percent and the Energy Department, 2.3 percent.

At the county seat

On a bitterly cold Monday morning in Pioche, a historic mining town 23 miles from Caliente, residents go to the Silver Cafe for breakfast. None of the restaurant's half-dozen patrons plan to join Detraz at the Lincoln County Courthouse down the street for the County Commission meeting.

At the Lincoln County Commission chambers, a small basement room in the two-story courthouse, the five commissioners -- Chairman Spencer Hafen, Tim Perkins, Tommy Rowe, Ronda Hornbeck and Hal Keaton -- and several county workers outnumber the audience.

The meeting begins promptly at 9 a.m., but the nuclear matters, despite their apparent importance, are not immediately addressed. First business such as the county's bills must be approved.

In populous counties such vouchers are approved in a matter of seconds with a single consent agenda vote. In this large rural county, where the tax base is small, the process takes more than a half-hour and includes discussion about whether some of the bills can be put off until the next fiscal year because the coffers are practically empty.

It quickly becomes apparent how such a poor entity could welcome the opportunity to pick the federal government's deep pockets in exchange for allowing nuke waste to be transported over its grounds.

But a consultant who is paid $171,000 a year out of $699,000 in Lincoln County's Energy Department oversight funds does not have the best of news on that option.

Limits on fees

Mike Baughman, president of the Carson City consulting firm Intertech Services Corp., tells the commission that transportation fee increases could be imposed on the federal government to get more money for Lincoln County's needs, but the county cannot broker the deal -- only the state.

In addition, a raise in Nevada's $150-per-train or truck shipment rate would have to show a corresponding hike in costs for Lincoln County, such as to have additional emergency response equipment and other safety measures, Baughman said.

"It (the increase of fees) cannot be an underwriter of a general fund," Baughman said. "We must show that we are incurring the costs."

Nothing is mentioned about the state of Nevada's chilly relationship with the federal government over the nuclear issue -- one that is not likely to produce meaningful talks for fee hikes as the two entities are spending millions of dollars to fight each other in court over Yucca Mountain.

A federal appeals court will hear arguments Jan. 14 and, regardless of the outcome, both sides expect to take the case to the Supreme Court to decide the fate of a nuke repository at Yucca Mountain.

That battle, which has simmered for 20 years, became all-out war in 2002, when Congress approved Yucca as the site to entomb 77,000 tons of radioactive waste produced by the nation's nuclear power plants and the military over the vehement objections of Nevada leaders.

No money for a fight

Robinson, who did not attend Monday's commission meeting, noted that while Las Vegans can afford to fight an all-or-nothing battle over Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of its core, Lincoln County residents, who will have the nuke trains in their back yard, cannot afford to fight the feds and lose what little they have. Bargaining for concessions is their only logical option, she and others say.

Karlynn Chatwin, manager of the bar and casino at the Knotty Pine, says the nuke train could pump up business in her town.

"We are pretty recessed here -- we need something," says Chatwin, a native Las Vegan and a Lincoln County resident of 10 years. "Children grow up here and leave because there is nothing for them.

"I'm fine with (nuclear waste transports). I believe the shipments will be safe because so much attention is on the issue that (the feds) are going to watch it carefully."

Roy Johnston, a Pioche resident for 13 years who did not attend the commission meeting, says many Lincoln County residents are realistic about the nuclear waste issue.

"Nothing we say or do is going to stop the government from shoving this on us," says Johnston, a railroad track welder. "The government is not just going to walk away after building what they've built at Yucca Mountain. Face it, it's coming here. Let's get something in exchange for it."

Chatwin knows what she's like to get. "I believe one of the concessions should be that the federal government pays to put our children through college, she says. "Parents here certainly cannot afford to do it."

An activist speaks

When the commission turns to the Yucca issues, Detraz begins by berating the commissioners for their regular 4-to-1 votes. Keaton, who opposes nuclear waste, is on the losing end.

Hafen warns her to stick to the agenda item and present her Yucca Mountain update. Detraz instead criticizes council members, including Hafen, for attending "secret meetings" with Energy Secretary Margaret Chu and other DOE officials.

In November some of the commissioners met with Energy Department officials in Amargosa Valley and in December at McCarran International Airport.

Detraz is cut off by Hafen as she reads the third of three newspaper clippings to support her claims. She turns to the sparse audience and accuses the commission chairman of denying her the right to speak. Hafen calls for the noon recess and leaves the room.

During the break Hafen, a land surveyor by profession, denies doing anything illegal.

Hafen said the meetings he and other commissioners have had with Energy Department officials were "work groups" to address transportation issues of nuclear waste and were not subject to Nevada's Open Meeting Law.

"Our job is to protect the health, welfare and safety of the people of Lincoln County,' Hafen said. "Nobody here shouted, 'Bring (nuclear waste) here! Bring it here!' But part of addressing the issue is to look at the best proposal the DOE will bring to the table.

"I don't believe (Yucca Mountain) is a done deal. But I have to be open to work out what is best for the county if (nuclear waste) eventually is going to come through here."

Hafen says such confrontations with Detraz "happen every meeting, but was magnified" at Monday's meeting because Detraz "had an audience," Hafen said.

"There is no question Marge is passionate on this issue," Hafen said. "The clerk puts her issue on the agenda as a courtesy. She says what she wants and we have taken the position not to respond to what she says."

Others who were heard in the morning commission session were Lincoln County resident Louis Benezet, a longtime Yucca Mountain opponent and colleague of Detraz, who asked the commission to ask for hearings by the Bureau of Land Management in Lincoln County on the issue of trains carrying nuclear waste.

"We don't know what impacts from a rail route would be (in Lincoln County)," he said. "We don't even know where the rail route would be."

Another was Connie Simkins, editor of the Lincoln County Record and a Panaca cattle rancher, who expressed concerns that the DOE's preferred route would impact grazing areas.

The only nuclear waste item on the agenda Monday that required a vote was a proposed letter to Chu to keep the lines of communications open with Lincoln County to discuss safe transportation plans. It passed 4-to-1, with Keaton voting no.

archive