Dump backers in House looking for answers

Suzanne Struglinski

Thursday, May 13, 2004 | 10:59 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Yucca Mountain supporters in the House are trying to find ways to get full funding for the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump as well as answers about what will happen to the project's progress if money falls short.

Yucca advocate Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., asked the Office of Management and Budget if it can change how Yucca received money without congressional consent, while the repository's top appropriators in the House have asked the department 13 questions on what will happen if it does not get the $880 million it wants.

The department split its $880 million request into $749 million to be taken directly from the Nuclear Waste Fund, a fund the nuclear industry pays into solely to build the Yucca dump, and $131 million to come from the Defense Department to pay for its share of the waste. The $749 million can only be taken directly from the fund if Congress approves a policy change.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, has a pending bill that would allow the department to draw money directly from the Nuclear Waste Fund for Yucca Mountain without it competing against other federal programs for money during the annual appropriations process.

Nuclear utilities have paid $20 billion into the fund and only around $7 billion has been used, leaving billion of unused dollars for a program on a tight schedule that gets underfunded every year.

The committee discussed Barton's bill and a similar bill in a March hearing but nothing else has happened since, with nothing scheduled in the near future, according to the committee.

But in a letter sent May 4 to Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua Bolten, a copy of which was obtained by the Sun, Dingell said "given the limited number of legislative days left in the session, the prospects for enacting funding legislation this year are slim."

"This raises the question whether any non-legislative alternatives exist to help ensure adequate funding," said Dingell, who is the House Energy and Commerce Committee's top Democrat.

Dingell wants to know if the office can take "administrative action" and make the change, going around Congress.

Dingell's office has not received a response. A call to the OMB press office was not returned.

Meanwhile, Reps. David Hobson, R-Ohio and Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., the top two members of the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls the Yucca budget, want to know what specifically would happen if the dump only receives $131 million this year.

"Given the budget resolution presently being in conference in the Congress and the Administration's apparent lack of success to date in advancing the reclassification legislation, it is possible that we will only be able to fund the net request of $131 million for fiscal year 2005," Hobson and Visclosky wrote in a letter sent last month to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, also obtained by the Sun.

Hobson and Visclosky want to know how the shortfall would affect contractor work and other department sites as well as what the legal and financial consequences would be.

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the department is "not going to give up" on its proposal to change how the program gets money.

Davis said the bottom line is that Congress voted to move the Yucca Mountain project forward and nuclear ratepayers have been sending their money to Washington to pay for it.

"We think its time to move this forward," he said.