Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Rural counties weigh nuke benefits

CALIENTE -- An Energy Department-funded oversight committee on Tuesday reviewed a plan passed by the Lincoln County Commission to gauge residents' feelings on the proposed railroad line to Yucca Mountain.

The plan, passed Monday, lets the Central Nevada Community Protection Planning Working Group hire a consulting group made up of two former teachers.

The consultants will conduct studies on possible socioeconomic fallout from the project, members of the Joint City/County Impact Alleviation Committee said at the meeting at Caliente City Hall.

The joint committee was formed in 1984 to study the potential long-term effects of the proposed nuclear waste dump.

The working group includes members of the Caliente City Council and the Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln county commissions. It was formed earlier this year to allow the governments to coordinate their dealings with the Energy Department.

The state is continuing to sue the government to stop the project at Yucca Mountain, which is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. State leaders and officials in Las Vegas have pledged to fight the dump.

In the rural areas, though, there has been some support of the project. Many leaders see it as a way to bring jobs and money into their counties.

Vaughn Higbee, a school superintendent-turned-consultant, said his group, L&H Associates, has interviewed about eight landowners and ranchers living along the proposed 319-mile rail route from Caliente to Yucca Mountain.

That route would be expected to carry thousands of tons of nuclear waste.

Higbee formed the consulting group with former school principal Larry Lytle, also a native Lincoln County resident.

Both men touted their roots in the area as qualifications for the position.

"I'm from the northern part of the county and Larry (Lytle) is from the south," Higbee said. "Between the two of us, there aren't a whole lot of people we don't know."

The studies are part of a slate of Energy Department activities, which include public "open house" tours of the proposed site and town hall-style meetings throughout the three counties that would be home to the railroad.

The working group, which uses federal money for Yucca Mountain oversight, came under fire in April after a Pahrump newspaper reporter and two local citizens were asked to leave a meeting, which members of the group said was closed to the public.

Lawyers for the attorney general's office, responding to a complaint by the Nevada Press Association, were reviewing Tuesday whether or not the group broke the state's open-meeting laws, Tom Sargent, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said.

No date has been set for the working group's next meeting.

Bryan Elkins, director of community development for the City of Caliente and member of the joint city-county committee, said the agencies will continue planning for the proposed dump even though the project's future could be jeopardized by a federal court ruling this summer that said the Environmental Protection Agency's 10,000-year radiation standard falls short of a stricter standard suggested by the National Academy of Sciences.

"There's a lot of uncertainty around the project," he told the committee.

The efforts come as the department works to complete its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must approve plans for the dump.

The Energy Department plans to submit the application by the end of the year to meet its goal of opening the dump by 2010.

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