Friday, Feb. 11, 2005 | 11 a.m.
CALIENTE -- The set of floods that drenched much of Lincoln County last month has raised a new set of questions for Energy Department engineers working to build a rail line to carry 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste through this rural Nevada town to a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, department officials said Thursday.
Gary Lanthrum, the Energy Department engineer who oversees the department's transportation plans, told the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board at a public meeting Wednesday that the flooding has prompted planners to further review how future floods could impact normal operations of the railroad.
Among the options designers are weighing are changes to the design of the heavy-duty casks that would hold the waste during shipment and possible "safe havens" along the route that would allow operators to seek higher ground in the event of a flood, Lanthrum said.
"My view is not that we design a railroad that will be immune to weather forever, but that we be aware (of the risk inclement weather poses)," Lanthrum said. "... It's important to do a good design but not to expect the designers to predict any weather."
The meeting, held at the Caliente Youth Center, where comments were frequently drowned out by the nearby train tracks, was the board's second public gathering in Southern Nevada this week. The board was created by Congress to perform technical oversight of the Yucca Mountain project.
The meeting came days after Margaret Chu, the Energy Department's assistant secretary who oversees the Yucca project, said delays, including when the U.S. Court of Appeals threw out a key Environmental Protection Agency standard in July, forced the department to distance itself from its earlier predictions that the proposed repository could open by 2010.
The weather-related uncertainties sparked a flurry of questions from sharply divided Caliente residents, many of whom are torn between the promised economic benefits the 319-mile railroad would bring and the thought of high-level nuclear material rolling through their town on its way to the dump, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Among the project's biggest proponents has been Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips, a local small business owner and one of Lincoln County's most visible residents for a dozen years, who has repeatedly said he trusts the federal department to adequately address these concerns.
Phillips, a Caliente native, said the flood, which covered parts of county roads, was the worst since a large-scale drenching in 1938.
"I've given it some thought," he said. "But that's beyond my pay grade. They (the engineers) can worry about that."
Meanwhile the comments provided ammunition for the vocal contingent of Yucca opponents who said the statements further underscored their stance. Lincoln County Commissioner Hal Keaton, a two-year veteran of the board and its most vocal opponent to the project, questioned the 11-member board and an audience packed with Energy Department officials, including Chu.
Keaton has routinely found himself at odds with Phillips and other commissioners and is routinely the lone vote of dissent on Yucca-related matters.
"They (Energy Department) decided to nail Nevada and bury it here," he said. "... The nuclear waste transportation project is a bad idea and it will never be a good idea. This proposed rail line will literally cut our county in two."
Keaton's words were not hyperbole for Joe Fellini, a fourth-generation rancher whose 130-square-mile property straddles the Lincoln and Nye county lines. If the line were built, he would stand to lose the land that has been in his family for 130 years, Fellini told the board.
It's a fight Fellini, who in the 1980s lost part of his land to the nearby Nevada Test Site through eminent domain, said he would not back down from.
"We haven't been a ranch for 130 years by letting people roll over the top of us," he said.
Fellini, who was joined by his daughter Anna, also a rancher, accused the federal department of intentionally keeping him and 17 other property owners in the dark about public scoping meetings, gatherings he said he later read about in the local newspaper.
"They're sitting here completely ignoring the Constitution of the United States," he said of the Energy Department. "This completely annihilates the Constitution and the state's rights."
Board chairman John Garrick said the flood concerns had been raised at previous meetings but that Lanthrum's comments would likely prompt further, more in-depth discussion among the board about more direct alternative routes to the proposed repository.
"One of the things that has intrigued the board was creating a more direct route to Yucca Mountain," he said. "I found that a very interesting discussion. ... There has to be a better way to do it."
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