Brian Greenspun remembers Clinton’s advice about Reid and Yucca Mountain that really paid off

Sunday, July 9, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.

President Bill Clinton was right about Harry Reid.

Way back in 1998, when Harry Reid was running for re-election to the U.S. Senate, I happened upon an exclusive interview with the president in which he said that if Harry Reid were not re-elected, Nevada was certain to get the Yucca Mountain dump.

I ran that story on the front page of the Las Vegas Sun - believing that if the president of the United States said the dump was coming our way without Harry Reid in the Senate to stop it, that was big news in Nevada - much to the chagrin of Harry's opponents and a few "experts" on journalistic ethics. Harry won his re-election bid, as usual not by very much, and the rest has been a very interesting history in the making.

I recount this story because it cannot be lost on any Nevadan just how prescient the president was eight years ago. Presidents come and go, but a good U.S. senator, who continues to rack up seniority and other IOUs along the way, is worth his weight in gold to the constituents he represents. Nowhere is this more true than in the Silver State because I believe our senior senator has just scored a knockout punch on the only foe Nevada has faced that could knock us flat on our backs.

We have water issues - we live in a desert. We have air quality concerns - we live in a bowl. We have traffic problems - we invite more cars into town than we have roads for them to travel or places for them to park. And we have all kinds of growth challenges - we encourage people to move here who don't come with a commitment to better our community from Day One.

But each of these "showstoppers" can be overcome. Whether it be a technological fix or a financial one, there is nothing out there that should stop Southern Nevada from growing its way to the top of the most favorable-city-to-live-in list and staying there for many years to come.

Except for just one thing. Yucca Mountain. You see, high-level nuclear waste has a way of stopping people in their tracks. Nobody wants it in their back yards, and everybody has wanted it in ours.

That is a lethal dose of reality in a city that makes a living based on tourism. One accident, one spill, one bad headline heard around the world and the people stop coming. Especially when there are so many other places to go for people who want to eat, shop, gamble and enjoy themselves.

Ever since Congress and, later, President George W. Bush, decided that only Nevada should be singled out for the honor of hosting the nation's radioactive garbage, Harry has been on the case. But it wasn't until he became minority leader of the U.S. Senate, it wasn't until he had earned enough respect from his powerful Senate colleagues, and it wasn't until he built up the kind of seniority in the Senate that made him a force to be reckoned with, that he was able to do what so far has been the impossible.

Ever since Congress decided that Las Vegans should bear the brunt of our nation's woefully lacking nuclear power plan, we have been on a delay-of-game tactic in the hopes of putting enough time and space between the political decision to destroy Las Vegas for the benefit of the rest of America and the reality of Yucca Mountain actually opening. So far, our congressional delegation and our state leadership (at least most of them) have put the inevitable off for more than 20 years.

Now word comes that Sen. Reid has reached an understanding with the top Senate dog for nuclear power, Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, which will buy us another 15 to 20 years. And the likelihood is now that Yucca Mountain will never happen.

As Sun Washington Bureau reporter Lisa Mascaro noted in a June 29 story, Sen. Reid believes the plan to build temporary nuclear waste sites across the nation is certain to create strong opposition from those states involved, causing them to agree with Nevada that the waste should be kept at the nuclear power plants.

"You can have all the requirements you want to move the waste, but as we learned from Yucca Mountain, people aren't simply willing to have it moved," Reid said.

Only Harry Reid could have pulled this off, which means that Bill Clinton was right and all those folks who find the oddest reasons for bashing Sen. Reid are wrong.

Either wrong or just wrong-headed. Because there is nothing more important to Las Vegas than doing everything we can do to keep this tourism engine humming. That means thousands upon tens of thousands of new jobs, hundreds of thousands of new residents, and millions and billions of dollars of financial benefits that will be shared by the people who live and work in our community.

Like all compromises in government, the solution isn't perfect. Reid will have to stick around in the Senate for many years to make sure this thing doesn't unravel.

Nevadans can do their part by making sure he moves from minority to majority leader in a very short time and that we refuse to pay attention to people who say they are on our side but who are clearly not. Sometimes they look and sound like former Nevada governors and sometimes they take the guise of smooth political salesmanship. But, always, they have as their goal to remove good men like Harry Reid from political office.

I don't know if Yucca Mountain is dead for sure. We will have to wait a couple more decades to find out. But I do know that one of the most respected scientific journals from MIT said that a proper scientific answer will resolve the radioactive waste issue within the next generation. That's right, science not politics will rule the day.

I also know that Nevadans owe an eternal debt of gratitude for the determination and skill that Sen. Harry Reid has brought to the Senate on our behalf.

President Clinton was right. Without Harry in the U.S. Senate, we would have already been up to here in radioactive waste. But with the good senator, it looks like we have our future back. The one full of hope and promise that is the dream of every Nevada parent.

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