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Tuesday, April 09, 2002
Copyright Las
Vegas Review-Journal
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Guinn vetoes Bush
Fight moves to Congress, where lawmakers
have 90 legislative days to override Nevada's governor By
KEITH ROGERS AND STEVE TETREAULT
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Declaring that "the battle is not
over," Gov. Kenny Guinn departed Monday for Washington, D.C.,
to follow through on his historic veto of the president's
decision to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca
Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"Let me make this clear, crystal clear in
fact. Yucca Mountain is not inevitable, and Yucca Mountain is
not a bargaining chip," Guinn said in a morning address at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas Tam Alumni Center.
"I assure you, as long as I am governor, it
will never become a bargaining chip. Yucca Mountain is not
suitable, it is not safe. ... We will expose the Department of
Energy's dirty little secrets about Yucca Mountain," he said
in a 10-minute speech before leaving on a private flight.
The signed "notice of disapproval" and a
10-page Guinn statement were submitted to Congress as Guinn
was preparing to leave Las Vegas. Robert Dove, a former U.S.
Senate parliamentarian currently advising Nevada, delivered
the documents first to the office of Senate President Pro Tem
Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and 10 minutes later to the office of
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.
It was the first time in history that a
governor has vetoed a presidential decision. Congress
authorized the state's veto power over the Yucca Mountain
Project in 1982.
When Congress reconvenes today, the House
and the Senate will have 90 legislative days to override
Guinn's veto. If either the House or the Senate sustains the
veto through a majority vote, or if no action is taken during
that period, then the decision that President Bush made on
Feb. 15 to build a repository at Yucca Mountain fails.
The deadline for congressional action will
probably fall in late July.
"This is indeed a moment we have
anticipated and we have prepared for, one that will go down in
history as one of the most significant proceedings in
Congress," Guinn told the audience of some 300 state, county,
and local officials and a group of middle school students.
"The battle is not over," he said near the
end of his speech. "In fact we are just beginning to fight."
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Rep. Shelley
Berkley, D-Nev., sat in the front row, along with Lt. Gov.
Lorraine Hunt. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was in Washington,
D.C., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., was traveling back to the
United States from a recent trip to Afghanistan.
Ensign said after Guinn's address, "We're
ready for the fight. Obviously it's going to be an uphill
struggle, but we've got a few tricks up our sleeves."
Berkley said she, too, is ready to persuade
her colleagues to back Guinn's veto, although Nevada leaders
have said that they don't believe there is enough support in
the House. Berkley, nevertheless, was optimistic.
"We've got some heavy lifting to do back in
Washington, but I think we're up to the task," she said.
In his speech, Guinn asked each Nevadan to
donate at least $1 to a fund to fight the Yucca Mountain
Project, saying legal bills and communications costs will run
into the millions.
Guinn planned a full day today to take
Nevada's case to the media and to Capitol Hill. Following an
appearance on CNN, he was to appear at a morning news
conference on the Capitol grounds with Nevada lawmakers. He
also scheduled a midday briefing that was to include state
lawyers and scientists.
Other parts of Guinn's schedule were
unclear. Reid said he planned to take the governor to see
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., a key ally.
Reid suggested Guinn also might attempt to
contact senators who are ex-governors, such as Sen. George
Allen, R-Va., whose state suffered a five-car train derailment
Sunday.
"I'm glad he's going to be here," Reid
said. "He doesn't need to meet with Democrats. I can handle
that."
House Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,
speaking at McCarran International Airport during a brief
stopover en route to Las Vegas, said the Democratic leadership
in that body supports Guinn's veto. Yucca Mountain would be
"the first order of business" when Democratic leaders meet
this morning to discuss strategy on upcoming votes, she said.
"This decision that the governor has made
... is one that is of national concern," Pelosi said.
Pelosi predicted that more Democrats would
vote to sustain Guinn's veto than voted with Nevada on the
last Yucca-related vote.
In that vote, 147 Democrats and 18
Republicans voted against the project.
"However great our numbers were before,
they'll be even greater now," Pelosi said.
In his speech, Guinn blasted the federal
government's approach to transporting 77,000 tons of spent
nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive wastes to Yucca
Mountain.
"One-hundred twenty-three million Americans
have not been told of the danger to their families and future
generations from shipping thousands of tons of radioactive
waste through their neighborhoods, alongside their schools,
their rivers, their parks and their downtown areas," Guinn
said.
He directed part of his speech at John
Sununu, a pro-Yucca Mountain lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and a former New Hampshire governor and chief of
staff to the first President Bush, who in January criticized
Nevada for being "not willing to do its part" in regard to
nuclear waste and national security.
"Mr. Sununu and other high-powered
lobbyists of the nuclear industry, hear me -- hear all
Nevadans -- loud and clear. The health, safety and well-being
of present and future generations of Nevadans is not for sale
at any price," Guinn said.
Sununu and former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro,
who also is a pro-Yucca lobbyist, said in a statement that now
that Guinn has vetoed the project on behalf of Nevadans, "it
is time now for the Congress to act on behalf of the American
people and the myriad national energy and security
considerations at stake" by affirming the Yucca Mountain
designation.
In his reasons for disapproving the Yucca
Mountain Project, Guinn noted that at the Nevada Test Site,
the state hosted hundreds of nuclear weapons tests.
"The government misrepresented the risks
and impacts of those test to our citizenry, and many Nevadans
were injured as a result," he said.
Besides being the nation's nuclear proving
grounds, Guinn added that hundreds of millions of cubic feet
of radioactive and hazardous garbage from nuclear weapons
facilities have been buried at the test site, 65 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.
Some time ago "the concept of
`environmental equity' would have made it unthinkable, given
the sacrifices already imposed on Nevada, that the state would
be forced to play host to yet an additional nuclear waste dump
-- indeed, the dump to end all dumps," Guinn stated among his
reasons for submitting his veto.
"The scientific uncertainties of the Yucca
Mountain Project are so numerous as to defy enumeration,"
Guinn said in the documents.
Guinn referred to the nuclear power
industry's ability to continue to safely store spent fuel at
reactor sites as an alternative to entombing the waste in
Yucca Mountain.
Among his conclusions, Guinn reasoned that
scientists found Yucca Mountain to be a fractured,
volcanic-rock ridge situated among earthquake faults.
"Yes, Yucca Mountain is the most studied
piece of real estate in the world. What the studies starkly
concluded, however, has been overshadowed by the mere fact
they occurred.
"A hundred more years of study will not
change the fatally poor geology of Yucca Mountain, or remove
the site from an earthquake fault zone."
The president of the Nuclear Energy
Institute said Guinn's disapproval notice brings the Yucca
Mountain process a step closer to being completed.
"Our elected leaders must answer the call
to advance U.S. energy security and act in the best interests
of our national security and the environment," said NEI head
Joe Colvin.
Review-Journal reporter Jan Moller
contributed to this report.
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