Monday, March 3, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
HERE WE go again.
President Ronald Reagan knew he was hitting a chord with the American people when he used those words to define a tried and very worn refrain from his opponents, political or otherwise. He meant, simply, that we've heard it all before, so let's try something new.
The nuclear waste industry, in its unrelenting desire to force the Congress and president to do its dirty work for it, has continued a public relations program designed to stir up the people to action. It does this by writing letters to the editors of the nation's newspapers, seemingly from regular Americans, sharing with them Nevada's desire to serve as the country's nuclear dumping ground.
Wittingly or not, newspaper editors fall victim to this subterfuge and give credence where none is deserving. In short, they print the letters.
The latest example is the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper that has grown up in the rough and tumble of Chicago politics and one which we'd expect would have a bit less naivete about the who and whys of letter writing.
Alas, that was not the case. Last week, the Tribune published a letter from Hal Rogers with the dateline of Dayton, Nev. The headline read, "Nevada open to nuclear fuel storage."
Why the Tribune had to go all the way to Dayton to find someone who favored the state as a garbage dump for America's high-level nuke waste is the first question any curious editor should have asked. Hasn't the editorial page editor ever heard of Las Vegas or Reno, two metropolitan areas of the Silver State that contain most of the state's human population? And what does that editor know or should have known about Hal Rogers, a prolific letter writer on nuclear waste issues who is well known to the editors of the major papers in our state?
The fact remains that the Chicago Tribune was duped, not unlike many larger newspapers around the country who have a passing interest in this nuclear waste issue but less than passing knowledge about the subject. Otherwise, the Tribune never would have printed the letter from Rogers as the "Voice of the People."
If newspapers around the country were interested in the Voice of the People on this issue, they would talk to the hundreds of thousands of Nevada parents who are very concerned about any move by the federal government to force the world's most deadly substances down our throats and into our back yard. If they truly cared about doing what was right, they would question the scientific basis for singling out Nevada a decade ago as the only potential site for burying deadly plutonium and other high-level wastes that don't start to lose their potency for at least 10,000 years!
And if they were as interested in discussing this issue toward the end of informing their readers, the newspapers would be very careful that the letters they publish not be from paid minions of the nuclear power industry who have billions at stake and millions of dollars to spend trying to sway public opinion.
In fairness, I shouldn't be so hard on the media because not every editor in the country knows what we know about the Hal Rogers of the world. We know he is the co-chairman of the Nuclear Waste Study Committee, a high-sounding organization that sounds scientific but, in reality, is a paid-for public relations machine for the nuke waste industry. And Rogers is the head mouthpiece.
He is hardly what I would call a "voice of the people" of Nevada. I might use words like traitor to the men, women and children of our state to describe someone who would sell out our futures for a few dollars. A word like prostitute comes to mind but that would denigrate an age-old profession while not coming close to defining the kind of person who pretends to speak for the overwhelming majority of Nevadans who care about the health and safety of their children but who really mouths the party line of a scared and desperate nuclear power industry.
We all realize that what to do with nuclear waste is a national problem and it demands a national answer. But burying that problem in the desert a few miles from Las Vegas, after trucking the deadly garbage through practically every state in the country along the way, seems more like a stupid political solution than a well-reasoned scientific response. After all, burying our garbage is a centuries-old answer to what to do with that with which we don't know what to do.
But in what will be the 21st century age of science and discovery, an era when animals are cloned and space is explored beyond our imaginations, is it that difficult to believe that a better answer can be found? Why is it necessary to pick on vote-poor Nevada to solve the nuclear power industry's money problems when science can find the right answer?
It obviously isn't. The reason for the push is that it appears clear that there will not be another nuclear power plant built in this country until the solution to the radioactive waste is found. Those who stand to make billions of dollars from the design, construction and operation of those plants couldn't care less if a few million people in Nevada and the tens of millions who visit here annually live the rest of their lives and generations yet to come in mortal fear. This is all about money.
And so it is with Hal Rogers who, despite what he says, does not represent the people of this state. He represents his monied puppet masters who pull his strings and those in Congress who knowingly or not do the bidding of the nuke waste industry.
Rogers says the people of this state are prepared to host the nation's nuclear nightmare if the government and nuke industry are willing to pay the price. That is about as far from the truth as any liar can get. No, Mr. Rogers, Nevadans don't want the dump. They want good science to find the kind of 21st century answer to this problem that will make it a national solution and not one that punishes only us, our children and their children.
No, Mr. Rogers, we are not the people in your neighborhood. You do not speak for Nevadans and you do not speak for our hopes, dreams and aspirations.
Go tell that to the Chicago Tribune!
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