Monday, Nov. 8, 1999 | 11:55 a.m.
Over the next two weeks the U.S. Department of Energy will make its case for building a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain to the state agency that has the greatest say about it: the Nevada Engineer's Office.
State Engineer Michael Turnipseed began Monday hearing the DOE's five applications to use 430 acre feet of Nevada's ground water to supply crews building and operating a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Whatever decision Turnipseed makes -- and he's not saying which way he's leaning -- is sure to be fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied for a proposed repository filled with 70,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants and 7,000 tons of defense-related nuclear waste. If it is approved by the president and Congress, the DOE would need the water rights before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would license it.
If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission grants the DOE permission to build a repository at Yucca, the federal government then will have to obtain state permits to control air pollution and sewage discharges and to meet other state environmental rules.
The hearings this week will be at the Grant Sawyer State Building on Washington Avenue near Las Vegas Boulevard North. They will move to Carson City the following week when the giant technology convention COMDEX comes to Las Vegas.
The DOE has not completed scientific studies at the mountain and does not yet have permission to build a nuclear dump for highly radioactive wastes there. That permission from Congress and the president is not expected until 2002 at the earliest.
The DOE does, however, have temporary water rights to use ground water at Yucca Mountain until 2002.
While an acre foot of water doesn't sound like much, it represents the amount of water spread across a one-acre field to a depth of one foot. It can serve a family of four for a year, meaning DOE's request for 430 acre feet could provide water to 1,720 people. The population in the Amargosa Valley is estimated at 1,200.
Four official protests have been filed with the state engineer's office in Carson City.
However, the obvious concern -- radioactive contamination of the ground water -- is not among those protests.
Turnipseed already heard arguments on water contamination issues in June at a preliminary hearing to set the November schedule.
The DOE's attorney Brent Kolvet argued at the time that if contamination became an issue this week, it could become "a mini-licensing hearing, an argument into whether a repository should be constructed."
Turnipseed agreed to keep Yucca Mountain water contamination out of the upcoming hearings, basing his decision on state law that says the state engineer cannot rule on constitutional or contamination issues.
The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection is responsible for enforcing ground water contamination limits. Those limits could be set by the state commission or in court after the expected legal battle.
Even without that issue, opponents think they have a strong case against using water for a repository in the Nevada desert.
For the state to grant permission to use ground water, the DOE has to prove that building the repository is beneficial, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state agency which plans to lead the opposition during the next two weeks.
Under Nevada law, beneficial water uses include providing drinking supplies, irrigating crops or suppling cattle, horses and wildlife.
Lined up behind the nuclear projects office are the state's Attorney General's Office, the environmental group Citizen Alert, the Nye County Conservation District and Amargosa Valley resident Michael DeLee.
Those opponents also will argue that the amount of water the federal government wants could exceed what the basin around Yucca Mountain can supply, and that a repository at Yucca Mountain could harm threatened and endangered species downstream.
Between Amargosa Valley and Death Valley is a place called Ash Meadows, where ponds of sky-blue waters support endangered pupfish and other species.
While ground water contamination won't be on the agenda during the hearings, it will be on the minds of nearly everybody there.
The DOE's own safety strategy and other documents say the proposed nuclear waste dump will not isolate the radiation from humans or the environment. Instead the ground water will dilute nuclear waste. The dilution is expected to lower radiation exposure to people at the repository's boundary, wherever it is set.
The DOE's written plan says the repository will "dilute and disperse" radioactivity in ground water after it leaves nuclear waste containers buried inside Yucca Mountain.
The state is arguing that the latest government plan has changed. Earlier the DOE intended to isolate waste 1,000 feet down inside Yucca Mountain. The latest government scenario allows radiation to escape the repository, posing the greatest threat to people living in Amargosa Valley.
The ground water drains into the Amargosa Valley, south of the mountain. The nearest farm field is 12 miles away from Yucca Mountain. The state's largest dairy, Ponderosa Farm, also operates in Amargosa Valley.
However, state law also prohibits contaminating the ground water, Adams noted. "They (DOE) are not planning to isolate the waste," Adams said. "They plan to eject it into the environment."
The DOE countered that contamination is not the issue when it comes to deciding whether the agency can use the water to build a repository at Yucca Mountain or the roads leading to it.
Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located, is taking no chances. The county is checking on the ground water running through Amargosa Valley on its own.
The Amargosa Valley aquifer that supplies drinking and irrigation water to farmers, ranchers and residents of the rural community has not shown any contamination from the nearby Nevada Test Site, where 1,000 nuclear bomb experiments exploded above and below ground from 1951 to 1992. This information has been confirmed by both the DOE and Nye County.
Nye County officials have drilled an early warning system of wells that ring the base of Yucca Mountain like a necklace. They have not detected radiation from nuclear weapons experiments conducted more than 30 miles farther away on the Test Site. The tests, which have been under way for more than a year, are ongoing.
The DOE is conducting its own underground testing program to track any radiation that may escape from 928 underground nuclear experiments, some of them triggered in the ground water table itself. So far, no radiation has been detected outside the experimental caverns on the site.
archive
