Fed funds to monitor Yucca study frozen

A Texas congressman said Nevada cannot spend federal funds to monitor the study of Yucca Mountain as a potential site for disposal of nuclear waste because the state previously has used the money to fight the proposal.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said he made a request through the U.S. Department of Energy for a Government Accounting Office audit of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Projects Office following media reports that the state misused the federal money.

"From what I can tell, the office was spending the money inappropriately," Barton said. "The money they spend should be to monitor the Yucca Mountain study, not to lobby against Yucca Mountain or for anti-nuclear activities."

As a result of the preliminary audit performed for the government by accounting firm Peat Marwick, the Energy Department froze $691,000 of a fiscal 1995 federal allocation that the state intended to spend this year. The freeze left the state office with only $92,000, enough to keep it open only until July 1.

The government action prompted Gov. Bob Miller and Nevada Democratic Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid to issue harsh statements Friday attacking Barton, the Energy Department and the nuclear power industry.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is being studied by the Energy Department as a potential permanent disposal site for the nation's high-level nuclear waste. The waste is produced by commercial nuclear reactors and government weapons facilities, none of which are located in Nevada.

The state opposes any shipment of nuclear waste to Nevada. Miller and the senators argued that because the nuclear power industry spends millions of dollars annually to lobby Congress, the state must disseminate information that may not otherwise be available.

But Barton, chairman of the House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, said he learned that the state was using the federal money to lobby members of Congress against proposals to transport nuclear waste to Nevada. He also said he was told that Nevada used federal money on anti-nuclear activities in other states that would serve as transportation corridors for waste coming to this state.

"They've had consultants go into other states with information on how to organize against Congress," Barton said. "The funds that were given to monitor the Department of Energy were unlawfully used to lobby against the study.

"I'm sure Gov. Miller is doing a fine job in Nevada, but he can't use funds for monitoring Yucca Mountain to slam the project."

Barton, a friend of the nuclear power industry, is one of the leading House recipients of campaign contributions from that special-interest group. But he said that in requesting the audit, he was only doing his job as chairman of the subcommittee that oversees Energy Department spending.

"We're not trying to pick any fights with the (Nevada) senators or the governor," Barton said. "But they need to understand that Joe Barton, as chairman of the oversight subcommittee, has a responsibility for making sure that the federal resources are spent the way that Congress says they must be spent."

The congressman said he has no problem with Nevada using federal money strictly to monitor the study.

"The money from Congress is to double-check what the Department of Energy does at Yucca Mountain to make sure they're following the law," Barton said.

Energy Department spokesman Bill Wicker in Washington, D.C., said that Nevada failed to spend the money "in accordance with federal requirements."

"The Department of Energy has asked the state of Nevada not to withdraw federal funds in excess of the disputed amount pending the completion of a final audit report," Wicker said.

The state office, established in 1983, has received millions of federal dollars to monitor the Yucca Mountain study. But Congress cut off that funding beginning in 1996 following an audit that concluded the state misused its funding on such items as public relations.

The state denied that charge, but a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the action by Congress. Nevada has appealed that ruling to the full court.

Bob Loux, executive director of the state office, plans in June to ask the state Legislature's Interim Finance Committee for as much as $1.8 million to keep his agency going for at least another year.

President Clinton has threatened to veto any bill that would establish a temporary nuclear-waste site in Nevada. But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., has said he wants Congress to pass a veto-proof bill providing for a temporary dump by May 22.

The ongoing study of Yucca Mountain is scheduled to conclude in 2001, with an Energy Department recommendation to the president. If the government approves of the site, a permanent repository could open there as early as 2010.

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