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County ready to give DOE an earful |
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Friday, 16 November 2007 |
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By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff 11-15-2007
After moving at the speed of a glacier for nearly a decade, the pace is about to pick up concerning the federal government’s attempt to store high-level nuclear waste at the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository.
By this time next year, Inyo County could be in the thick of the approval process, and it will not be speaking in glowing terms about the nuclear waste project located just across the state line at the Nevada Test Site.
The county contends the current project’s studies and environmental documents do not even acknowledge what could be significant impacts from Yucca Mountain on Inyo County, thus will be pointing out the “inadequate analysis” of a number of those issues, ranging from groundwater to transportation to socio-economic impacts.
The public will get one chance to comment on the environmental documents for Yucca Mountain. That hearing will take place in Lone Pine on Thursday, Nov. 29.
However, when the project moves into the strictly defined regulatory process, individuals will likely not be able to make any comments. The county will take on the charge to be “the voice of the people” and speak out about how Yucca Mountain could impact the county’s residents.
The Board of Supervisors was recently updated on the status of the effort by the Department of Energy to start the regulatory process that could lead to the final approval of the Yucca Mountain Repository. The supervisors were also presented an outline of the areas the county will comment onduring the approval process.
Matt Gaffney, the county’s Yucca Mountain Repository Assessment Office project coordinator, said the county, as an official Affected Unit of Local Government, automatically has legal “standing” to submit “contentions” and otherwise comment on issues and actions that the county maintains need to be addressed.
Gaffney said the county needed to get its comments, studies, scientific data and other information put together in preparation for making its case as strongly as possible in front of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will decide whether to approve the project.
Although DOE officials have missed many deadlines for actually submitting the official Yucca Mountain License Application to the NRC, Gaffney said it was almost certain that the application will be submitted on June 30, 2008. “The threshold is fairly low” for submitting an application, Gaffney said. After the NRC gets the application, it will then take maybe six months to “docket” the application, which officially puts Yucca Mountain on the regulatory track for a final decision.
Inyo County will be able to present evidence and other data to back up its complaints and concerns about the project’s shortcomings.
When it comes to Yucca Mountain, the county isn’t alone on the California side of the border. Gaffney said the California Energy Commission has put a lawyer on the case full-time to help Inyo County. Plus, Gaffney predicted that state Attorney General Jerry Brown will probably also jump into the legal fray (and spotlight) once the Yucca Mountain license application has been “docketed.”
Unfortunately, the county is in the unique position of complaining about some issues which it thinks are extremely important, but that the DOE has already decided are not even worth looking at, much less addressing, preparing for or mitigating.
For example, Inyo County wants to bring up the socio-economic impacts of Yucca Mountain. Those impacts range from slightly annoying to catastrophic. Truck traffic to the site will disrupt the quiet, small communities along State Route 127. That would be annoying. A truck crash or terrorist attack which results in the release of any radioactive material would be catastrophic, and impact the entire county’s economy by hurting tourism and outdoor recreation, its peoples’ way of life and the desert communities themselves.
However, Gaffney pointed out that according to the DOE, Inyo County’s small desert towns are “not considered in the sphere of influence” for the socio-economic studies in the primary Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Statement, and a later, supplemental EIS.
The DOE even “refuses to acknowledge Death Valley National Park” in its socio-economic studies, he added, even though the park boundary is only about 15 miles from the Yucca Mountain site.
The county, using federal funds it gets as an AULG, has had consultants study the potential socio-economic impacts, and will use that information to help argue its case.
The same problem arises with transportation issues.
The DOE maintains that railroads will carry virtually all of the spent nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. So, it has completed an Environmental Impact Study on the proposed Caliente Rail Line, but it doesn’t even acknowledge that S.R. 127 could even be used by trucks hauling waste to the site.
Gaffney and the county’s transportation consultants noted that even if the rail line gets completed, there will be several years where trucks will have to haul the waste. And with several nuclear power plants in California, and Las Vegas determined to block any trucks with nuclear waste from coming through town, “the transportation plan generates more questions than answers,” when it’s presented in the EIS and other federal plans, said Gaffney. But “look at an atlas” and the only conclusion is that the nuke-waste trucks will be using S.R. 127, Gaffney said.
So, once again the county will state that the transportation impacts on Inyo County have not been studied or adequately addressed.
The county will be making that argument even though S.R. 127 has not been identified by state and federal transportation departments as a “designated” waste shipment route. That low-level waste has been trucked on S.R. 127 for several years could put the road on the list of “designated routes” for the waste, he said.
At any rate, the two-lane road can barely handle the skimpy traffic it gets, and would need a complete overhaul to handle the extremely heavy nuclear-waste-hauling trucks, first-responders would need to be trained and the full attention of Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol would have to be focussed on the road before and during any shipments.
On a more technical level, the county will contest the analysis of groundwater flows from Yucca Mountain southwest into Inyo County. The county will also question the DOE’s assumptions about impacts on groundwater pumping on the upper and lower aquifers below Yucca Mountain.
The county has been compiling water data from an extensive groundwater drilling and testing and monitoring program in the Death Valley area. That drilling and monitoring work is ongoing.
On Nov. 29, residents from Inyo County and the rest of California will get a chance to comment on three huge Yucca Mountain environmental documents.
The meeting will be the only public meeting in California to seek public comments on the Caliente Rail EIS and the Supplemental EIS that refines the original 2002 Yucca Mountain EIS.
The meeting will be held at Statham Hall in Lone Pine on Thursday, Nov. 29, from 4-7 p.m.
The county will be presenting its extensive comments at the meeting, which will provide a good overview of the project and the county’s concerns.
For more information, contact Gaffney at (760) 873-7423, or e-mail him at
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 29 January 2008 )
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