Congresswoman Shelley Berkley - Legislation: Press Releases 2000

Washington, D.C. (March 22, 2000) — A furious lobbying effort paid off today for Congresswoman Shelley Berkley and her House allies who opposed a bill (S. 1287) that would have created a temporary high-level nuclear dump in Nevada and tossed out stringent radiation exposure standards. In a sharp improvement from the last time the House voted on temporary nuclear dump legislation, 167 members voted against it, far more than necessary to sustain an expected veto by President Clinton. It was the first time the House mustered sufficient votes to sustain a veto on a temporary dump bill.

“This is a solid victory for Nevada’s efforts to keep the dump out of the state,” said Berkley. “It’s gratifying to see so many colleagues vote against the temporary dump legislation. We added 47 votes, compared to the last time the House voted on a similar bill in 1997. That’s real progress. We can now be fully confident that Congress will sustain the President’s veto of this bill.”

Today’s vote fell sharply along party lines, with 148 Democrats opposing the temporary dump bill and 53 supporting it. By contrast, just 18 republicans voted to keep nuclear waste out of Nevada while 199 voted in favor of the dump. Two independents split their votes on the bill.

S. 1287 was pushed to the floor by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois.) “Unfortunately, the Republican Leadership of the House has been effective in getting their party’s members to vote against the Nevada position,” said Berkley. “On the other hand, there is a rising tide of Democratic opposition to a temporary nuke dump in Nevada, as shown by the fact that nearly three-quarters of House Democrats voted against the bill, with the Democratic vote total increasing by a whopping 51 compared to 1997.”

Berkley, a freshman lawmaker facing her first major battle against nuclear waste legislation, worked with the House Democratic Leadership, the White House, and citizens groups over the past several days to lobby against the temporary dump at Yucca Mountain. The lobbying team made hundreds of calls to House Members and held countless briefings on the House floor and in the hallways to achieve the high water mark in the vote count and guarantee the President’s veto will hold up.

S. 1287 posed a major threat to Nevada because it would have forced nuclear waste to be shipped to Yucca Mountain by 2006, years before even the most basic safety preparations could be made. The bill also contained language designed to eventually strip the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing tough radiation exposure standards at Yucca Mountain. The attack on the EPA was particularly insidious, because it is widely recognized that Yucca Mountain can not meet radiation exposure standards and the project could come to a halt as a result.

“This week was an educational process in which a lot of Members learned more about the dangers of putting high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. I used the debate as a forum to explain to my colleagues that Yucca Mountain fails many scientific tests. It is threatened by water contamination that could unleash radioactivity into the water supply. It is beset by earthquakes and volcanic activity. And shipping over 100,000 tons of deadly waste across the nation’s highways and rails is a formula for accidents and disasters.”

Berkley is an advocate for research into promising technologies that can drastically reduce the toxicity of nuclear waste. She has successfully fought for increased funding for this type of research and notes that a 1999 federal study touts technological solutions for nuclear waste as an alternative to underground dumping.