Congresswoman Shelley Berkley - Legislation: Editorials

Seventeen years ago President Reagan signed into law the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Under the new law, the U.S. Department of Energy would search the nation looking for sites to bury high-level nuclear waste. A key aspect of the study was that it would include three sites and therefore provide some regional equity to the burden of storing the waste. One site would be located in the northeastern part of the country, one in the southeastern United States, and one would be in the West. Nobody liked the thought of storing the waste in their backyard. But at least the first attempts to resolve the issue began reasonably enough.

And then it got ugly.

Too often in Washington, it's the case that sound public policy and reasonable discussion suffer at the expense of political gamesmanship. And so it's been with Yucca Mountain. First the Northeast site ran into a Congressional roadblock when the vote-rich region decided to back out of the deal. Then President Reagan dropped the southeastern site after it seemed he might lose electoral votes in the 1984 Presidential campaign. And then there was Yucca. The current darling of the Republican leadership in Congress, S. 1287, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2000 would drop 77,000 tons of nuclear waste on Yucca Mountain as soon as 2006.

These decisions were not based on science -- they were based on the calculus of politics and political pandering. It has become scandalously obvious that Yucca Mountain is the wrong choice for a central nuclear repository. It is an earthquake zone. It is an underground flooding zone. It is in a volcanic eruption zone.

And we live here!

On Tuesday, April 25th the entire State of Nevada celebrated as President Clinton vetoed the bill and sent a message to Congress that politics will not substitute for sound scientific judgement. While Senators Reid and Bryan are holding the line against Trent Lott in the Senate, I'm working every day to gain converts in the House. The Republican leadership in Congress seems determined to override the President's veto B again, the intrusion of politics into public policy B but as I've been able to persuade more and more Members to see the issue from our point of view, I'm increasingly confident that we'll be able to sustain the President's veto, and get on with the real business of the country.

After all, isn't it time we started doing something about our overcrowded schools, reforming Social Security and Medicare for our seniors, runaway growth and congestion in our cities, and health care reform that extends affordable care without sacrificing basic health needs. These are the issues Congress should be focused on. And yet we're stuck debating this legislative lunacy. It's time to just say, AYucca NO!@ and move on.