Thursday, July 14, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
New deadline set
on Yucca Mountain
Energy Department
won't give up data
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Jon Porter
GOP lawmaker gives Energy Department until Monday to release documents
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WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter set a new deadline Wednesday for the Energy Department to hand over documents related to Yucca Mountain workers' e-mails.
Porter, R-Nev., gave DOE officials until Monday to comply with a demand issued in April by the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee.
Porter, the panel's chairman, is investigating allegations of improper pressures and misconduct on the nuclear waste project.
"I am giving them one last opportunity," Porter said when Energy Department leaders missed a Wednesday deadline.
Porter said he will seek to subpoena material concerning e-mails in which scientists appear to discuss shortcomings in quality assurance documentation of water flow research at the Nevada site.
Porter sent a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman demanding the documents by Monday. DOE spokesman Allen Benson said officials are reviewing the letter.
Energy Department officials have expressed concern that disclosure of certain documents could interfere with investigations by inspectors at the Energy and Interior departments, and with a document database being compiled at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
DOE's acting general counsel, Eric Fygi, proposed in letters Friday and last month that subcommittee investigators review material at the agency's headquarters.
Porter rejected the offer, saying, "I'm sorry, that is an insult to the congressional process."
The subcommittee had held two hearings on the e-mails, which were written between 1998 and 2000 by scientists assigned by the U.S. Geological Survey to collect data and write computer models on water flow at the repository site.
Joseph Hevesi, a USGS hydrologist who wrote some of the e-mails, was subpoenaed to testify and told the subcommittee June 29 that he did not falsify documents on Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Hevesi testified that some provocative messages were written out of job frustration but not malice. He said others contained science jargon that could be wrongly interpreted.
