Saturday, July 23, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Porter: DOE didn't quite comply
Energy Department spokesman defends efforts to deliver Yucca documents
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy failed to fully comply Friday with a subpoena issued by a House committee that demanded thousands of pages of documents about Yucca Mountain, Rep. Jon Porter said.
A DOE spokesman said the department delivered 1,652 pages of personnel and research records for the nuclear waste repository. The material was sought by the House Government Reform Committee for an ongoing investigation of e-mail messages that suggested quality assurance documents may have been manipulated.
Among the material that was not supplied was a copy of a draft license application for the Yucca site, a 5,800-page document that would be expected to detail the Energy Department's safety justifications for building a waste burial site in Nevada.
The department "is not in full compliance," said Porter, R-Nev., who is heading the House investigation as a subcommittee chairman. "I had an opportunity to look at some of the documents and it is quite clear they have not fulfilled the subpoena at this point."
Porter said the material did not arrive with an index, and the committee would be in contact with DOE on Monday for an accounting of what was delivered. He said the department could be given more time to fulfill the subpoena.
DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said the department believed it was "in full compliance" with the subpoena, which it received on Wednesday. He said some of the subpoenaed documents were in Las Vegas and were being summoned.
He said other documents had not been previously requested and could not be rounded up by the Friday deadline.
"We have made every reasonable effort to enable the subcommittee to examine the documents they requested," Stevens said.
The Energy Department continued to resist handing over the draft license application, which its lawyers have argued does not appear to fall within the scope of Porter's investigation.
The DOE and the state of Nevada have been involved in a separate legal dispute over access to the document, which was written by a contractor and delivered in July 2004. It was subsequently revised, attorneys have said.
