Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

YUCCA MOUNTAIN FUNDS: Bill offers counties greater freedom

Senate plan would limit DOE controls on how money to monitor project is spent

WASHINGTON -- Congress is moving to limit the Energy Department's controls on millions of dollars that the government sends to Nevada counties each year to monitor Yucca Mountain.

Under a Senate bill set for a vote this summer, county officials no longer would be required to submit work plans for DOE review and approval before receiving their annual funding.

The work plan reviews have irked some local government managers who say the counties should be given more independence. They chafe over delays in receiving grant money and work plan corrections directed by DOE reviewers.

"It is not the best use of everyone's time to go through an exercise of working and reworking a document that is pretty detailed," said Irene Navis, Clark County nuclear waste planning director.

The process is not so troubling to some other observers. Nye County Commission chairwoman Candice Trummell said the reviews can be useful to steer county leaders clear of inadvertent misspending and safeguard against audits.

The money involved is shared by Nye County, eight other Nevada counties and Inyo County in California. The other counties are contiguous to Nye, where the Yucca repository is being planned. This year the counties are getting $8 million, while next year's budget calls for $8.5 million.

As the host county, Nye County's portion is close to $3 million, while the other jurisdictions receive smaller sums. Clark County gets about $1.6 million for Yucca Mountain oversight.

With the Energy Department now preparing to seek a license for a nuclear waste repository at the Yucca site, key senators concluded that the DOE-county relationship poses potential conflicts and needs to change.

The DOE work plan reviews are "inconsistent with its role as a license applicant" because the counties probably will oppose the DOE at repository hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the Senate legislation.

The measure calls for the DOE to adopt an more informal "advise and consent" role in working with the local governments on their spending.

The directive was requested by Nevada county leaders and was inserted by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., into a report that accompanies the Senate's fiscal 2006 spending bill for the Energy Department.

"The whole point of oversight is to maintain an independent review," Reid said in a prepared statement.

"Additionally, DOE and most likely all of the county governments will be legal adversaries on the Yucca Mountain project."

As the Yucca project evolved over the years, it fell to the Energy Department to distribute the county funding appropriated by Congress and to ensure that it was being spent according to rules set by the 1982 nuclear waste law and annual budget bills.

Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson would not comment on the Senate bill. Benson said DOE officials "try to be as cooperative as they can be" in working with the local governments.

"They need the money to do their job, and our job is to make sure they spend it in accordance with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act," Benson said.

"You try to work things out amicably."

Nevada counties will not have free rein if the legislation becomes law. Their spending still would be subject to audits by the Energy Department and the department's inspector general.

A 2003 audit challenged $2.08 million in Nye County spending for 2001 and 2002, and $1.13 million spent by Lincoln County. The audit also questioned $132,296 spent by Clark County.

Federal law allows the county governments to use federal money to hire consultants to evaluate the repository's local impacts, to monitor DOE science work and to communicate with residents about the project.

The counties cannot spend federal money on lobbying or lawsuits or to seek allies against the project, but they can use the money to participate in upcoming license hearings.

Trummel said the audits have been more troublesome than the work plan reviews. Inspectors have adopted "overly strict" interpretations of the spending rules, she said.

"Nobody wants waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars," Trummell said.

"The basic consensus of the (counties) is that we need to have more independence with our oversight, but I am personally more concerned with what that means in terms of auditing."