State notifies DOE

State Engineer Tracy Taylor put the Department of Energy on notice Wednesday to stop using Nevada's water to drill bore holes at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site and let inspectors from his office visit the site to confirm compliance with his order.

His letter to Scott Wade, director of DOE's Environmental, Safety and Health Division of the Yucca Mountain site office in Las Vegas, follows U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt's denial Friday of an emergency motion by U.S. attorneys to block Taylor's June 1 cease-and-desist order.

The order, which had been temporarily lifted then reinstated on July 20, "is still in full force and effect," Taylor wrote in his letter to Wade late Wednesday.

"I ask that you immediately confirm that you have stopped using water ... and that you contact me to make arrangements to allow officials of the Office of the Nevada State Engineer to enter your facilities on Friday," Taylor's letter reads.

An Energy Department spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project wouldn't comment on Taylor's letter or say whether the bore hole operations were in progress this week.

Hunt ruled that the Department of Energy had violated a court-approved agreement by using Nevada's water to drill bore holes to extract rock samples for data needed to build surface facilities near the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The water is used to cool and lubricate drill bits and to make mud for collecting the core samples.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires data about the potential for earthquakes and floods at the site to be included in a license application for the planned repository that DOE intends to submit by June 2008.

In a telephone interview Wednesday from his office in Carson City, Allen Biaggi, director of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which includes the State Engineer's office, said Hunt's decision "was pretty clear and convincing."

"We want them to confirm to us that they have stopped using the water, and we're going to send somebody down there on Friday to verify," Biaggi said. "I want to make it clear that we're very appreciative that the judge's order upholds Nevada's 103-year-old water law and the state's jurisdiction over the resource."

He said Gov. Jim Gibbons "has taken a strong stand on Nevada's water law in this case and a strong stand against Yucca Mountain."

"We had worked out a way they could use water for certain things. What they're doing with the water at the site was not in that agreement," Biaggi said.