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December 5, 2003
Trummell: Post YMP agendasCOMMISSIONER NAMED LIAISON ON NUCLEAR WASTE ISSUES
By MARK WAITE While no agenda was published, Commissioner Candice Trummell pushed unsuccessfully for posting meetings county officials attend that concern the Yucca Mountain Project. Commissioners voted 4-1 to require posting agendas at a Nov. 18 meeting in Pahrump, but rescinded that action Tuesday. Commissioner Midge Carver, who requested the rescission, said it would interfere with the way the county normally conducts business. Carver said she normally receives enough e-mails from the Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities, it's almost like Spam. "We had liaisons I felt we should trust to do what we needed to do. We didn't need to be informed of every single, solitary thing that happened. Because we are, in effect, notified of all the meetings by e-mail, what more could we possibly want?" Carver asked. "It's ludicrous at best to feel that this can happen and happen efficiently. I guess that's the thing," she said. At the Nov. 18 meeting, Les Bradshaw, director of Nye County Natural Resources and Federal Facilities, complained it would be cumbersome to post agendas and comply with all the conditions of the open meeting laws for every meeting on Yucca Mountain. Trummell said she didn't believe the federal facilities office was doing a good enough job of notifying commissioners what was going on. Trummell said she wouldn't support an action if three commissioners can't attend the meeting. Three commissioners would constitute a quorum, which would require publishing an agenda. "This was a group set up not necessarily to get input from the public," Carver said. She added, "They still have to come before the commission to make a decision." Carver implied Trummell's suggestion to publish agendas stemmed from a meeting with officials from the three counties that was held in September in Amargosa Valley. Margaret Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, convened it. That meeting was denounced in Las Vegas as a secretive attempt to divide the counties on Yucca Mountain issues. "The situation was certainly manipulated. This item was meant originally to try to remove the ability to manipulate as much as possible," Trummell said. Coincidentally, it was announced at the Tuesday commission meeting that Trummell would replace Commissioner Joni Eastley as Nye County's liaison on nuclear waste issues. County Commission Chairman Henry Neth is the other commission liaison on nuclear waste; he served in that capacity with former Commissioner Jeff Taguchi. Trummell said she listened to a teleconference of the 10 counties receiving Yucca Mountain oversight funds. Various county officials, she said, agreed to divide the money in the traditional manner. In that case, Nye County would receive $1.34 million in 2004, down from the $2.01 million in this year's allotment. Trummell has taken an active interest in Yucca Mountain during her first year on the commission. She asked commissioners to take a stand opposing a rail route to ship nuclear waste through Pahrump Valley and released results of a statewide survey on Yucca Mountain. Trummell said Lincoln County posted an agenda for the Goldfield meeting, since all three Lincoln County commissioners would be attending. Eastley said it wasn't her intention to attend any of the Yucca Mountain meetings, now that she's no longer a county liaison. Commissioner Patricia Cox, who lobbied to be appointed a Yucca Mountain liaison last January, said she'd only attend if the full commission were requested to be there. "We do have to start trusting each other in bringing back the report and the information and staff does inform all the commissioners when meetings are taking place," Cox said. Trummell noted that it was the second time commissioners made a decision in front of a packed audience in Pahrump and reversed themselves when no one was there in Tonopah. She said the other decision involved a flip-flop over the establishment of a Nye County health department. |
