The approval of 17 contracts worth $2.3 million to oversee the Yucca Mountain project was so routine, Nye County commissioners approved it last week as part of the ho-hum consent agenda.

Under the consent agenda commissioners can vote on a number of items with one motion. All contracts were bundled under item (n), part of 17 items from (a) through (q) up for approval.

Darrell Lacy, director of the Nye County nuclear waste project office, wasn't worried about cuts in the Yucca Mountain program.

President Bush asked for $494.5 million to fund the program in fiscal year 2008, ending next Sept. 30, but Congress allocated only $386.5 million. It will mean cuts to the county well drilling program, Lacy said.

Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said last week a $100 million reduction in the program "would be very serious" but didn't detail what that would mean.

"We're making contingency plans to keep our funding, our expenditures, within what our funding is. At this point in time I think we're in pretty good shape," Lacy said.

Some of the contracts run from April to April, he said.

"These are probably covered, but there are some discretionary projects within these contracts that we may hold back on, just to conserve funding," Lacy said.

The Nye County well drilling program, part of the Yucca Mountain oversight, tends to form "large chunks" of the funding, Lacy said. They are often part of cooperative agreements with the U.S. Department of Energy, he said.

Lacy said Nye County actually receives a total of about $4 million between Section 117 funding under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, specifically to Nye County, and a third of the Section 116 funding provided to the affected units of local government, the 10 counties surrounding Yucca Mountain.

In November the 10 counties reached an agreement to distribute $9 million in oversight funding for fiscal year 2008. They range from $3 million Nye County will receive, to $315,000 for the smaller counties like Churchill, Eureka, Lander, Mineral and White Pine.

In an Aug. 2 letter to Sproat, Nye County said the U.S. Department of Energy request for oversight funding doesn't reflect the requirements needed by the counties.

In the coming year Nye County says the counties may need to participate in the licensing process of the nuclear waste repository; study the new TAD canisters proposed for shipping the nuclear waste; examine the concept of interim storage at locations yet to be determined and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership which would involve recycling waste.

The DOE expects to submit the license application for the repository next June.

"We would like to request that more realistic numbers be submitted by the administration on our behalf," states the letter, signed by Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis.

A statement accompanying the request to approve the 17 contracts at the last county commissioners meeting mentions 2008 will be a year of dramatic and rapidly changing events associated with Yucca Mountain.

There is debate in Congress regarding the project's fate, the environmental impact studies for the railroad, and the repository and DOE are encouraging Nye County to become more involved in public safety.

"It is proposed to award these contracts without competition. The justification for this award is based on previously demonstrated technical expertise and years of successful experience," Lacy states in his memo. "On average these contractors have worked for Nye County for at least seven years facilitating program continuity, stability and the accumulation of a large bod of interdisciplinary knowledge regarding Yucca Mountain performance and its potential impacts on the county."

The 17 contracts include:

Mary Ellen Giampaoli, Blue Diamond, Nev., environmental compliance and land use contractor, $150,000;

Mal Murphy, Sun River, Ore., regulatory and licensing contractor, $300,000;

Cash Jaszczak, Las Vegas, policy and planning support, $200,000;

Wilbur Smith Associates, San Francisco, Calif., Nevada rail impact contractor, $150,000;

BEC Environmental Inc., of Las Vegas, infrastructure planning and public safety, $200,000;

Joseph Ziegler, Aiken, S.C., regulatory, policy and planning support, $200,000;

NERMI LLC, Las Vegas, repository ancillary facilities evaluation, $200,000;

TerraSpectra Geomatics, Las Vegas, graphics support, Web site management, GIS maintenance, $150,000;

Tom Buqo, Blue Diamond, hydro-geologic evaluations, $200,000;

Anita Johnson, of Hydrogeologica Inc. of Golden, Colo., hydro-geologic evaluations, $75,000;

Thomas Anderson, Pittsburgh, Pa., hydro-geologic evaluations, $55,000;

Jamieson Walker, Henderson, hydro-geologic evaluations, $75,000;

Richard Reinke, Norwest, Golden, Colo., hydro-geologic evaluations, $150,000;

Frank D'Agnese, Earth Knowledge Inc. of Tucson, Ariz., hydro-geologic evaluations, $100,000;

John Walton, professor of the department of civil engineering at the University of Texas-El Paso, hydro-geologic evaluations, $100,000;

William Belke, Las Vegas, quality assurance, $10,000;

Ken Hooks, Caruthers and Associates Inc., Denver, Colo., quality assurance, $10,000.