TONOPAH -- Nye County commissioners Tuesday turned down a U.S. Department of Energy offer to increase the annual Payments Equal to Taxes by $250,000 during each of the next five years.

Commissioners had hired consultant Steve Bradhurst in February for up to $40,000 to lead negotiations with the DOE for the PETT funds for the years 2009-2013. Nye County received $11.25 million for this year.

Nye County, in its original request, requested much larger PETT payments ranging from $23 million in 2009 up to $29 million in 2013.

DOE countered with an offer to give Nye County $11.5 million in PETT payments in 2009, increasing to $12.5 million in PETT by 2013.

Bradhurst said he called negotiators from DOE last Friday to see if there was any flexibility. DOE emailed back that the offer for $250,000 annual increases would not be changed.

Three approaches are normally used in appraisals: market, cost and income. The cost approach is the way to appraise this property, Bradhurst said. A market approach isn't possible since they're not selling nuclear waste repositories. The income approach isn't usable since the DOE isn't making money on it, he said.

"As you start to develop the cost of the repository, it's unique. Nobody's ever done it before. But it is standard to take a project and look at the cost of the project," Bradhurst said.

"It looks like this is something similar to a utility under construction, like a power plant under construction. If you were to start to build a power plant, all the value of that power plant includes the cost of finding the site and all the studies that go into the site.".

Merlino assessed the property at $31.7 million in 1992, but Bradhurst noted since then the DOE spent close to $6 billion on the site.

"For sure, the appraisal would be higher for FY 2009," he said. "A request for $20 million for FY '09 would seem to be reasonable. It represents a compromise for the time being, it would be a stipulated agreement bridging the gap."

A letter from Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis, initiating the negotiating sessions, stated the county should be paid at least $17.4 million in 2009 due to the rising land values in Amargosa Valley, unadjusted since 2001. Then there are additional improvements like the proposed railroad, construction, underground shafts, ventilation systems and infrastructure.

Hollis estimated 147,000 acres of public land had been withdrawn for the project, including the rail line.

The request for $23 million would be only 5 percent of the $444 million budget approved for the Yucca Mountain Project this year, Bradhurst said.

"We have an impasse at the worker bee level but we need to get to the policy level and talk about it," he said.

Prior PETT agreements provided $30 million for a five-year period from 1999 through 2003, followed by $38 million from 2004 through 2008.

Nye County uses PETT funds for a variety of things. In the coming year the county allocated $750,000 in PETT funds for the traffic light at Homestead Road and Highway 160; $2 million for building construction at the Calvada duck ponds; $1.095 million for the Pahrump chip-seal program; $750,000 for the Great Basin College project and $555,000 for a microwave communications system among a long list of items.