Nye County commissioners Tuesday quietly renewed a five-year agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy that will provide payment equal to taxes amounting to 3 percent of the Yucca Mountain budget.

A $288 million budget this year, means the county will receive a much smaller $8.6 million payment.

That's almost $3 million less than the original five-year renewal agreement proposed by the DOE, which suggested payments increase $250,000 per year beginning with $11.5 million this year, increasing to $13 million by the 2012-13 fiscal year.

Nye County commissioners in July 2007 rejected that offer.

Commissioners opened the negotiations with an April 13, 2006, letter from Commissioner Gary Hollis, the liaison on nuclear waste, to Paul Golan, prinicipal deputy director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, asking for PETT payments to more than double, to $23 million in the 2007-08 fiscal year, increasing to $29 million by the fifth year of the agreement in 2011-12.

Hollis wrote Golan that communities with nuclear power plants were receiving much more money, the DOE was asking to withdraw 140,000 acres of public land counting the Caliente rail line, and payments weren't keeping pace with land values in Amargosa Valley.

Section 116 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires DOE to grant to the county payments equal to what would have been collected if Yucca Mountain had been subjected to property taxes.

The county has been eligible for the payments since May 28, 1986, the starting date of the Yucca Mountain site characterization by the DOE. Five-year agreements were negotiated in 1994, 1999 and 2003.

In February 2008, commissioners agreed to accept the original DOE offer of payments increasing $250,000 annually starting with $11.5 million and asked that PETT funding be taken out of a line item in the 2008-09 federal appropriations budget. The federal government has gradually reduced the amount of funding for the Yucca Mountain project each of the past three years, from $495 million to $386 million to $288 million.

The latest PETT renewal agreement allows Nye County an additional 2.5 percent of any Yucca Mountain appropriations beyond $300 million.

In February 2008, Rick Spees, an attorney with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Akerman Senterfitt, warned commissioners without a new five-year agreement the county would be at the mercy of whatever number the DOE offered.

Last November commissioners were informed the county would receive 43 percent of its 2008-09 PETT allocation of $11.5 million, or $4.95 million, for six months as part of a continuing resolution funding the federal government until the new Obama administration took office.

There was almost no discussion Tuesday when the five-year agreement was renewed.

Commissioner Joni Eastley only asked whether the Yucca Mountain budget this year was $288 million. She also noted the license agreement for Yucca Mountain is now under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an indication the project is far from dead.

Darrell Lacy, director of the Nye County Nuclear Waste Project Office, contacted for comment at a Phoenix conference on recycling nuclear fuel, said the prior negotiations were held before he started work for Nye County.

"My understanding was that was the only way DOE was going to go with a five-year agreement," Lacy said. "Sometime there has to be an acknowledgment the funding has been cut in half."