March 13, 2008
DOE Caliente Rail Location Disputed

By Dave Maxwell, Staff Writer

At the March 3 Commission Meeting Jan Cole, owner of the Hot Springs Motel and Spa in Caliente, said she was very upset with the Board of County Commissioners, stating they were amiss in choosing not to recommend the use of alternate railroad routes through Lincoln County. The routes would have replaced the preferred route the Department of Energy (DOE) has selected to transport nuclear waste material to the proposed Yucca Mountain storage site. “I can tell you already you have done me no good. In fact, you have been detrimental to the value of my property and I don’t think anything you have done has helped me. In fact, I think what you have done has harmed me,” she said.

In the County’s final 117-page comment report, “An Analysis of Impacts and Alternatives with Recommended Mitigation,” prepared following the completion of the studies and submitted to the DOE in early January 2008, the conclusion was not to recommend the alternative routes.

Dr. Mike Baughman stated the purpose of the studies was to identify impacts to grazing and land uses along the alternate routes surveyed. He said “The Analysis Report incorporated many of the findings that had been brought out in the studies.” He also said he felt the “studies helped inform those 117 pages of comments significantly” And in so doing, it was determined that the studied alternative routes would not impact people, property and operations on public lands any less than the DOE preferred route. Therefore, no alternative routes were recommended.

Commissioners employed the services of the consulting firms of Robison-Seidler of Las Vegas, Resource Concepts of Reno, and L&H Consulting in Alamo, to select possible routes and study possible socioeconomic and personal property impacts.

Dr. Baughman, who also assisted in the process, said the County’s study found that the alternative routes would impact too many other people adversely. “The County taking a position to any other alternative was simply imposing impacts on somebody else,” he said, “and those people would come to the Commission also complaining about why did you recommend that route?”

He added, “The County elected not to make a statement about one or the other, but to point out all of the impacts associated with both, in far greater degree than DOE did, and then to identify the mitigation measures such that, on those routes perhaps the impacts could be mitigated. That was the purpose of all the work.”

Ms. Cole said “I don’t see anything in this (the County’s study) that wasn’t addressed by the (DOEs) Draft Environmental Impact Statement.…what's the point of going through this?...What was the purpose of this?...You spent a lot of time looking at two alternatives that you decided not to go forward with even suggesting.”

Ms. Cole added she felt “the purpose of the comments to the Draft EIS is to get across to the DOE what it is that this County does or does not want.”

Commissioner Wade Poulsen said that had the Commission not done the study of alternate routes they would not be able to negotiate with the DOE about mitigations on the preferred route.

The study allowed the County, he said, to open some areas of conversation of impact mitigation with DOE that would have been missed if the Alternative Route Studies had not been done. “Now we have a working relationship with DOE to have citizens sit at the table with the DOE and talk about the impact to their property, talk about the mitigation prospects in the future if this thing comes,” Poulsen said. “It gave us legitimate data to be able to get the DOE to come to the table, because prior to that, the DOE would not come to the table to talk to the County. Now they’re talking.” He said that he believes, “We can change and alter the impacts with the DOE.”

Commission Chairwoman Ronda Hornbeck said the County’s report, while deciding not to recommend any studied alternative routes, did make the DOE recognize that impacts to property, communities, and grazing operations was a lot more than just the width of the railroad bed. “It’s not just that little strip of rail that’s going to be running through that piece of property,” she said.

Dr. Baughman commented that the Draft Environmental Impact Statement prepared by the DOE was woefully negligent in identifying impacts anywhere beyond the narrow alignment of the rail line. The County’s analysis report brought to the attention of the DOE, he said, “areas where they badly missed the boat. They did a terrible job.”

However, Ms. Cole was still angry that the County was allowing the rail line, if built, to come through Caliente, the most populated town in the County.

In November 2007, Ms. Cole spoke at a public meeting sponsored by the Las Vegas Office of the Department of Energy in Caliente, and said the rail line EIS by the DOE was showing only 279 people would be affected by the half-mile wide “Radiological Region of Influence” on either side of the track. She then pointed out on a map that a half-mile area on either side of the track would involve not only the old UPRR interchange yard but also cover nearly three-quarters of the current City of Caliente. “And it will always be there,” she said. Just how much at risk people in the “region of influence” would be was not spelled out in the Rail EIS that was available at the meeting in November.

At the March 3 Commission meeting, Ms. Cole said the Analysis Report does not tell DOE, “You don’t need this train going through the most populated city in the County. There wasn’t any talk about that. Ninety-eight percent of the county is federally held, and you’re telling me that DOE doesn’t have to just go on its own property? I want the people, the citizens of the County, to say that it makes no sense when all these scoping meetings for all these years have said the least amount of impacts to local population in a county that is 98 percent federally owned, that it’s in this County’s best interest to take this rail into the most populated city in the County and impact the 2.7 percent of private property?”

Poulsen said he had made the same type of comments in face-to-face meetings with the DOE explaining the whole point of the scoping meetings was to try to lessen impacts to the citizens of the County and private property.

Ms. Cole said she had “been told all along by everybody that she talked to that the County was supporting the Eccles option” and “…believed it would be until the Draft EIS arrived in my mailbox.”

Poulsen said that while he also preferred the Eccles route, the County Commission cannot not dictate to the City of Caliente what they are going to do. He suggested that Ms. Cole speak to the City Council to oppose bringing the train through the city.

Commission Chairwoman Ronda Hornbeck said that if the County had not done the study, had not done anything in trying to lessen the impacts likely to be imposed on everyone, “Trying to go forward and go to DOE and say ‘Give us a Voice.’ If we had done nothing, then we have no opportunity and we’re trying to take any opportunity that we can to try to make a difference on the railroad, and if it comes, what are they going to do about impacts? Then we have not done our job,” she said.

Ms. Cole said she was also very disturbed that the County’s Analysis Report had published estimated property values. They had no right to do so, as she pointed out because only state licensed real estate appraisers can do that, as required by state law. Earlier in the meeting, Connie Simkins, Lincoln County Nuclear Oversight Program Coordinator had called to the Commissioners attention that some local property owners were upset that values had been published in the report and were too low. Commissioners acknowledged they had made a mistake and said the figures would be removed.

At one point in the conversation with Ms. Cole, Poulsen referred to the final paragraph of the introduction to comments the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners sent to the Department of Energy regarding the three Draft Environmental Impact Studies done by the DOE. The paragraph reads: “In the event that DOE is unwilling or unable to commit to numerous mitigation measures identified within this comprehensive comment letter and its Exhibits, Lincoln County may seek to prevent construction and operation of the proposed Caliente rail alignment. Further, Lincoln County is concerned that, despite DOE efforts to mitigate impacts, many unavoidable adverse impacts, both anticipated and unanticipated, may yet result. Given this, Lincoln County encourages DOE to reconsider the Record of Decision to use mostly rail within Nevada and to consider transportation of spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste by truck across existing highways as a means to minimize said unavoidable impacts within Nevada.”