Guy W. Farmer: A message for Bob Loux ... it's time to go

Nevada's longtime Nuclear Projects Chief, Bob Loux, should resign in order to divert the media spotlight away from him and focus it back where it belongs, squarely on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

Although Loux has fought hard and successfully against the toxic dump for more than 20 years, he made a fatal mistake by giving himself and members of his staff unauthorized pay raises at a time when Nevada faces a serious budget crunch involving big cutbacks in spending and layoffs of state employees. There's no way Loux can justify giving himself a 16 percent pay raise when other longtime state employees are facing pay cuts and worrying about their jobs. I think hubris " placing his personal interests ahead of those of the state " got the best of him.

My main worry is that the continuing media attention to Loux will detract from the ongoing fight against the Yucca Mountain project. Jon Summers, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, "laughed off" suggestions that Loux's missteps would create a credibility problem for the state. "Oh please," he said. "They (the Department of Energy) don't have any room to talk about credibility. We could talk for days about the track record of Yucca Mountain mismanagement ..." I wish I was as sanguine as Summers is about the Loux problem.

Calling Loux "an invaluable asset" in the battle against the Yucca project, former Nevada senator and governor Richard Bryan, who heads the state's Nuclear Projects Commission, said "folks in the nuclear power industry are delighted at the situation Bob has gotten himself into." Someone who is close to Bryan told me last weekend that although Loux can be an SOB from time to time, "He's our SOB." I've seen the cocky and occasionally abrasive nuclear projects chief in action a couple of times and liked what he said about the dangers of Yucca Mountain better than the way he said it.

Yucca proponents immediately mounted a vigorous attack against Loux and his supporters. Assembly Minority Leader Heidi Gansert (R-Reno) filed an ethics complaint against the official and a high-profile nuclear dump enthusiast, fellow Appeal columnist Chuck Muth, accused Loux of malfeasance in Carson City District Court in an effort to remove the state official from office. But Muth's petition was dismissed last Wednesday by Judge Bill Maddox, who ruled that Nevada's Constitution gives the Legislature exclusive power to remove state officials.

What Next for Loux?

Gov. Jim Gibbons, notably absent from the capital in recent days " he didn't show for the visit of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin last weekend " asked Loux to resign, but the embattled bureaucrat said he'd present his case to Bryan and the Nuclear Projects Commission on Tuesday in Las Vegas before deciding what to do.

Because Loux has clearly violated the public trust, I reluctantly endorse the Reno Gazette-Journal's call for his resignation. "His act was particularly egregious," the RGJ opined last week, "when every other department, agency and commission ... is slicing huge chunks from their spending plans in response to a budget shortfall that exceeds $1.2 billion." So come on Bob, do the right thing and save us from a long, drawn-out fight that will detract from the worthy cause you've championed so well for more than 20 years. We appreciate your service, but it's time to go.

No matter what happens to Loux, the state needs to keep the focus on the toxic dump and not on the personalities involved with the project. As an Appeal editorial declared last Wednesday, "Nevadans have said repeatedly that they do not want Yucca Mountain to open as a nuclear waste dump, and they're resentful of a federal bureaucracy fueled by nuclear industry lobbyists that doesn't listen to those concerns and ignores the science that should have canceled the project long ago." Amen!

Meanwhile, Yucca supporters like Muth and influential Reno blogger Ty Cobb, Sr. continue to lobby for the dangerous project. In his latest attempt to find a "compromise" that would keep the project alive, Cobb said the Legislature should direct Loux's Nuclear Projects Agency to carry out its prescribed mission by "impartially and legally analyzing the possibility of placing nuclear waste at Yucca as a temporary site ..." But I cringe whenever I see the word "temporary" applied to a federal program or project. Cobb's proposal would also require the Feds to study nuclear waste reprocessing and to construct a specialized reactor that would provide cheap energy to Nevada.

Frankly, I have zero confidence in the Department of Energy to carry out its part of Cobb's plan. We've already seen how DOE, egged-on by the powerful nuclear energy industry, has ignored our state's concerns for more than 20 years and how President Bush betrayed Nevada by approving the Yucca Mountain project after promising to base his decision on "sound science," which is in short supply at the DOE.

One final comment: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is opposed to Yucca Mountain and has vowed to kill the project if he wins in November, while GOP candidate John McCain, of neighboring Arizona, is a champion of nuclear power and the Yucca project. You should keep that in mind if this life-and-death issue is important to you, as it should be to every Nevada voter.

Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.