Environmentalists focus on Nevada in anti-Bush effort

Posted on Mon, Sep. 13, 2004

Environmentalists focus on Nevada in anti-Bush effort

By John Heilprin
ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON - For environmentalists hoping to turn anger at President Bush into electoral votes for John Kerry, the biggest and perhaps only field of dreams is a nuclear waste dump site in Nevada.

Lesser hopes are pinned on mercury-polluted waterways in Wisconsin and Florida, and woodlands threatened by road-building and other development in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon. Voters upset at Bush's environmental record might give Kerry a boost in all those states.But Nevada, where Bush wants to entomb a half-century's waste from atomic power plants, is the only state where an environmental issue can realistically swing the outcome, according to environmental leaders and political analysts.

"Kerry is competitive because of it," said Ted Jelen, chair of political science at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "He otherwise wouldn't have much of a chance."
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Bush won Nevada, 50-46 percent, over Democrat Al Gore in 2000. But the state is fighting the Bush administration over building a nuclear waste dump in the desert 90 miles from Las Vegas
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