KLAS-TV Channel 8 News Las VegasFederal Judge Denies Shoshone Tribe's Yucca Mountain Plea

A federal judge has denied an Indian tribe's plea to stop federal plans for a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada based on a claim that the project violates a 19th century treaty.

With the Yucca Mountain repository yet to open and a disputed rail line yet to be built, U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pro ruled that the Western Shoshone National Council couldn't demonstrate "immediate and irreparable" harm.

Lawyer Robert Hager of Reno, representing the tribe, said Wednesday that no immediate decision had been made whether to appeal.

A spokesman for the Energy Department had no immediate comment.

The tribe had asked for a preliminary injunction to stop the federal and interior departments from applying to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an operating license for the $58 billion repository, and continuing to plan a railroad line across Nevada to reach it.

In his ruling issued late Tuesday, Pro left open a chance for the tribe to seek another injunction. He also gave the government until July 20 to seek dismissal of a lawsuit the tribe filed March 4.

Congress in 2002 picked Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the site to entomb 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel now stored in 39 states. The site is at the western edge of the Nevada Test Site, within ancient Shoshone lands.

The tribe claims the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 allowed only settlements, mining, ranching, agriculture, railroads, roads and communication routes on Western Shoshone ancestral lands.

The treaty recognized vast stretches of territory in present-day Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho as Western Shoshone tribal land. An Indian Claims Commission decided in 1946 that the tribe lost the land through "gradual encroachment."

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)