The Yucca Mountain Task Force, "a national lobbying group that formed this spring" to advocate for long-term nuclear waste storage at the Nevada site, is traveling to the Yucca Mountain region, "to begin building ties" there. The task force includes "state utility regulators and nuclear industry executives, including the Nuclear Energy Institute." NEI also pays for "a consultant in Nevada, former governor Robert List." The trip's organizer is "the U.S. Transport Council, an organization of nuclear waste shipping firms and equipment manufacturers that plan to seek Yucca contracts." Opposition to Yucca is strong in Nevada, but some rural officials say they need to secure "jobs and other economic benefits," since the waste site may happen, "whether they like it or not." Nevada's coordinator of Yucca opposition said the task force is trying to "get the local governments pumped up" and "show the project is not dead."

"Consultants paid by the oil and gas industry have been volunteering to work for the Bureau of Land Management's Vernal [Utah] office for the past five months, expediting environmental studies to keep pace with a glut of drilling requests in the region," reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Five consultants paid by the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States are working through "a backlog of about 400 permits." The Vernal BLM office receives the second-highest number of drilling applications in the country. The office says there are "a series of safeguards ... to guarantee the work remains objective." But the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which received details of the arrangement through a Freedom of Information Act request, compared the industry "volunteers" to "foxes guarding the henhouse."

"Business advocates are raising millions of dollars, plotting major lobbying campaigns, and quietly working to influence the president as he ponders a replacement for [retiring Supreme Court] Justice Sandra Day O'Connor," reports the Washington Post. Big business groups want favorable future rulings on pensions, taxation and product liability, among other issues. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been preparing for the past two-and-a-half years by giving White House staff private "in-depth analyses of decisions rendered by federal appeals court judges - the most likely pool of high court candidates." The reports run around 20 pages, for each judge. The National Association of Manufacturers will also "likely ask its lobbyists and its members back home to urge swing senators to vote for Bush's nominee." C. Boyden Gray, also of the Committee for Justice, "has become the unofficial liaison on judgeships between the White House and the corporate community."