JACKSON, Miss.–This year you’ll save $3.7 million. That’s because it’s no longer going to the federal government for a project that’s been scrapped, for all intents and purposes. That’s money that would have gone to the Nuclear Waste Fund.
The money was being paid by all states each year to fund the project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, which was stopped in 2010. It was being developed as a national storage site for nuclear waste. But, according to Mississippi’s Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, the project was stopped without any plans to stop collecting your money.
The National Assoc. of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, of which Mississippi’s Public Service Commission is a member, sued, and finally won in November, to get the collections stopped.
Last week, the court’s decision was enforced, and the collections have stopped.
“I am proud to have been in this fight against another federal ‘bridge to nowhere’, paid for through fees tacked onto Miss. power bills,” said Presley. “Any day that we can keep Mississippians’ money in their pockets and not send it to Washington, D.C. is a great day.”
Presley said he would like to see the $80 million paid in since 1982, paid back.
