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A Protest County2024 Oct 11
Protests take many forms. But rarely, I would imagine, do protests take the form of a state legislature creating a county. Yet exactly that happened in Nevada in 1987, when the federal government planned a nuclear weapons waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Nevadans, not wanting to be the country's nuclear trash dump (understandable), used some political funny business (the legislative vote took place at 3:45am, for instance) to create a the tiny "Bullfrog County" directly around Yucca Mountain, with prohibitively high property taxes which would go directly to the state government.
Nobody actually lived in Bullfrog County, and so its county seat was placed at the far-away state capital, Carson City, and officers were appointed rather than elected, and the rules allowed a single person to sit in multiple (or all) the offices. There were no courts, no paved roads, no buildings, and almost all the land was closed to the public. And it was entirely an enclave inside Nye County. So Bullfrog County was a county like none other.
This created problems. The lack of courts created a legal paradox. As the taxes flowing directly to state government now incentivized the creation of the nuclear dump they originally sought to dissuade, there were political problems. And there were government problems, as the Department of Energy was not happy about this development (understandable) and redirected their funding to Clark County.
But mostly, Nye County residents, who existed and were not happy about this new lawless, people-less enclave popping up in their territory and potentially robbing them of the economic benefits of having a nuclear dumpster in their backyard (a federally funded nuclear dumpster, I should say), challenged Bullfrog County's very existence in court. And they were successful. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Bullfrog County to be unconstitutional, as it had no residents and thus no representative government. And so Bullfrog County was dissolved two years after it was created, and Yucca Mountain went on to be selected as American's nuclear weapons garbage repository.
Good news, though. Due to political complications, the nuclear dump has yet to be built, and since its funding has been eliminated, maybe it never will. And so we bury our nuclear weapons trash instead two thousand feet beneath New Mexico in a salt... thing, as the Founding Fathers intended.
Protests take many forms. But rarely, I would imagine, do protests take the form of a state legislature creating a county. Yet exactly that happened in Nevada in 1987, when the federal government planned a nuclear weapons waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Nevadans, not wanting to be the country's nuclear trash dump (understandable), used some political funny business (the legislative vote took place at 3:45am, for instance) to create a the tiny "Bullfrog County" directly around Yucca Mountain, with prohibitively high property taxes which would go directly to the state government.
Nobody actually lived in Bullfrog County, and so its county seat was placed at the far-away state capital, Carson City, and officers were appointed rather than elected, and the rules allowed a single person to sit in multiple (or all) the offices. There were no courts, no paved roads, no buildings, and almost all the land was closed to the public. And it was entirely an enclave inside Nye County. So Bullfrog County was a county like none other.
This created problems. The lack of courts created a legal paradox. As the taxes flowing directly to state government now incentivized the creation of the nuclear dump they originally sought to dissuade, there were political problems. And there were government problems, as the Department of Energy was not happy about this development (understandable) and redirected their funding to Clark County.
But mostly, Nye County residents, who existed and were not happy about this new lawless, people-less enclave popping up in their territory and potentially robbing them of the economic benefits of having a nuclear dumpster in their backyard (a federally funded nuclear dumpster, I should say), challenged Bullfrog County's very existence in court. And they were successful. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Bullfrog County to be unconstitutional, as it had no residents and thus no representative government. And so Bullfrog County was dissolved two years after it was created, and Yucca Mountain went on to be selected as American's nuclear weapons garbage repository.
Good news, though. Due to political complications, the nuclear dump has yet to be built, and since its funding has been eliminated, maybe it never will. And so we bury our nuclear weapons trash instead two thousand feet beneath New Mexico in a salt... thing, as the Founding Fathers intended.