Monday, September 13, 1999
Lubbock, TexasSC Mulls Waste Pact With Texas
ODESSA {AP} South Carolina officials have inquired about joining a radioactive waste compact with Texas, Maine and Vermont, the Odessa American reported.Weeks before the abolition of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority on Sept. 1, the state agency received a letter from the South Carolina governor's office requesting membership in the Texas Compact, the newspaper said.
Doug Bell, former general manager of the Texas authority, said he got the letter and forwarded copies to both John Howard, the governor's environmental adviser, and Jeffrey Saitas, executive director of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission.
Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for Gov. George W. Bush, however, told the newspaper that he consulted with Howard and no letter had been received.
He said that any decision to expand the compact could only be made by the compact commissioners, still unnamed by Bush, and must be ratified by Congress. Since Texas has no approved dump, it is not yet necessary to have commissioners, Sullivan added.
Patrick Crimmins, spokesperson for the TNRCC, said department members knew of the letter but couldn't find it.
Vermont, Maine and Texas joined together several years ago to dispose of low-level nuclear waste from the two New England states. Congress approved the pact last summer and it was signed into law by President Clinton.
The agreement said Texas would host the facility and Vermont and Maine would each pay $25 million for the right to send low-level waste to Texas.
The Hudspeth County town of Sierra Blanca was supposed to be the site for the dump, but TNRCC rejected the proposed site last year because of geological faults running underneath it.
Opponents of a nuclear dump say South Carolina's request illustrates a "loophole" in the compact language that gives the commissioners the authority to accept waste from any state they choose.
"I just think this shows that the compact system is not working, and Texas is in grave danger of becoming the nation's dumping ground," said Erin Rogers, director of the Sierra Blanca Legal Defense Fund, an organization founded to oppose a waste dump in Hudspeth County.