Texas Panel Rejects Nuclear Waste Dump, a Cross-Border Concern
By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 23, 1998AUSTIN, Oct. 22—When environmental disputes arise between Texas and Mexico, usually it is the Americans accusing their cross-border neighbors of polluting the air, the water or the ground. But in an administrative fight that reversed those roles, a Texas regulatory commission denied today a state agency's bid to build a radioactive waste dump near the Rio Grande.
The decision delighted a group of Mexican lawmakers and their constituents who had traveled north to protest the plan.
"Very happy! Very happy!" declared Carmelo Enriques, a member of Mexico's national legislature, after the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission denied a permit for the planned dump.
The commission's unanimous vote came after a daylong hearing in which Enriques and about a dozen other local and national Mexican politicians joined scores of U.S. opponents and backers of the plan, listening to scientific and legal arguments before the commission's three members, all appointees of Gov. George W. Bush (R).
The hearing climaxed a week of lobbying and protests by the opponents, including a six-day fast by at least two Mexican legislators and a festive demonstration Wednesday outside the governor's mansion here. Bush, who has said he supports the plan in principle but not if it is determined to be unsafe, repeatedly declined to meet with the Mexican officials.
"We have been here for one week about this," said Enriques, whose home state, Chihuahua, borders the vast West Texas desert. "We are surprised. The decision is a success."
The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority proposed to build the dump in that region, on a 16,000-acre former ranch outside the small town of Sierra Blanca, 90 miles east of El Paso and 16 miles from the Rio Grande border.
Those who traveled here from Mexico to protest the plan numbered only a few dozen among the hundreds of people demonstrating and lobbying against the dump -- an opposition that included many residents and local officials from West Texas and an array of environmental groups.
But for the Mexicans, who complained that Texas agencies were disregarding their concerns about the safety of disposing radioactive waste so close to the river, today's victory was special.
"I am afraid of a trend of turning the border into a dump," said Norberto Corella Gil Samaniego, a senator from Mexico's Baja state on the California border. Noting that Mexico's Congress unanimously adopted a resolution opposing the Sierra Blanca facility, he said: "The strong fellow is apt to always put his garbage in the weak fellow's yard. That is why we are worried. That is why we came here."
A certain irony also did not escape him. Environmental officials and others here often complain of pollution from Mexico. The natural resource commission has blamed smoke from forest fires in Mexico for the poor air-quality readings in parts of Texas. Some ranchers in West Texas have blamed factory emissions in Mexico for dry weather patterns. And Northern Mexico's industrial boom since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement has heightened concern about lax pollution standards there.
"We cannot say that we have not done wrong in the past," said Corella. "But we cannot say that the U.S. has not also done wrong. What we are saying is, let's look to the future."
Two administrative law judges here who reviewed plans for the dump earlier this year recommended that the commission vote no, saying the radioactive waste authority provided them with inconclusive studies on the possibility that an earthquake might cause a leak at the dump. The judges said the agency also did not study carefully enough the dump's potential socioeconomic impact. In rejecting the application on those grounds today, the commission stopped -- or at least delayed -- Texas's bid to join South Carolina, Washington and Utah as states with disposal facilities for low-level radioactive waste. Most of it is industrial and medical waste that often degrades in years or decades, compared with such material as fuel rods from nuclear plants or waste from nuclear weapons, which can stay deadly for eons.
"Currently, [low-level] radioactive waste is being stored throughout the state, mostly in unlicensed utilties, including haphazard storage in all the major metropolitan areas," David C. Duggins, a lawyer for several Texas power companies, told the commission, urging members to approve the permit. "This is a health and safety issue of the highest magnitude."
In remote Sierra Blanca, opinion has been mixed, with some of its 700 residents fearing environmental damage and others eager for financial rewards. Hudspeth County, where the town is located, already has received several million dollars from the radioactive waste authority, which has helped pay for a new library, a medical center, two fire engines and other improvements.
The county stood to get $1 million a year from the authority if the dump were to become operational.
But it was not their decision alone. "It is not their border," said Duarte Ignacio, a member of Chihuahua's state legislature, standing outside today's hearing. "The border belongs to all of us."