Published Friday, December 10, 1999
The State Columbia, S.C.

PLAN CUTS NUCLEAR WASTE'S S.C. FLOW

By CHUCK CARROLL
Staff Writer

South Carolina should close its borders to low-level nuclear waste from all but two Northern states, a unanimous gubernatorial task force decided Thursday.

Under the proposal, set for final adoption next week before being sent to the governor, only waste from South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey would be buried at the state-owned site in Barnwell County. The three-state body would be known informally as the Atlantic Compact.

Backers said such an arrangement is the best way to rid South Carolina of its reputation as "the nation's nuclear dumping ground," saying that reputation has hampered the state's ability to attract jobs and investment. Currently, the state-owned site takes waste from 38 states.

Several other methods of restricting the flow of waste into the state were rejected, some because they likely would run afoul of the Constitution's interstate-commerce clause.

Advocates of the Atlantic Compact proposal say it also meets the other charge Gov. Jim Hodges gave his task force six months ago: to preserve enough space in the landfill until, about three decades hence, South Carolina's nuclear reactors have to be disposed of.

Under the plan, Connecticut and New Jersey would use no more than 800,000 cubic feet of space in Barnwell; South Carolina would get the remaining 2.2 million cubic feet. Hodges' energy adviser, John Clark, said the three states combined likely will never fill the Barnwell site with their own waste, although the compact would have the option of contracting with out-of-region generators.

The task force plans to sign off on the final report next week, after which it will be forwarded to Hodges, and presumably, to the Legislature. Hodges promised during the campaign last year to reverse the David Beasley administration's policy of opening the Barnwell site to waste from all over the country.

South Carolina dropped out of a previous disposal compact with other Southeastern states in 1995 after North Carolina missed a deadline for opening a disposal site to replace the Chem-Nuclear landfill. But by doing so, it lost the ability to keep other states' waste out.

Lawmakers raised the disposal fee in hopes of bringing more money into South Carolina coffers for education, but the huge windfall was never fully realized because waste generators took steps to avoid paying it.

Task force Chairman Butler Derrick, noting that the state has not grown as fast as the national average in the past decade, said he hoped joining the Atlantic Compact would help change that.

"Now I think that if we're going to continue to grow as I would like to see this state grow, we have to show the rest of the country and the rest of the world that we are responsible when it comes to our environment," he said.

Prospects for legislative acceptance of the Atlantic Compact proposal are enhanced because the task force -- with some caveats and questions still to be addressed in next week's meeting -- unanimously adopted a resolution backing it.

Sen. Tom Moore, a powerful Aiken Democrat, on Thursday withdrew a proposal widely considered to be more favorable to Chem-Nuclear, the site operator.

"I am satisfied to work within the confines of a compact," he said. "Having said that, I want to know as specifically as possible, what's in that (Atlantic Compact proposal), how is South Carolina protected politically, economically, environmentally?"

Once those questions are answered, he said, "I think it'll fly."

Moore said he met briefly with Hodges earlier in the day to tell him he thought the proposal would stand a better chance of passing if the task were to vote unanimously for it. He declined to elaborate, other than to say the details could be worked out later.

Hodges adviser Clark was at that earlier meeting with Moore and Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg. Clark said the two lawmakers received Hodges' assurance that the $12 million the Atlantic Compact will pay South Carolina upon its admission into the compact will be used in Barnwell County for economic development. The money also will be used to offset anticipated job losses at Chem-Nuclear caused by the dramatically lower waste volumes that would be disposed of.

Chem-Nuclear says it currently pays $700,000 a year in taxes to Barnwell County -- or 14 percent of the county budget -- and has pumped more than $1.6 million into county schools since 1996.