S.C.' s nuclear disposal history a sordid past
By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE
Staff Writer
South Carolina dove into the radioactive-waste disposal business in 1969, when it issued Chem-Nuclear Systems a license to store low-level nuclear waste on state-owned property in Barnwell County.The facility opened in 1971 and began accepting waste such as contaminated clothing and equipment from hospitals and nuclear facilities around the country. The state took in tens of millions of dollars a year in disposal fees.
But during Gov. Dick Riley's administration, legislators began to worry that South Carolina would permanently serve as the nation's nuclear-waste host. In 1980, Riley and other S.C. officials convinced Congress to allow regional compacts of states that operated disposal systems to exclude non-members from sending their waste there.
Absent that law -- or outside a compact -- the current interpretation of the interstate- commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution requires dumps such as Barnwell to take radioactive waste from any state that wants to send it.
In 1982, seven states joined South Carolina in forming the Southeast Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact. The compact agreed to rotate 20-year shifts as landfill operators. The Barnwell facility was to remain open through 1992, when North Carolina was supposed to take the first shift.
The concept of rotation was so important that federal law required the Barnwell facility to close at the end of 1992 unless the S.C. Legislature, Congress and the compact voted to change that.
But when it became clear that North Carolina would not open a new facility on time, the Southeast Compact Commission and then-Gov. Carroll Campbell pushed to extend the closing to the end of 1995.
Campbell argued that additional money from the extension would help balance the state's then-troubled budget and preserve the compact. Opponents, led by House Speaker Bob Sheheen, argued that the only way to make North Carolina open its facility was to close Barnwell on schedule.
After a bitter struggle, the 1992 Legislature agreed to the extension, with the caveat that the 42 non-compact states would be locked out on June 30, 1994.
The 1994 deadline came and went without incident. Outsiders were kicked out.
But North Carolina continued to miss deadlines, and with the Dec. 31 deadline for final closure looming, Gov. David Beasley asked the 1995 General Assembly to punish North Carolina. Instead of closing the landfill, he said, the state should cut off North Carolina and, on July 1, open it to the entire nation.
Before the Legislature voted, the Southeast Compact rejected the idea. So Beasley asked lawmakers to withdraw from the compact they had convinced Congress to authorize.
Critics pointed out that doing so would make it legally impossible to bar any state from sending waste to Barnwell. But legislators were convinced by the promise that a larger market would mean $42 million a year in fees for college scholarships and $98 million for school construction.
On July 1, 1995, the Barnwell facility again opened its doors to the nation's waste. The income to the state has never met projections.
Cindi Ross Scoppe writes about legislative actions and their effects. Call her at 771-8571 or e-mail her at scoppe@cyberstate.infi.net.