From the THE STATE, Columbia, SC
June 11, 1999
TASK FORCE TO STUDY SOUTH CAROLINA NUCLEAR POLICY
By Chuck Carroll, Staff Writer
Gov. Jim Hodges is now actively in the hunt for a way to get South Carolina out of its role as the dump site for much of the nation's low-level nuclear waste.The Democratic governor signed an executive order Thursday creating a task force charged with bringing him a final report by November. Hodges is seeking to reverse the policy of his predecessor as he promised during the 1998 campaign.
He named former Democratic U.S. Rep. Butler Derrick, a leading architect of the nation's laws regulating low-level waste disposal, to head the 13-member group.
Under state policy dating back to the early days of the David Beasley administration, the state's low-level waste disposal site in Barnwell County is open to waste from every state except North Carolina. Barnwell is by far the largest of three such facilities in the country and the only one east of the Mississippi River.
"The charge of this task force is to formulate recommendations for me and for the Legislature to address this problem of low-level nuclear waste," Hodges said at a news conference in his office. "My stated goal would be to get South Carolina out of the business of taking nuclear waste from the rest of the country. I think that is a policy that is strongly supported around the state of South Carolina."
Hodges said the task force should examine two possible alternatives:
? Go it alone. Under this option, he said, South Carolina would take care of low-level waste generated within the state but close the disposal site in Barnwell County to all other states.
? Enter or re-enter a regional compact for low-level waste disposal. Under this plan, member states would negotiate a schedule under which each would assume responsibility for disposing of the group's waste on a rotating basis. Other states would be excluded and presumably would be under pressure to find their own solutions.
South Carolina was in such a compact with six other Southeastern states until 1995.
Under the compact, the Barnwell facility was to close at the end of that year. North Carolina was to open its replacement site and operate it for the next 20 years.
But North Carolina's efforts to open a suitable site foundered in the face of environmental and political opposition, despite spending $110 million that came from fees charged on waste dumped at Barnwell.
That's when former S.C. Gov. David Beasley pushed through the General Assembly a plan that withdrew the state from the compact, banned North Carolina from using Barnwell and opened the site to all other states.
Critics of that policy say it unwisely provided a relief valve for states and allowed them to avoid facing the difficult technical and political problems involved in opening their own dumps as part of a regional plan.
Hodges said many states "realize that things have changed and that we're committed to changing a policy that was very comfortable to them."
He said other states didn't have to worry about being part of a compact as long as they knew South Carolina would take their waste.
"If we indeed are able to move forward and are able to rejoin a compact," Hodges said, "then those that aren't a part of that compact will have to find some solution to their nuclear waste problem. So many states, many regions, want to be a part of exploring a new compact with South Carolina."
"We've got all the leverage in the world. We're the guys who have the site," added Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter, a longtime Barnwell critic who hopes to be named to the task force.
Leventis said the low-level waste problem is at least as symbolic as it is substantive. He said South Carolina needs to stand up for itself.
"If we're ever going to get out of the problems we have with all kinds of waste, we're going to have to stop letting other states set our course and we're going to have to set our own course," he said.
Not everyone is a fan of the idea of rejoining a compact.
Rep. Bob Sheheen, D-Kershaw, who chaired a Hodges transition panel that recommended closing the Barnwell site to other states, is one such person.
He said he does not support rejoining the Southeast Compact with North Carolina as a member. He's not sure why the remaining members would want to return to the pre-1995 policy, because under the current policy, their turn to accept the waste may never come. "We've already tried that once and it didn't work,'' Sheheen said.
But Dell Isham, director of the Sierra Club, which has been running radio spots in the Midlands against the Barnwell dump, was glad to see Hodges tackling the issue.