The News & Observer
Published July 4, 2000

Records, Rock Samples, Legal Issues
Are All That Remain of Waste Project

By Scott Mooneyham
The Associated Press

RALEIGH -- Fourteen years and $120 million later, North Carolina's failed efforts to build a low-level radioactive waste dump for several states officially ended over the weekend.

Saturday was the date state lawmakers set for the state-mandated authority that had overseen the project to close up shop and secure the site along Wake-Chatham county border.

All that work was completed weeks before the deadline.

"They have secured the site, sealed the wells and archived the documents," said Rep. George Miller, a Durham County Democrat who had served on the commission of the seven-state regional compact formed to develop the waste repository.

Lawmakers decided last summer to withdraw from the compact and close the site after concluding that the need for a radioactive dump had diminished over the years. North Carolina was chosen as the site for the dump in 1986, but state officials had become increasingly disillusioned with the project, wondering whether it would ever be completed.

The significance of the deadline - effectively removing the North Carolina from the business of radioactive waste handling - wasn't lost on an environmentalist who had fought the project.

"It's a victory for the public in general. That project became more and more dangerous the more we found out about it," said Jim Warren of the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network. "As for the authority, I can't say I'm sad to see them go. Good riddance. It was a politically driven agency that chose a political site."

Now, much of what remains of the project are 400 boxes of records, stored in the State Archives building. Soil and rock samples taken at the site have been turned over to the North Carolina Geological Survey, according to the final report issued by the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Authority on June 20.

The report says the land has been turned back over to its three owners, the largest being Carolina Power & Light.

Still, the legal issues surrounding the site probably are not fully resolved.

The Southeast Compact Commission, which now consists of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia, is expected to take legal action against North Carolina later this month.

At its last meeting, the commission ruled that North Carolina was out of compliance with the law that created the compact. The commission imposed a $10 million fine and wants the state to repay $80 million of the $120 million paid for site development. The commission authorized its attorneys to sue North Carolina if the money is not received by July 10.

North Carolina lawmakers have set no money aside in its budget to repay the money, and Miller has said he thinks the state was on firm legal ground in withdrawing from the compact.

State officials had been at odds with the compact for years before deciding to withdraw. Years of delays in the dump's development had created friction and caused South Carolina, with the only major radioactive waste depository in the Southeast, to leave the original compact.

South Carolina began refusing to take waste from North Carolina. Then in 1997, the compact cut off funding to North Carolina for the project.

Critics such as Warren have questioned the need for the waste repositories.

"There's no safe way to bury nuclear waste, and we shouldn't be doing it that way," Warren said.

Warren claims the dump was being developed not for low-level medical waste, as stated by state officials, but for the nuclear waste being generated by the nuclear power plants in the Southeast.

A report from the state Division of Radiation Protection, issued as part of the legislature's mandate in closing down the waste site, backs up some of Warren's conclusions.

The report found that a central disposal site isn't needed and that radioactive waste is being safely stored at the nuclear power plants, hospitals, universities and industries which generate it.

The report added that a site will eventually be needed for the highly radioactive wastes generated by the nuclear plants in the state. The utility companies that run those plants do not believe on-site storage is a long term solution.

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