3-3-98

Lawmakers down on dump plan

A legislative panel meets today to consider whether the state should pump more money into a proposed landfill for radioactive waste in Wake County.

By JAMES ELI SHIFFER, Staff Writer

     Prospects of more state money for a proposed low-level radioactive waste landfill appeared dim Monday, while frustration with the $111 million project is growing among lawmakers.
     The day before a key legislative committee will take up the dump's future, committee members and other state leaders said the General Assembly needs to change the direction of the project, rather than simply bail it out of its cash crisis.
     "I want to make sure taxpayers are not putting any more money into a project that I believe will never be built," said state Rep. David Miner, a Cary Republican who is a member of the Joint Select Committee on Low-Level Radioactive Waste.
     "What I think is alarming is the fact that this project has been allowed to go for such a long period and [has] taken on a life for itself, almost like these independent prosecutors in Washington."
     The News & Observer reported Sunday that the money spent on the Wake County site -- $31 million in taxpayer money and $80 million collected from utility companies -- has yielded little for the state while supporting a legion of contractors and consultants. Records of the N.C. Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Authority and interviews show that inadequate oversight led to missed deadlines and massive cost overruns for a site that has yet to be deemed safe for disposal of nuclear waste.
     One of the groups formed to oversee the process, the Joint Select Committee on Low-Level Radioactive Waste, last met in February 1996. At the request of a member, state Rep. George Miller Jr. of Durham, and authority officials, the committee will meet this morning to discuss the future of the project.
     The Southeast Compact Commission, a regional group that chose North Carolina to build the landfill, said the state has a responsibility to keep paying for it. After Gov. Jim Hunt rejected that argument in November, the compact cut off funding and the authority voted to suspend work.
     Legislative leaders resurrected the joint committee to deal with the impasse, appointing two co-chairmen and several members who acknowledged that they knew too little about the project to have formed any conclusions about it.
     "I do know we've got to do something," said Sen. David Hoyle, a Democrat from Gastonia who co-chairs the committee along with Rep. Walter W. Dickson, a Gastonia Republican.
     Other committee members interviewed Monday criticized the decade-long search for a disposal site as an expensive and dubious venture.
     Ever since 1987, when the legislature created the authority, "it's just been a botched-up job," said Sen. John Kerr, a Goldsboro Democrat. About the project's expenses, he said, "There's always been a lot of fluff. You should have seen the legal bills."
     Critics of the process have suggested two actions to stop the project: eliminating the authority's annual operating budget and withdrawing from the eight-state compact. But neither the governor nor legislative leaders have taken a stand on these proposals.
     One legislator who has monitored the process, Republican Rep. John Nichols of New Bern, said the project's troubles stem in part from its location.
     "Siting in one of the most populated counties in the state seems ugly stupid to begin with," Nichols said Monday. "I think we poured money down a hole and utility companies poured money down a hole for a site that we could never get approved."
     Even if the General Assembly votes to end the search for a site, radioactive waste will continue to pile up at nuclear power plants, hospitals, universities and laboratories across the state. Miller, the Durham legislator, said it's time for Congress to re-evaluate the 1980 law mandating that states take responsibility for their own low-level nuclear waste.
     "We still must deal with that problem," he said.