3/3/98 8:15 PMLegislators told dump costs ultimately their responsibility
By ESTES THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH (AP) -- A regional commission delivered a bitter message Tuesday to a legislative panel -- the state ultimately is responsible for the cost of developing and building a low-level nuclear waste dump.Legal action may be needed if the funding muddle isn't cleared up, said Kathryn Hanes, executive director of the Southeast Compact Commission.
''We would like to be able to work it without having to take it to court,'' Ms. Hanes said after a meeting of the Joint Legislative Commission on Low-Level Radioactive Waste. ''It's certainly not our choice.''
The funding issue is critical to the life of the over-budget project that was supposed to open five years ago but has been stalled by hundreds of technical questions from regulators. Some $111 million has been spent so far, including $31 million in state tax dollars and $80 million contributed by the compact.
Funding from the compact, which represents all seven southeastern states in the group trying to share responsibility for the dump, was cut off late last year because North Carolina didn't solve a $7 million shortfall needed for work to finish the project's license application. Since then, the state authority overseeing the project has stopped all work on the site in southern Wake County.
Low-level wastes include everything from lab rags and gloves to parts of decommissioned reactors, but not spent nuclear fuel.
Legislators were surprised at the stern message delivered by Ms. Hanes and James Setzer, vice chairman of the compact commission and the senior advisor to the Georgia governor for nuclear matters.
''It doesn't matter that this is politically contentious,'' Setzer said. ''It is. The other reality of life is we've got a waste problem.''
Ms. Hanes said the compact commission's view is that the next move is North Carolina's. Compact funds were spent on development costs to help the project move forward, she said, but those funds are running low. The federal law creating the compact system envisioned each state paying to develop a repository and being repaid by user fees, she said.
The states in the compact are North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama.
''Doesn't it make sense that every state in the compact should participate in the cost of this,'' asked state Sen. William Purcell, D-Scotland.
Setzer said for that to happen, each state would have to amend its low-level waste laws and he doubted that would occur.
State Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston, vice chairman of the legislative commission, said discussions would have to be held with legislative leaders and the governor before any move is made. Gov. Jim Hunt already has said the compact commission should pay for the project.
Hoyle said most legislators had no idea that the project was costing as much as it has because the money didn't come from the state's general fund and wasn't examined annually.
Mel Fry, director of the state Division of Radiation Protection, told the commission that most of the concerns raised by his office about the safety of the site haven't been answered. The work to date has centered primarily on developing a method for answering the 600 individual questions Fry's regulators have raised.