WHO: Sierra Club, Ex-TCEQ Employees and Eunice, New Mexico Resident
WHAT: Calling on TCEQ to grant Contested Case Hearing for proposed WCS Radioactive Waste License
in Andrews County, Texas
WHEN: Tuesday, May 20th, 3:00 PM
WHERE: Sierra Club, Lone Star Chapter offices, 1202 San Antonio St., Austin, TX
VISUALS: Several Maps showing location of proposed waste site and geo-hydrology of the RadioActive Waste disposal site above the Ogallala aquifer
CONTACT: Cyrus Reed, 512-740-4086
(Se Habla Español) or Donna Hoffman, 512-477-1729
Sierra Club Joins Ex-TCEQ Radioactive Material Division Employees and New Mexico residents in Opposing WCS license to bury radioactive material in Andrews County;
Asks TCEQ for Contested Case Hearing
Cyrus Reed, Conservation Director of the Lone Star Chapter
of the Sierra Club, will be joined on Tuesday, May 20th
at 3 p.m. by two Ex-TCEQ employees, Sierra Club’s legal
advisor, Attorney Eric Allmon and Eunice, New Mexico business
owner Rose Gardner in calling on the Texas Commission on
Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to either deny the proposed
radioactive waste license for Waste Control Specialists
or give the Sierra Club and Eunice residents an opportunity
to present evidence before the State Office of Administrative
Hearings (SOAH).
The Commission is scheduled to consider the proposed
license on May 21st at 9:30 AM at the TCEQ central headquarters.
“From the very beginning, TCEQ’s own engineers and geologist have been telling the executive director that the WCS application to bury byproduct uranium materials in the West Texas dirt of Andrews County was fraught with contradictions and inconsistencies, but the Executive Director has forged ahead just the same,” noted Lone Star Chapter Conservation Director Cyrus Reed. “Now it’s
time for the Commissioners to either deny the proposed license
outright, or at the very least, give Sierra Club and the
Eunice, New Mexico residents a chance to present their evidence
of the harms posed by these dangerous wastes through a contested
case hearing.”
Eunice resident Rose Gardner, Sierra Club member, said she is scared that the TCEQ could railroad the license through, even after the main geologist reviewing the application recommended not issuing the license.
“It’s unbelievable that the Executive Director and higher-ups would not listen to their own staff and they would instead put the residents of West Texas and Eunice, New Mexico at risk from these uranium byproduct wastes including weapons-grade Fernald Waste. Their decisions could significantly impact my health and groundwater,” noted Gardner. Gardner said as a small business owner, and also an owner of animals and alfalfa fields in a rural part of New Mexico, she is worried about her future, particularly as the byproduct materials license is only the first of two licenses that WCS is seeking. WCS is also seeking to import much more radioactive waste as part of a license covering both “low-level” radioactive waste, primarily from Texas’s nuclear plants, as well as “federal” low-level radioactive waste from former Department of Energy sites. (Note: "Low-level" is
a regulatory term that includes some of the most highly radioactive
wastes in existence.)
Former TCEQ employee Glenn Lewis, who worked in the Radioactive Materials Division on the team reviewing the low-level license application, said that agency scientists and engineers have found the proposed site unsuitable to safely store radioactive waste.
"The team reviewing the byproduct application was not permitted to issue a recommendation," Lewis said, "and
the low-level team has recommended that the license application
under its four-year review be denied. Because these two proposed
facilities are immediately adjacent to one another, it is
impossible to justify not submitting each of these proposals
to the scrutiny of a public hearing, regardless of the financial
and political power of the applicant."
