Texas: Ground Zero for the Nation’s Nuclear
Power and Nuclear Weapons Waste?
On May 26, 2003 the Texas Senate cast the final vote in an eight-year
legislative battle to allow a private company to open a national radioactive
waste dump in West Texas. The Senate, by a 23 to 8 margin, voted to turn Texas
into ground zero for the most dangerous and concentrated forms of low level
radioactive waste from nuclear power plants across the country as well as
hundreds of contaminated nuclear weapons manufacturing plants—all to
benefit one private company called Waste Control Specialists. Governor Perry,
who has received at least $360,000 from Waste Control Specialists since 1997,
is expected to ignore calls to veto the bill. If Gov. Perry allows the bill
to become law, Texas will be well on its way to becoming the first state ever
to open a compact dump site (23 years after congressional passage of the act
encouraging states to form regional radioactive waste disposal compacts).
The dumpsite could also ease the way for the Bush administration to push forward
its plans to build new nuclear power plants and new nuclear weapons plants,
generating tons of new waste across the country.
The following report describes some key aspects of the 50-page bill and summarizes
how the Texas Legislature passed the bill despite widespread opposition. See
the end of the report for a scorecard showing how all Texas legislators voted
on the most important votes related to the bill’s passage.
Background: Beyond Nuclear Power Coalition Calls for
Responsible Radioactive Waste Management in Texas
The Beyond Nuclear Power Network, a statewide coalition including
the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, League of Women Voters, and several other
groups and individuals met several times during the 18 months before the state
legislative session started and began working with key legislators to convince
them to vote against any bill that did not include the following principles:
1. A publicly accountable state agency, not
a private company, should be licensed to a manage radioactive waste. The House
Environmental Regulation Committee correctly stated in 2002 that "effective
long-term management and monitoring low level radioactive waste requires a
stable entity, without the potential for bankruptcy or abandonment."
2. The compact "loophole," allowing Governor-appointed
Compact Commissioners to contract with any state, group of states, or
company to import unlimited amounts of radioactive waste to be disposed
of in Texas, must be closed. The use of compact sites for the disposal
of nuclear weapons waste should be prohibited. The compact should be amended
to require that Texas and Vermont permanently manage waste produced within
their respective borders.
3. Below-ground disposal should be prohibited. Above-ground storage has the
potential to avoid the health hazards of burial grounds prone to releasing
radioactivity and avoid the high cost associated with remedial action that,
inevitably, will be required.
4. Waste transport should be minimized. Radioactive waste should be kept as
near the site of generation as possible, with sites of the largest generators
(the nuclear power plants) used for management of waste from other locations.
Since the power plants create the vast majority of the risk (in both volume
and radioactivity of the waste), their sites should be used as permanent repositories.
5. All decisions on the management, siting, storage, and transportation of
radioactive waste should be made with full and effective public participation
so that decision-makers and the public have a full range of information on
which to base decisions.
In addition, the Network called for Texas to adopt requirements
to generate at least 20% of its electricity from renewable resources by 2040.
Texas policymakers should aim to replace nuclear power with renewable energy
sources by 2028 and 2033 when the nuclear plants reach the end of their licenses.
Legislative Action on Radioactive Waste Legislation
Bill Introduced
On March 3, Senator Teel Bivins (R-Amarillo) and Representative Buddy West (R-Odessa)
filed identical bills—SB 824 and HB 1567. For months beforehand, Bivins and West,
along with Sen. Duncan (R-Lubbock) and Rep. Chisum (R-Pampa) had been involved in secret
meetings with the bills’ principle authors: lawyers for and owners of Waste Control
Specialists (WCS).
In fact, WSC did much more than just hold secret meetings with the bills’ sponsors
to ensure that its bill would pass. WCS’s owner, Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons,
gave nearly a half million dollars in contributions to state officials during the campaign
cycle preceding the legislative session, and paid 16 lobbyists nearly a million dollars to
push the bill. Simmons realized that such an investment was worth it for the hundreds of
millions to hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars in profit he could make from a private dump
into which mountains of radioactive waste could be imported and dumped in cheap, dirt
trenches.
Bill Content
HB 1567/SB 824, as filed, allowed virtually unlimited amounts of commercial and federal
radioactive waste to be dumped at three separate sites in West Texas. The first site would
accept low-level radioactive waste from contaminated federal nuclear weapons production
sites around the country. The second site would accept nuclear power plant and other
"compact" waste from around the country. (Texas and Vermont are in a compact
agreement that allows Governor-appointed compact commissioners to accept unlimited amounts
of waste from other states to be disposed of in Texas.) The third site would accept a stew
of hazardous and low-level radioactive waste. In the final version of the bill, the amount
of federal nuclear weapons waste is "capped" at 162 million cubic feet of
waste—enough for WCS to make over one hundred billion dollars in profit.
The waste would be dumped at the WCS site in Andrews County—a site proponents
claim is leak-proof because of clay-rich soil and lack of rainfall. However, all existing
low level radioactive waste dumps have leaked, including those receiving much less
rainfall than Andrews County. At a low level radioactive waste dump site in the desert at
Beatty, Nevada (which receives 5 inches of rain per year), monitoring wells at the site
have repeatedly shown radioactive contaminants in groundwater 357 feet below ground. All
of the counties in the 35-county swath targeted by the bill receive between 14 and 20
inches of rain per year.
The area is also seismically active, with 18 seismic events counted within a 30 mile
radius of the WCS site. Of these, the latest occurred June 2, 2001 with a 3.3 magnitude,
and the largest occurred January 2, 1992 approximately 15 miles from the site with a 5.5
magnitude.
HB 1567/SB 824’s sorely inadequate financial security provisions will leave the
state and taxpayers footing the bill for future clean-up of the site--a tab that could run
into the hundreds of millions of dollars. While the profits from dumping the waste would
go to WCS and its billionaire owner Harold Simmons, the legislation requires the State of
Texas to take title to the compact waste as soon as it arrives at the dumpsite. The bill
also requires the federal government to take title to the federal waste at the end of the
35-year facility license (the federal government’s dismal record of cleaning up its
messes makes it very likely that Texas may also become financially responsible for the
federal waste). HB 1567 only requires the dump license holder to set aside $20 million in
financial security for post-closure clean-up needs. But $20 million isn't likely to even
make a dent in the actual cost of cleaning up at a site that holds hundreds of millions of
cubic feet of waste. A 1998 DOE report estimated that the clean-up cost for a radioactive
waste dump handling just 1.5 million cubic feet of waste would be $370 million. WCS
proposes taking up to 400 million cubic feet of waste.
Proponents of the radioactive waste dump argue that a disposal site is needed to
provide for disposal of waste from Texas' two nuclear power plants, as well as a power
plant in Vermont.
But decommissioning of Texas’ two nuclear reactors is not scheduled until
2030-2037, which would be 25 to 32 years after the site is established under HB 1567/SB
824. There is no requirement that WCS operate the dump for even a mere 15 years--the life
of the permit. By 2030 the dump sites could be full of other states’ waste, WCS
profits could be maximized, and the dump could be closed, leaving Texas the liability for
the rest of the nation’s waste but still searching for a way to handle radioactive
waste from its power plants. (Three fourths of all the waste from nuclear power plants
comes from their decommissioning.)
Bill Heard in Committees
On March 25, the Senate Natural Resources Committee and the House Environmental
Regulation Committee held back-to-back marathon hearings on the bills. Concerned citizens
from across the state joined with representatives from the Sierra Club, Public Citizen,
League of Women Voters, SEED Coalition and other groups to speak out against the bills.
The bill was left pending in the Senate, and was eventually slightly modified and passed
out of the Environmental Regulation Committee on March 31 at a special 8:00 AM Monday
morning committee meeting held solely to quickly pass the bill.
House Passes Bill on Earth Day
On Earth Day, April 22, the Houston Chronicle editorialized that
"International Earth Day is being celebrated today and, coincidentally, the Texas
House of Representatives is preparing to plow ahead with a bill that could turn Texas into
a national repository of nuclear waste and potentially leave Texas taxpayers holding a
costly and environmentally questionable bag. It is legislation that should not be
passed."
Unfortunately, the House of Representatives ignored the advice of the largest daily
paper in the state and, after 6 hours of debate, 26 amendments (none favorable to the
Sierra Club’s position passed), 4 points of order, and 10 record votes, HB 1567
passed by a margin of 107-34.
The Sierra Club very much appreciates Rep. Lon Burnam’s stamina and principled
argument throughout the entire 6-hour debate. Representatives Burnam, Jesse Jones, Yvonne
Davis, Pete Gallego, Dora Olivo, Eddie Rodriguez, Robert Talton, Gabi Canales, Garnett
Coleman, and Mike Villarreal all offered good amendments and spirited debate on the House
floor.
The next day, during the bill’s final House vote on third reading, Rep. Vicki
Truitt (R-Tarrant County) offered an amendment written by the Sierra Club that would
require the most concentrated forms of waste—the Class B and C waste—to be
disposed of within above-ground vaults, instead of being dumped in below ground trenches.
The amendment was accepted by the bill’s author, Rep. West, and passed. Later, Rep.
Truitt explained that the reason she had offered the amendment was because she had been
educated and lobbied over the last year by a Sierra Club member in her district.
Bill Moves to Senate
On April 29, the Senate Natural Resource Committee introduced and passed a re-written
bill, with several important changes from the bill approved by the House. Sen. Bivins, who
re-wrote the bill, placed a 10 million cubic yard (or 270 million cubic foot) cap on the
amount of federal waste that could be dumped in Texas. He also removed the Truitt
amendment requiring Class B and C waste to be disposed of in above-ground vaults.
On May 7, the full Senate voted to bring HB 1567 up for debate. The Sierra Club and
others had hoped to convince 11 Senators to vote against consideration of the bill, thus
blocking it from ever coming to the floor. Sadly, Senators Van de Putte and West, who had
previously expressed strong opposition to the bill, joined 21 other Senators in voting to
bring the bill to the floor.
Senators Shapleigh, Madla, Barrientos, Hinojosa, and Ellis offered good amendments,
which were uniformly voted down. They included an amendment requiring Class B and C waste
to be disposed of in above-ground vaults (Barrientos), an amendment increasing the
post-closure financial security to at least $100 million, from $20 million (Shapleigh), an
amendment to ensure that local fire departments and other first responders to transport
accidents were adequately trained and equipped to handle radioactive waste accidents
(Madla), and an amendment prohibiting any federal waste from being dumped in Texas
(Shapleigh).
Senator Duncan succeeded in passing two good amendments: one requiring the Texas
Commission on Environmental Quality to be the licensing agency instead of the Texas
Department of Health, and another one which placed a more meaningful cap on the amount of
federal waste that could be dumped in Texas. The Duncan cap allowed a total of 1.3 million
cubic yards of federal waste (or 36 million cubic feet) to be dumped. This cap included a
5,000 cubic yard cap on Class B and C waste and a 10,000 cubic yard cap on the most
concentrated Class A waste. The amendment would have allowed WCS to make $1.04 billion
dollars in the first five years. Apparently, this was not enough money. Senator Bivins
told the other Senators that no company would bid on a dump that was this limited. Minutes
later, WCS supporters re-grouped on the Senate floor and voted to reconsider the Duncan
amendment. Senator Wentworth offered an amendment to lift the Duncan cap to a whopping 126
million cubic feet (or 6 million cubic yards). This would allow WCS to make over $100
billion. The Wentworth amendment passed 18 to 12.
The Senate then voted to approve the whole
bill 23-7.
Conference Committee
Because the House and Senate versions of the bill were different from each other, a
conference committee consisting of five Representatives and five Senators was assigned to
come up with a compromise. Instead of meeting and negotiating with the conference
committee, Sen. Bivins re-wrote the bill in secret.
The Bivins conference report deleted the Senate’s previous limits on the Class B
and C waste and instead implemented a brand new limit, increasing the allowable volumes of
this type of waste by 120 times. It increased the B and C cap from
5,000 cubic yards to 600,000 cubic yards, or 16 million cubic feet of the hottest, most
dangerous radioactive waste. (Class C waste is permitted to contain up to 4,600 curies of
cesium-137 per cubic meter of waste—enough radiation to kill someone standing 3 feet
away in 20 minutes without intervening shielding.)
Sixteen million cubic feet of Class B and C waste amounts to 8 times more than
ALL of the commercial waste (including Class A waste) that Texas is currently obligated to
manage according to the Texas-Vermont compact (2 million cubic feet ) and 40 times more
than the B and C waste that Texas is currently obligated to manage under the Texas-Vermont
compact (400,000 cubic feet).
Since Class B and C radioactive waste is too dangerous to be allowed to be dumped
at the low level radioactive waste disposal site in Utah (the only national
radioactive waste site open to the country after 2008), Texas will be poised
to become the nation’s dumping ground for the nation’s MOST radioactive
low level waste.
On May 23 the House voted to accept the conference report. On May 26 the Senate
voted to accept the conference report, over the objections of Senator Duncan. "I can tell you that we’ll be back," he said.
"This will be a campaign issue for some statewide office—it will be
a major issue in this state in the future."
We couldn’t agree more.
As George W. Bush pushes forward with plans for building a new generation of nuclear
weapons and nuclear power plants, thus generating tons of new nuclear waste, Texas will
become a focal point for the nuclear industry and the nuclear weapons complex. Grassroots
activism has prevented national nuclear dumps from being built in Texas for over twenty
years. Continued grassroots activism to stop the WCS dump will not only protect Texans and
the Texas environment from ever-lasting radioactive contamination, but will also
contribute to larger efforts to phase out nuclear power nation-wide and to force the U.S.
to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and cease plans to generate new
"mini-nukes" and bunker busters. These weapons would be used in "rogue
nations" and on "terrorists," but the mountains of radioactive waste that
come with the weapons generation would come to Texas.
