West Texas Waste Wars

by Nate Blakeslee, Sierra Blanca Legal Defense Fund

A big guttural howdy from the front lines of the West Texas Waste Wars. Some of you may know that the state of Texas has been trying for about 15 years to build a low-level radioactive waste dump here. What you may not know is that lately all kinds of waste companies have been coming out of the woodwork to get in on the action, and Texas is in imminent danger of becoming the pay toilet for the nation's nuclear industry. Since 1995, a hazardous waste dumping firm, Waste Control Specialists, has been trying to get its Andrews County dump permitted for radioactive waste, a move perceived by the state as an effort to steal business from its own West Texas project. In 1996, Envirocare of Utah, a major player in the dog-eat-dog world of radioactive waste dumping, decided to join the pissing contest by purchasing a big chunk of land next to the Waste Control dump and announcing that they too were going to open a nuke dump.

As if this weren't bad enough, West Texas is now at the mercy of the US Congress, which is deciding whether to approve a deal to nuclear waste from Maine and Vermont to Texas, a scheme hatched back in 1992 by former Governor Ann Richards and heartily endorsed by current governor (and your next Republican presidential candidate) George Bush, Jr. Well, Never Say Die! as we often never say here in Texas. Still, it's hard to deny that we appear to be up shit creek with a turd for a paddle. How did it come to this?

Bear with me if this is going back further than you care to, but the story really begins in the late 1970s. The closing of several leaking low-level radioactive waste dumps during the last two decades has the nuclear industry more than a little worried. Thirty-nine states, plus the District of Colombia and Puerto Rico, currently share a single disposal site in Barnwell, South Carolina. Eleven other states use a site in Hanford, Washington. For the 12-month period ending July 1, 1994, the 33 states that together produce 43 percent of the nation's low-level waste-had no access to dump facilities. Unable to operate without producing low-level waste, yet unwilling to fund safe, site-specific, permanent disposal systems of their own, utility companies soon found themselves up to their asses in their own waste. Of course, rather than take this as an indication that it was time to give up on the whole damn industry, the utilities were and are hell-bent on siting a new dump to hold the waste from the current generation of reactors. But guess what, they aren't having much luck in finding a place to build one. According to a 1995 US General Accounting Office (GAO) report, the main obstacle to building new dumps has been public opposition.

No shit, you say. But what all this means for Texas is that the stakes have gotten a lot higher in the Waste War. Diminished disposal space has forced the industry to spend two decades reducing its waste flow through compacting, recycling and substituting fewer radioactive isotopes when possible. Several feasibility studies have demonstrated that there is now not enough waste for the 11 dumps (yikes!) planned around the country. In fact, building more than two or three national dumps, according to the report, will drive fees so low that the profit margins anticipated by the states (and now private investors) will be threatened. God forbid, you say. But this economic reality, and the growing public resistance to new dumps, has raised the very real possibility that the next dump permitted will become the nuclear waste repository for the whole nation for decades to come. Only two new dumps-Sierra Blanca, Texas, and Ward Valley, California-have gotten anywhere close to being permitted. With Texas authorities predicting that their facility will be operational by the end of 1998, the eyes of the nation are on West Texas.

Texans, however, have never wanted the waste any more than anyone else does. In 1983, the legislature formed the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority (TLLRWDA) and directed the agency to find a suitable site to build and maintain the state's low-level dump. Eight years and $30 million later, Authority director Rick Jacobi, formerly a safety officer at the infamous South Texas Nuclear Project, was still looking. Turned away by public opposition in county after county, Jacobi was finally ordered by the Texas legislature, in its infinite wisdom, to locate the dump in Hudspeth County, in far West Texas near the Mexican border. Jacobi settled on the Fashkin Ranch, near the tiny town of Sierra Blanca, about 200 miles (not far in Texas) north of Big Bend National Park. Trouble is, the site was previously rejected by the TLLRWDA, and with good reason: it sits only 16 miles from the Rio Grande River (drinking water for thousands), above an aquifer and right in the middle of Texas's most seismically active zone (yes, we have earthquakes here, too). Sierra Blanca is also a predominantly low-income, Mexican-American community. Lest anyone think that this act of environmental racism was a fluke, it should be pointed out that the town is the recipient of New York City sewer sludge, to the tune of 250 tons per week. A company called Merco Joint Ventures tried unsuccessfully to sell that shitty operation to Oklahoma for over a year; Texas gave 'em the permit in 23 days.

Such would have been the case with the nuke dump, too, but a coalition of West Texans said enough is enough. Sierra Blanca rancher Bill Addington began organizing a network that now links Sierra Blanca with Marfa, Alpine and El Paso. The anti-dump movement has attracted support from across the state, including opponents from Dallas-Ft. Worth, Austin, and Houston, cities through which nuclear waste would be transported. This coalition has joined Mexican officials from the border states of Coahuila and Chihuahua, and officials from nearly two dozen Texas cities and counties to force a hearing on the draft license already issued by the notoriously lenient Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC, or "train-wreck," as we call it).

So where do we stand today in the West Texas Waste Wars? Well, Envirocare got booted out of the picture after their CEO was implicated in a bribery/extortion scandal back in his home state of Utah. Waste Control Specialists is also suing them, but it looks like they'll have to wait in line. Waste Control has had one setback after another trying to get into the disposal game, though it may soon get its first required permit from the Texas Department of Health. After almost getting axed in the last legislative session for wasting so much time and money without accomplishing a damn thing, the state's dumping agency (TLLRWDA) is still limping along in its case hearing. To date it has spent about $5.6 million in legal fees fighting the "powerless" border community they originally figured they could roll right over. Its hopes now ride on US Congressional approval of the Texas-Maine-Vermont Compact, which would provide TLLRWDA with $25 million each from Maine and Vermont for construction costs if it passes. The bill was soundly defeated in the House in 1995 and stifled again in 1996, but now it has passed the House Commerce Committee and could come before the full House at any time. Vermont and Maine aren't taking any chances this time, with the two chipping in at least $150,000 to fund their big-shot lobbying team (which includes feminist heroine Sarah Weddington, among others). The tri-state compact is billed by industry lobbyists and their congressional mouthpieces as a means of protecting Texas from receiving waste from all over the nation; in reality it does the opposite, ensuring that Texas will receive waste from Vermont and Maine. New states can be added to the contract at any time, without Congressional or voter (ha-ha) approval. A 1994 study by the Houston Business Journal concluded that the authority would likely open the dump to other states in order to keep it economically viable. If Sierra Blanca is one of only a few dumps- if not the only-in operation, the pressure to do so would be enormous.

Here's some good news, though. Bonnie Raitt has agreed to make Texas a stop on her twentieth anniversary No-Nukes tour. Together with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Jimmie Vaughan, she'll be playing a benefit concert for the Sierra Blanca Legal Defense Fund in Austin on September 28. That'll mean an infusion of capital and a boost in spirits for a movement that has had to contend with more than its fair share of mind-numbing corporate double-speak and backstabbing elected officials. To our friends fighting dumps in California, Nevada and across the country: don't let the bastards wear you down!

For more information contact the Sierra Blanca Legal Defense Fund, POBox 18087, Austin, TX, 78760; (512)447-8906; e-mail heart@igc.apc.org, or on the web at www.compassionate.org/sbldf.

Nate Blakeslee is a freelance writer and activist based in Austin, Texas.