Radioactive Dump Could Get OK Despite Proximity To Groundwater

SAN ANTONIO (AP) – The head of the state’s environmental agency could recommend licensing of a radioactive waste dump despite an agency report that indicates the West Texas site is too close to a groundwater supply, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Two geologists and two engineers for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recommended turning down the proposed location in Andrews County, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

Waste Control Specialists is seeking two licenses to store low-level radioactive material in the tiny county on the New Mexico border, northwest of Midland.

Glenn Shankle, executive director of the TCEQ, could sign off on a draft license this month, which would trigger a public comment period that could last a year before the commission decides whether to issue the license.

Susan Jablonski, an engineer who directs the TCEQ radioactive materials division, said Shankle supports an ongoing review of the site and license provisions as the application license moves forward.

The draft license could be issued even though scientists found one water table may be closer than 14 feet, making it “highly likely” that water could seep into the dump as annual rainfall increases.

“Analysis of available data shows that groundwater in the natural system already is unacceptably at or near the boundaries of the proposed disposal units,” the scientists said in an interoffice memo obtained by the Express-News through a public information request.

The team said Dallas-based WCS – owned by Harold Simmons, a top donor to Gov. Rick Perry and other state politicians – failed to show the site complies with state law requiring that water “shall not intrude into the waste.”

WCS President Rodney Baltzer said the company’s extensive testing shows the site is safe, and it took the company’s case to Shankle in September. “We mobilized and prepared a pretty extensive presentation,” he said.

The waste site will not pose a threat to the public now or in thousands of years, when some of the waste will still be radioactive, Baltzer said.

TCEQ required more soil samples and computer modeling before moving ahead with the draft license, and Jablonski said the initial conclusions by the scientists did not account for new monitoring provisions developed for the site’s licenses.

But Glenn Lewis, a technical writer who worked with the TCEQ team that evaluated the site before leaving the agency in December, said monitoring won’t address the fundamental geology of the area.

“These facilities are supposed to contain the radioactive waste safely for tens of thousands of years,” Lewis said. “Fourteen feet is not much of an insurance policy for tens of thousands of years.”

WCS has spent more than four years seeking to develop the nation’s largest private disposal site for low-level radioactive waste.

The TCEQ licenses would allow it to store material from Texas and Vermont nuclear power plants, medical and industrial facilities and some government weapons programs.

Simmons, an investor who has a number of business interests beyond his ownership of WCS, has donated nearly $500,000 to Perry since 2001. Perry named all three members of the environmental commission.

Last year, Simmons was the state’s No. 3 political contributor, giving $655,000 to mostly Republican officeholders and political action committees.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)