Sierra Club Fight Over Radioactive Waste in Texas Heats Up

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The New York Times
Sunday, October 21, 2012

Sierra Club Fight Over Radioactive Waste in Texas Heats Up

By NICK SWARTSELL

ANDREWS — Rose Gardner inflated balloons for her grandson’s birthday party recently at her floral shop in Eunice, N.M., and talked about nuclear waste.

“I’m just really respectful of radiation and its effects,” she said, a reason she became involved in the Sierra Club and its legal battle with Waste Control Specialists, which operates a radioactive waste site in nearby Andrews County, Tex. “Some people may say I’ve gone overboard, but I don’t think I have.”

The Sierra Club is suing on behalf of Ms. Gardner and two residents of Andrews to have its claims heard in court. In legal action against W.C.S. dating to 2007, the Sierra Club has challenged the company’s state environmental licenses because of the discovery of groundwater in some of the waste disposal site’s 520 monitoring wells.

But officials with the company, which is owned by the Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, say the site is safe. And Andrews County has joined the battle, suing the Sierra Club in a bid to end its legal claims. (The Harold Simmons Foundation is a major donor to The Texas Tribune.)

The 15,000-acre site began receiving radioactive material in April. It has multiple disposal areas, including one for waste producers involved in the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, which encompasses Texas and 35 other states.

Cyrus Reed, the director of the Sierra Club’s Texas chapter, said the site’s hydrogeological status was still uncertain and that water in Waste Control Specialists wells might mean that having radioactive material there was dangerous. The site, he said, is close to the Ogallala Aquifer, a major source of drinking water, and there are concerns that radioactive materials could seep into it.

W.C.S. officials say the Sierra Club is simply opposed to all things nuclear.

“Their point, that those wells are saturated, doesn’t really matter,” said Rodney Baltzer, the company’s president. “Any of the water they’re talking about out there isn’t groundwater; it’s infiltration from rain, and it’s not connected to the Ogallala Aquifer or some kind of well someone is drinking from. The red-bed clays underneath are like concrete.”

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