(CN) — In a far-flung corner of West Texas, just off a lonely oilfield highway on the state’s dusty border with New Mexico, a small facility that the New York Times once dubbed “America’s most valuable hole in the ground” has drawn the ire of environmentalists for years.
The Waste Control Specialists facility in rural Andrews County has bold ambitions to become the nation’s primary home — at least for the next few decades — for used nuclear power plant fuel, a much more radioactive type of waste than the “low-level” waste that’s already been housed there for years.
Though the government has so far concluded the plan would be safe, critics, like longtime environmental attorney Terry Lodge, have railed against it for years.
So, imagine Lodge’s surprise to find himself now agreeing with the waste company’s opposition to a new and separate proposal from federal regulators that many worry could lead to radioactive waste being thrown out with the garbage at local landfills across the nation.
“Yes, it is a strange ally,” Lodge said with a laugh during a recent interview.
The new proposal is far from just a Texas issue, but for a state with a long history of fights over nuclear waste, it’s notable just how much agreement there is among a variety of stakeholders that the plan from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a bad idea.
In an unusual and perhaps unlikely alliance, environmental groups, state regulators, the Texas waste company and others in the Lone Star State have all come out against the new plan.
“We regret to find ourselves in such definitive opposition to an NRC staff proposal,” Waste Control Specialists wrote last month in formal comments to regulators. “We are not accustomed to being in this position.”
The proposal centers on a type of nuclear waste colloquially referred to as “very low-level” waste.
Though the term isn’t a formal one, very low-level waste can refer to things like contaminated debris or soil from shuttered nuclear power plants. The NRC identifies this type of waste as the least hazardous variety on the spectrum and says it generally only contains “residual” radioactivity, but others have argued the phrase is a deceptive one that glosses over the health dangers of even mildly contaminated waste.
The NRC’s proposed change would reinterpret existing regulations to let disposal sites that aren’t specifically licensed for radioactive waste request an “exception” to take in the waste. Once an exception is granted, the facilities would have a blanket authority to receive the waste without a further case-by-case review of the shipments.
Critics worry that local landfills or even individual landowners could try to get in on the action, bringing the waste to facilities that aren’t equipped to handle it.
“I mean, it’s monstrous,” said Lodge. “You’re talking about a guaranteed disaster.”
Though a variety of groups and entities in Texas are hoping to stop the plan, their specific arguments against it vary widely.
Dozens of environmental and advocacy groups from across the U.S., including a handful in Texas, penned a letter to regulators in July urging them to cancel the proposal, saying it’s simply too dangerous.
“This proposal wants to let that waste out into the regular garbage, which could get recycled, could get burned, could get buried into landfills but then leach into your water,” said Diane D’Arrigo, a longtime environmental advocate with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, one of the groups that signed onto the letter.
“If they get away with this, this is truly getting away with murder,” she said.