Aug 13 - The Dallas Morning News

A proposed permanent disposal site in far West Texas for low-level radioactive waste drew closer to approval on Tuesday when the director of Texas' environmental agency completed a draft license that would authorize the facility.

Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists already has a license for permanent disposal of uranium mining waste and for storage of low-level waste from medical radiology labs, nuclear power plants and other operations.

The company, part of Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons' company, Valhi Inc., is seeking a license for permanent disposal of low-level waste at its plant in Andrews County. Environmentalists are fighting the project.

Mark R. Vickery, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, forwarded the draft license to the agency's chief clerk on Tuesday, agency spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said.

A 30-day public comment period will begin when the draft license is officially published. The agency's three-member commission will eventually vote on the license. No vote is scheduled.

The commission voted in May to grant the company a related license for permanent disposal of radioactive byproduct material, much of it from mining or milling uranium. Some of that waste came from a former federal nuclear weapons plant in Ohio.

The byproduct license and the draft low-level waste license are similar, Rodney A. Baltzer, Waste Control Specialists' president, said in a statement Tuesday. "The disposal will occur on the 1,300 acres we have already permitted through TCEQ," and both projects would use similar landfills, he said.

The Sierra Club's Texas chapter has asked a state district judge to overturn the byproducts license and also opposes the low-level waste license. Opponents cited statements by former TCEQ employees who questioned the site's impact on groundwater and other concerns.

"Our concerns would be similar: Has the site been adequately characterized?" Sierra Club Texas conservation director Cyrus Reed said Tuesday. "If we license this, it becomes the de facto disposal site for the nation."

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