Naked City

Last legislative session, when House Environmental Regulation Committee Chair Warren Chisum realized the House was poised to create a private nuclear waste dump in Andrews County, the Pampa Republican tried to kill his own bill -- which had been amended by supporters of the company pursuing a permit for the Andrews dump. Chisum told me he preferred no bill to a bad bill. The bad bill would have brought Texas more than the scrapped nuclear plants of Maine and Vermont -- which were destined for a Sierra Blanca dump rejected by the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission. It would have provided a final resting place for Department of Energy weapons waste, a huge waste stream in search of a home.

Chisum prevailed and became an environmental hero -- for two years.This session, last session's hero is the author of a waste dump bill that might be worse than the one he killed. The bill by Chisum and Lubbock Sen. Robert Duncan guarantees that nuke waste will be dumped somewhere in West Texas -- and allows private companies to make big profits receiving and storing it, while shifting to the state all liability for damages. In fact, as the private company gets paid for taking the radioactive waste off the hands of waste generators, the waste is deeded over to the state.

If you're a dump operator, it's a great deal: You get the profit, and if anything goes wrong, the state gets sued.

Acccording to a bill analysis by environmental lobbyists, HB 3420 and its companion SB 1541 would also open our borders to the Department of Energy's aging piles of nuclear weapons waste. And without the Texas-New England compact, which died with the Sierra Blanca dump, environmental activists are wondering how many of the nation's 103 aging nuclear reactors will be buried in Andrews, on the Texas-New Mexico border. The death of Chisum's bill last session also killed the Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority, so any Texas dump will be controlled by the TNRCC -- an agency with no established radioactive waste division, few employees with radioactive waste experience, and a dismal record of protecting the environment. And a dump can be permitted within four months. (The state of Texas is 49th in per capita spending on environmental protection and regulation, and the industry-friendly TNRCC is charged with protecting the public from environmental hazards. The threat of the TNRCC regulating a radioactive waste dump has some environmentalists almost nostalgic for the now-defunct Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority.)

Look for the environmental lobby to fight this one, with Sierra Club organizer Erin Rogers (who coordinated the fight to defeat the Sierra Blanca waste dump) taking the lead.

As Rep. Ann Kitchen's pipeline safety bill headed for a Wednesday committee hearing, Austin's PIPE Coalition was again asking if federal approval of Longhorn Pipeline's permit to pump gasoline under Austin neighborhoods was driven by politics rather than science. U.S. Fish and Wildlife's David Frederick quickly approved the Longhorn project and insists his decision had nothing to do with pressure from Longhorn lobbyist Ben Barnes, who gave him two $1,000 tickets to a Bill Clinton fundraiser.

On Sunday, March 18, the Texas AFL-CIO, Texas ACLU, NAACP, American Jewish Congress, Lesbian and Gay Rights Lobby of Texas, and the Texas Civil Rights Project have scheduled a "March Against Hate." The march, from the intersection of South Congress and James Street (just south of Academy) to the Capitol, begins at noon. For info, call 474-5475.