The US Senate slipped through approval of the controversial Texas/Maine/Vermont Radioactive Waste Compact (S.270/H.R.629), authorizing an agreement to manage nuclear waste primarily from nuclear power reactors and triggering $55 million dollars to fund the dump in Texas.
Two important environmental justice amendments were adopted by unanimous consent at the insistence of Senator Paul Wellstone (D, MN). They make Congressional approval of the Compact contingent on upholding environmental justice and limiting the waste going to the dump to Maine, Vermont and Texas generators only. On October 7, 1997, the House of Representatives passed the Compact with Representative Lloyd Doggett's amendment prohibiting radioactive waste from states other than Maine and Vermont going into Texas. A conference committee, expected to be comprised of bill sponsors and Compact advocates, will reconcile the differences between the two bills, then send it back to the House and Senate for final approval or rejection.
The Compact bill has been held back for years in Congress because of its apparent violations of civil rights, environmental justice and international agreements with Mexico. Technical problems such as high earthquake risk, a seismic fault beneath the proposed burial pits and long hazardous-life of the wastes continue to plague the proposed project. A Civil Rights complaint (under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act) has been filed against three federal and several state agencies which receive federal funds.
The State of Texas is conducting a narrowly scoped process to license the dump near Sierra Blanca, just 16 miles from the Rio Grande and the Mexican border. The Mexican federal Congress, three Mexican States, local governments in Texas and Mexico, and hundreds of environmental justice, civil rights, religious and environmental organizations oppose the dump and compact. The Tigua Indian Tribe has filed suit against the State of Texas for the land on which the dump would be located.
"This Compact was originally defeated in the US House (in September 1995). It took nearly four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying by the nuclear power industry, Governor Bush, the States of Maine and Vermont and the federally-supported Low-Level Radioactive Waste Forum, to convince Congress to ignore the human impact of their vote on Sierra Blancans, people all along the 2000-mile transport route and our Mexican neighbors to the south," stated Diane D'Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "We will continue to support Senator Wellstone, Representative Doggett and numerous others in their efforts against this unjust bill as it continues through the legislative process.
It's unfortunate that the Texas Senators have chosen to protect the nuclear power industry rather than the people. "