Greening Austin Daily

Radioactive Waste Site Deal Now Receiving National Attention

16th September, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments

I posted several times (see here) about the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission voting earlier this year to allow importing of and burial of radioactive waste in Texas from 36 other states.  In light of scrutiny of Perry contributions and the HPV vaccine during the Tea Party Presidential debate on Monday, that decision by the Waste Commission as it relates to the Perry campaign contributions of Harold Simmons (owner of a radioactive waste disposal company) is starting to receive national attention as well, including being one of the headline stories on NPR yesterday.  You can see that story here, but here’s an excerpt:

Perry donor Harold Simmons, an 80-year-old billionaire, is a political player. He gave millions of dollars to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, financing ads that knee-capped Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

For Perry, Simmons has anted up roughly $3 million worth of support over the past decade — some of the money going to Perry’s campaign committee, other dollars going to the Republican Governors Association when Perry was fundraising for it.

Simmons also owns Waste Control Specialists LLC, working in the heavily regulated industry of radioactive waste disposal.

Craig McDonald, of Texans for Public Justice, says those two facts go together.

“There has been no secret that Harold Simmons’ direct self-interest lies in building, permitting and operating his hazardous waste dump and low-level nuclear waste dump in West Texas,” he says. “And the wheels have been greased at every turn.”

In 2003, the Texas Legislature took the state-run radioactive waste program and made it a private monopoly for Waste Control Specialists. Simmons later bragged about the lobbying that accomplished that.

Waste Control Specialists owned the site in West Texas. But it needed an environmental review. A panel of eight state employees fended off corporate lobbyists and the Perry administration for four years to produce their report.

“We knew from the beginning that this permit was intended to be issued,” says Glenn Lewis, who was on the panel.

And they understood why.

“The realization that Harold Simmons was a top campaign contributor to Gov. Perry,” Lewis says.

Despite that, the panel said that radioactive waste should not be buried so close to big aquifers.

“I am frankly surprised even now that a team of engineers and geologists, knowing what the political expectations were, still worked up the nerve to say, ‘No, it’s not safe,’ ” Lewis says.

Next, Waste Control Specialists needed license approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. All three commissioners were Perry appointees. The commission chose to ignore the environmental review.