Big dig

Red bed clay will start churning in September to make way for the latest additions to the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews County.

WCS announced Tuesday that it had awarded URS, one of the world's largest engineering firms, a three-year, $80 million contact to design and build a byproduct waste pit at the facility. These new facilities will enable WCS to begin operations under its license to dispose of radioactive byproduct material issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in May.

According to WCS, the contract contains three separate elements:

>> The addition of a railroad loop and facilities for unloading hazardous waste materials from rail cars.

>> Construction of the byproduct disposal landfill.

>> Construction of a low-level radioactive waste disposal landfill facility upon TCEQ approval of WCS' pending license application.

The pit will serve as a permanent resting place for what's known as by-product waste, mainly radioactive leftovers from uranium mining operations. Part of that will include 3,776 canisters of Cold War-era radioactive waste that's being stored above ground at the WCS site now.

WCS president Rod Baltzer said construction should be finished by May 2009.

"This is the first tangible step of all licensing and contractual efforts we've been going through in the last several years," Baltzer said. "We've spent millions to get the byproduct license."

The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in state district court June 30 against Texas' environmental regulatory agency to try and force a public hearing on the byproduct disposal license WCS got in May.

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality commissioners voted 2-1 to allow WCS to permanently dispose of byproduct waste and denied Sierra Club members and residents of Eunice, N.M., the chance for a public hearing on the same day. 

Eunice sits about five miles away from the WCS site.

Lone Star Chapter president Ken Kramer has several concerns about WCS' byproduct waste disposal pit, including the possibility of nuclear waste eventually seeping into groundwater formations at 180 feet and 225 feet below the WCS dump, and an entire aquifer that lies much further below those.  

WCS' Baltzer has said Andrews County's geology is ideal for permanent radioactive waste disposal pits because of red bed clay, a nearly impermeable type of soil that the pits are being dug into.

"We will immediately begin constructing the facilities for unloading hazardous waste and for disposal of radioactive byproduct material since licenses and contracts for those operations have already been secured," Baltzer said. "We will not begin construction of the LLRW disposal landfill until the TCEQ issues a license. We expect a draft LLRW license to be issued by the TCEQ in the near future."

Kramer has said he hopes the Sierra Club's lawsuit will be successful in forcing a public hearing and that the judge presiding over it will rule in favor of shutting down the by-product disposal pit's construction.

"It's not unexpected that WCS would go ahead and try to start the process to build the pit," Kramer said. "They're not precluded by our decision to ask for rehearing."

Kramer said his group would continue to oppose the facility.

"I don't think a letter-writing campaign would make a difference," Kramer said. "We're interested in pursuing this through the legal process. I think that's the proper way to stop it."