The City of Andrews,Texas is only some 50 miles from Hobbs and even closer to the Lea County border that runs between New Mexico and Texas. Andrews is right now the site of a low-level nuclear waste facility.
The company that operates the nuclear waste repository in Andrews, Interim Storage Partners, wants to expand this West Texas site to additionally and “temporarily” store high-level nuclear waste until a permanent storage facility is secured by the US government. Such a permanent site (PDF) may never become a reality.
On September 13, the US government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted Interim Storage the federal permit (PDF) necessary to give the expansion at the Andrews facility a green light.
In response to the NRC’s action, on September 23 State of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, on behalf of Governor Greg Abbot (R) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, filed a lawsuit (PDF) in a US court of appeals calling the NRC’s action unlawful. Specifically, the suit asks the court to first review the legality of the permit the NRC granted to Interim Storage and subsequently rescind it.
Only a few days before all of this happened on September 9, Governor Abbot signed Texas House Bill 7 into law. The new law purportedly bans either the storage or the transportation of high-level nuclear waste in Texas. On his Twitter account Governor Abbot states, “Texas will not become America’s nuclear waste dumping ground.”
Additionally, Governor Abbot is concerned that storing high-level nuclear waste in the midst of the highly lucrative Permian Basin oil and gas fields potentially threatens future industry operations. Successful oil and gas production is crucial to a healthy economy for West Texas not to mention to that of Lea County
Nuclear Waste Facility in Lea County
A different nuclear waste storage enterprise Holtec International, a New Jersey company, wants to build a multi-billion dollar nuclear waste repository in a Lea County desert area dotted with pumping and abandoned oil and gas wells. Holtec has applied for a 40-year license that would allow the company to transport spent fuel that is now stockpiled at various locations throughout the US and then store this fuel, no one knows for how long, at the Lea County site. If built, the facility would be within a few miles of Hobbs and even closer to Eunice.
According to an article written by Adrian Hedden and published in the Carlsbad Current-Argus, “the Holtec site would see the high-level nuclear waste brought into the remote area in southeast New Mexico via rail from nuclear power plants and facilities across the country to be held temporarily at the site known as a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF).”
Earlier this year in March the State of New Mexico filed a lawsuit in US District Court to block the Holtec project. The suit alleges that the NRC “has not properly vetted a proposal to locate a nuclear waste storage facility in Lea and Eddy counties,” states an article in the New Mexico Political Report. “The state argues that the license is outside of the scope of authority for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because of the impacts the facility could have to the people of New Mexico.”
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas (D) stated in a recent press release (PDF), “I am taking legal action because I want to mitigate dangers to our environment and to other energy sectors. It is fundamentally unfair for our residents to bear the risks of open ended uncertainty.”
Governor Grishim Opposes the Holtec Project
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) and several state legislators have also voiced intense objections to the Holtec project. According to the Associated Press, Tripp Stelnicki, a spokesman for Governor Grisham, stated in an email, “we [New Mexico officials] are open to most anything in preventing the placement of this kind of national high-level waste depository in New Mexico.”
Lea and Eddy County Government Officials Remain Quiet
Government officials in Lea and Eddy counties have not recently commented about the proposed project. In the past Lea and Eddy county officials have suggested that the expanded facility would economically benefit both counties. Officials at Holtec International agree, suggesting that the development of the expanded facility would create about 100 temporary construction jobs and 100 permanent positions.
The outcomes of both the Holtec and the Andrews’ Interim Storage projects are still in limbo. The age-old dilemma of economic growth vs. environmental quality remains a heated topic of debate. Whatever happens, the folks of Lea and Eddy counties, as well as those in the Andrews, Texas area, will be impacted.
Photo by Dan Meyers / Upsplash
