Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 36, No. 4, Ed. 1 Friday, September 11, 1992 Page: 2 of 16
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PAGE 2, HUDSPETH COUNTY HERALD-Dell Valley Review, SEPT. 11, 1992
UT’s
Sunday, August 30, 1992
Austin American-Statesman
Pecos County
. J
Drydin r
soccccccoocoocccococococccccooooddossssee:
Hudspeth County/(ald
and DELL VALLEY REVIEW C VERCCCCl
‘1 see some of the big guns.
erators with strong and influential
secececeeeeee0e00eeeeee0eeee30e0000000000000006
Dumping zone for America?
Approximately 240,000 tons
of sower sludge from New
York City will be spread over
range land west of town.
Terrell County
J
— Kinney County
A, San Antonio
A proposed deep-well Injection
system here would accept up
to 18 million barrels of industrial
and refinery waste over the next
10-25 years.
70,13-5 -
Profile of a dump town,
Houston
• -
Radioactive waste
from through-
out Texas, and
possibly several
New England
states, will be
deposited in the
state's proposed
low-level radio-
active waste dump.
TE
cans.
Mexican government officials
also have objected, saying the
projects violate binational agre-
agreements on environmental i
issues along the Rio Grande.
And because of the peculiar mix
of demographics, geography,poli-
tics and money that determines
where America unloads its obnox-
ious wastes, many believe a broad
swath of rural Texas from east of
El Paso all the way to South Texas
is vulnerable.
“It faces everybody. They have
targeted the border area be cause
we’re poor down here and we have
no money to fight them," said Toot-
sie Herndon, the wife of J.B. Hern-
don, mayor of Spofford, population
67, where Texcor seeks to put a
dump.
“If everyday people don't wake
up and smell the roses, this whole
area will be ruined," she said.
Higher authorities, than Mrs.
Herndon agree that rural Texans
should take notice. After all, well-
lobbyists, who are looking to
sparsely populated areas to store
their waste,” state Sen. Judy Zaffi-
Serving Dell Qty and Hudspeth County
290Trail West Park, P. O. Box 659, Dell City, Texas 79837
Second class postage paid in Dell Qty, Texas 79837
Subsidiary MARY-MARY, INC.
Opposition
Still farther east in Kinney
County, Texcor Industries is try-
ing, despite broad opposition, to
build a dump to hold mine- and oil
field-waste products known as Nat-
urally Occurring Radioactive Ma-
terial.
Other proposed projects include
deep-well hazardous waste injec-
tion to pump 18 million barrels of
A. proposed dump here would receive
hazardous industrial waste from throughout
Texas, and possibly from other states.
muo-ruysun
Mary Louise Lynch ........
Susan Barker..................
C. Warren........... ....
Bernice M. Elder------......
Linda Polk—.................
Sally Brown...................
drained grazing land near an inter-
state highway or railroad also can
make an ideal dump site.
ZTexcor’s proposed dump
. for "naturally occurring
.... radioactive materials” A
would accept waste from
Texas, and possibly j
1 other states. ,
rini, D-Laredo, said.
Will open door
“If these sites are developed,
then I believe there is a danger
that the door will be opened. And I
believe there will be a continued
effort to target the isolated coun-
ties,’ she said.
Cont’d. Pg. 11
the state of Texas.”
Ralph Heyer, administrator of
the Bureau of Radiation Control’s
licensing branch, acknowledged
that because the UT System is not
considered a commercial waste
handler, the state regulations do
not require public notices or public
hearings.
If anyone wished to oppose the
system’s plan, “it would have to be
contested after the license is is-
sued,” Heyer said.
Bacon said the intent of the UT
System is “not to do anything that
is hidden or behind the scenes. We
are beginning to talk with mem-
bers of the community as a courte-
sy to let them know this is a
possibility."
She said the activities that gen-
erate the wastes — such as educa-
tional and medical research and
patient therapy — are valuable
and must continue. A systemwide
storage facility would be the most
efficient way to handle the wastes
until the state disposal site opens,
Bacon said.
Pecos County Judge Fredie Ca-
pers, who was informed of UT’s
plans last week, said he doesn’t
think a public hearing is needed
because the facility would simply
store radioactive wastes, not bury
them in the ground.
“It’s supposed to be completely
safe and nonhazardous,” he said.
Such facilities “are not hazard-
ous at all,” said Rick Jacobi, gener-
al manager of the Texas Low-
Level Radioactive Waste Disposal
Authority. “I’m sure there’s a po-
tential for public concern, but
there really shouldn’t be.”
However, Tom Buckle, Gal-
lagher’s Austin attorney, said,
“The Health Department tends to
treat medical and educational in-
stitutions with kid gloves, just as-
suming they’ll do it right. There’s
nothing better about a university
than a private enterprise. They
can make just as big a mistake.”
The events here are being
repeated elsewhere as industries,
hospitals, urban areas and utilities
look for places to dump their wastes
and are finding rural South and West
Texas an easy target.
Other ommunities, which fit a
profile of a town where resistance
is expected to be low or nonexistent,
suddenly may find themselves being
eyed as the next dump site.
One researcher said: “Once an
area becomes considered a dumping
ground, anything goes. It’s open
season.”
Hard times,
hard bargains
in rural Texas
By John MacCormack
Express-News Staff Writer
SIERRA BLANCA - Just a
decade ago, when the West Texas oil
fields were bustling, Slim Snyder had
three and sometimes four men
working for his wrecker service that
sits just below interstate 10 here.
But traffic on I-10 has steadily
dwindled, and Snyder, a large man in
loose Dickie overalls, now works
alone.
“I’m it When people ain’t got
money, they can’t travel And it’s
going to get rougher,” he said.
The times are changing here and
elsewhere in Hudspeth County, a
region of majestic openness where
cattle graze six or eight to the 640-
acre section and humans are
distributed two per every three
square miles.
Here, as in much of rural South
and West Texas, the old economic
mainstays — ranching, oil and gas,
sheep and goats, railroading and
farming — have faltered.
Children leave for El Paso, Dallas
or Houston, the downtown begins to
look like a set for a remake of "The
Last Picture Show.” Suddenly, a
doctor is an hour’s drive away.
For those who stay behind, some
of the new economic alternatives,
from maximum-security prisons to
hazardous waste dumps, can be
simultaneously unimaginable and
hard to resist.
..........Editor Publisher
..........Assistant
.........CrowFlat Editor
..........Sierra Blanca Editor
__________Ft. Hancock Editor
..........Courthouse News
skirmishes of what will become a
divisive regional issue.
Dozens of communities up and
down both sides of the Rid Grande
already have banded together to
protest the projects in Terrell and
Kinney counties, claiming they
would endanger the drinking water
of millions of Mexicans and Ameri-
(The following is taken from San Antonio Express-News in part from
the August 23, 1992 issue........)
• • Dallas
Fort Worth
nuclear waste escaping scrutiny,
thanks to ruling
proposition. Shippers would have
to pay South Carolina a surcharge
that Texas officials say could ex-
ceed $2,000 a barrel, in addition to
normal disposal fees
The Health Department’s Bu-
reau of Radiation Control wrote
waste generators last year, asking
them to devise plans to handle
their wastes during the disposal
hiatus.
The UT System responded by
seeking permission to collect and
store low-level radioactive wastes
from all its medical, educational
and research institutions at a sin-
gle site. The system includes 14 in-
stitutions that had been dealing
with their wastes individually.
The site under consideration is
on UT land 15 miles northeast of
Fort Stockton, said Pamela Bacon
of the UT System office of general
counsel. It includes a vacant ware-
house and office building. Bacon
declined to be more specific be-
cause the site might be changed,
but local officials believe it is a for-
mer sulfur-production facility.
From there, UT’s wastes could
be shipped to the state’s low-level
waste disposal site being developed
at Sierra Blanca, 150 miles west.
UT’s plan has raised questions
because under the Health Depart-
ment’s radiation control rules, a
facility that accepts “waste from
other persons” is subject to the re-
view process and standards for
commercial waste handlers.
The department’s office of gen-
eral counsel solved the dilemma by
ruling that the UT System as a
whole is a “person” under the regu-
lations — and that pooling the
wastes from its entities would not
represent taking waste from
others.
The ruling has been criticized as
“purely a subterfuge” by Bob Gal-
lagher of Nuclear Sources and Ser-
vices Inc. of Houston. He said his
company is the last commercial
handler of radioactive wastes in
Texas.
The UT System “can permit a
site for radioactive material with-
out gathering the environmental
information, going through the
public hearings or doing anything
a commercial facility would have
to do,” Gallagher said. “They will 41
end up processing and storing
most of the radioactive waste in
Some demographic characteristics of communities seen as
least resistant to the location of major waste facilities ir their midst:
Region: South and Midwest
Size: Small, usually fewer than 25,000 people.
Location: Rural.
Perceived Economic Impact : Significant.
Political Ideology: Conservative.
Average Individual Age: Above middle age.
Education Attainment: High school or less.
Political Party: Republican.
Occupation: Rancher/farmer, technology related, business
related, nature exploitive.
Income: Low.
Religion: Catholic.
Issue Awareness: Not concerned.
Age of Community: Many 'old-timer' residents who have
lived there 20-plus years.
Personal Activism: Not involved in voluntary associations.
SOURCE: The ‘Cerrell Report,’ prepared for the California
Waste Management Board in 1984
GRAPHICS BY RUPE scro
By Bill Collier
American-Statesman Staff
The University of Texas System
apparently will be able to collect
and store low-level radioactive
waste from all its component
schools and hospitals at a West
Texas site without intense public
scrutiny.
Proposals by public institutions
to put nuclear wastes somewhere
typically involve public hearings
and attract strong opposition. The
State of Texas, for example, spent
years and millions of dollars in a
maelstrom of controversy over
where to dispose of such wastes.
But the UT System, the state’s
largest source of low-level radioac-
tive waste after nuclear power
plants, can avoid the scrutiny
thanks to a ruling from the Texas
Department of Health.
One critic calls the ruling “a
subterfuge.”
The UT System has been plan-
ning at least since May to put its
radioactive wastes in a warehouse
near the West Texas town of Fort
Stockton. The wastes — an esti
mated 2,000 to 3,000 55-gallon
drums containing such items as
contaminated surgical gloves —
would stay there for several years.
Fort Stockton Mayor Joe Shu-
ster said UT’s plans were a sur-
prise to him.
“All they’ve got to do is explain
to us what they’re doing. I think we
ought to have a say-so just like
everybody else,” Shuster said. He
said the 8,500 residents of Fort
Stockton “just want to know it’s
safe enough before they say it’s
OK. We’re still in America, aren’t
we?”
UT System officials say that
they are not trying to evade public
oversight and that the storage fa-
cility would be safe.
The university system needs a
place to store its wastes because
federal law forbids shipping them
out of state beginning Jan. 1. Tex-
as is planning to build a low-level
nuclear waste disposal facility, but
it won’t be ready until June 1, •
1996, at the earliest.
A disposal facility in Barnwell,
S.C., still may be able to accept
wastes from other states, but it
would be an iffy and expensive
refinery waste beneath Pecos
County and a non-hazardous indus-
. Mal waste dump for McMullen - _ _
County.*well-financed, powerful waste gen-
In almost each case, the pro ject
has divided the local community,
and some see these as just the first
Any erroneous reflection upon the character, standing or reputation
of any person, firm or corporation, which may occur in the columns
of the Hudspeth County Herald will be gladly corrected upon being
brought to the attention of the editor-publisher. The pubfisher is
not responsible for copy omissions or typographical errors which may
occur other than to correct them in the next issue after it is brought
to attention, and in no case does the publisher hold himself liable for
covering the error. The right is reserved to reject or edit all advertising
copy as well as editorial and news content.
PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY OF EACH WEEK for Hudspeth County,
Texas, third largest county. Notices of church, entertainments where
a charge of admission is made, card of thanks, resolutions of respect,
and all matter not news, will be charged at the regular rates.
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
• Required by the Post Office to be Paid in Advance
PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY OF EACH WEEK
For Hudspeth County, Texas
$12.00 in county $13.00 Out of county
Phone: 915-964-2426 915-964-2490 915-964-2467
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Lynch, Mary Louise. Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 36, No. 4, Ed. 1 Friday, September 11, 1992, newspaper, September 11, 1992; Dell City, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1602370/m1/2/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .