Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 27, Ed. 1 Friday, February 21, 1992 Page: 2 of 12
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New Mexico
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0 Dell City
1437
(2/—0189)
Hudspeth County
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(Houston,
Fort Hancock
Jacobi
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Mexico
Chronicle
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Hudspeth County,(0d
and DELL VALLEY REVIEW C Veede
appeal was filed.
By ROY BRAGG
Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
Houston Chronicle
Section D
Sunday, Feb. 16,1992
Nuclear site
sparks furor
in W. Texas
Sierra I ■
Bianca j
Faskin (*,
Ranch •,:
tional nuclear holding facility.
Their biggest fear is radiation
leakage from the sealed concrete
containers that will entomb the
waste into ground water that runs
underneath the desert and feeds
private and municipal wells
throughout West Texas.
The danger would last forever
because much of the waste will be
radioactive for a long time, in
some cases thousands of years.
“We’re fairly well convinced
we’ve got a major problem here,”
said Linda Lynch of Dell City,
whose family took the lead in
fighting a proposal to locate the
dump there nearly a decade ago.
“A lot of people ask me why
we're fighting it,” said protester
Bill Addington, whose family owns
a general merchandise store here.
“They say ‘Bill, it’s going hereb
anyway.’ I don’t believe that. We
Because of the state’s failure to
make the deadline, every cubic yard
of waste transported out of state is
being hit with an extra $120 er ruble
foot excise tax by the Department of
Energy, Jacobi said.
Estimates for 1993 show the state
may produce 60,000 cubic feet of
radioactive waste. At that rate, the
excise tax could cost Texas compa-
nies $7.2 million.
The tentative plan, which still re-
quires board approval, would be for
consultants and authority staffers to
begin the studies while the licensing
process is undertaken, Alvarado
said.
With a year set aside for construc-
tion and another year set aside for
license hearings, the facility could
open by 1997, Alvarado said.
Unless there’s a lawsuit.
Hudspeth County rancher Sam1
Dodge has retained El Paso attorney
S. Anthony Safi to look into the
Legislature’s selection of Sierra
Blanca.
In a letter to the authority, Safi
contends the Legislature was med-
dling. The authority was empowered
to make the site selection based on
scientific data and that led it to Fort
Hancock.
"They drew this little box in Hud-
speth County (with the Shelley bill)
and that usurped the responsibility
of the authority," he said. "We think
that in doing that the legislature
violated the federal law and the
state constitution."
Electrical and water utilities are
nearby, so the costs of stringing lines
would be low. The ranch also is
easily accessible, sandwiched be-
tween Interstate 10 and the Southern
Pacific’s east-west rail line, al-
though federal laws only allow the
roadway to be used for waste trans-
port.
Tests on hydrology, demographics,
archaeology, plant and animal life
are planned.
Federal law gave the states until
Jan. 1 to submit license applications,
said Rick Jacobi, authority general
manager.
Most, including Texas, didn’t meet
the deadline. Jacobi said the author-
ity hopes to apply for a license by
March.
is Hudspeth
4 County #*-
State Sen. Peggy Rosson, D-EL
Paso, who opposed the Fort Hancock
site but went along with the Sierra
Blanca selection, agreed with Shel-
ley; Hudspeth County officials
wanted the site.
Love paints a different version.
"The Legislature mandated that
it’s got to be here,” he said. "It wasn’t
the commissioners court that did it. I
think it would be futile to try to fight
it. I think the majority of the people
just don’t have any strong feelings
about it.”
Love said he’s committed to mak-
ing the best of the situation.
"There are some benefits to be
derived from this thing, so we’re
going to try to derive them."
But the perquisites, on closer in-
spection, don’t seem particularly lu-
crative.
For example, state law requires
the authority to contract whenever
possible with local businesses. Un-
fortunately, Sierra Blanca has only a
few merchants, so most of the pro-
ject’s equipment purchases will have
to be made out of town, Alvarado
said.
The law also requires local resi-
dents be given priority for job open-
ings. But, Alvarado points out, many
jobs will be specialized technical
positions requiring training or scien-
tific degrees that few if any local
residents have. As a result, out of 33
full-time, permanent jobs, only a
half dozen or so will be filled by local
residents.
On a more positive note, Alvarado
said, the county and the school sys-
tem will be paid 10 percent of the
project’s annual gross receipts —
estimated as high as $1.3 million —
to compensate local governments
for loss of tax revenue. And the
facility will be operated for at least
30 years, meaning the money will
continue to flow each of those years.
The Faskin ranch site just south-
east of here is the best that’s been
identified in the mandated area,
Alvarado said.
There’s rocky soil on the northeast
side, with the Devil's Ridge moun-
tains and the Grayton Lake playa on
the south side.
The site averages 11 inches of rain
a year. Although the playa some-
times fills with water, it would take
40 feet of water to cause the playa to
fill up and spill over.
On another legal front, the U.S.
Supreme Court is reviewing a pair of
New York cases that challenge the
; constitutionality of the federal law
that made the Texas dump neces-
sary. That case is pending.
The site also has drawn interna-
tional opposition.
The mayor of Juarez, which is
across the border from El Paso, said
the location could create an interna-
tional ecological hazard and would
undercut Mexico’s environmental
improvement efforts on its side of
the border.
And earlier, The Group of 100
Artists and Intellectuals, a promi-
nent Mexican environmental associ-
ation, wrote Gov. Ann Richards that
the planned dump violated the spirit
of several international agreements
that protect the border environment,
the op in the states, Addington said
So far, 400 people have signed a
petition against the dump.
Addington, whose family ranches
south of town, said the potential for
environmental disaster — West
Texas seismic activity, the fractured
bed rock lying between the water
and the dump site — makes Hud-
speth County a bad site.
He admits that few people here
cared when Dell City and Fort Han-
cock were picked as early sites.
“They didn’t need our help," he
said of Fort Hancock, where an
organized and vocal opposition took
the fight to the authority. “They had
El Paso county helping them. I knew
they’d kick it out of there.”
Although confident they can win,
Addington worries what the dump
would do to his town, where every-
body knows their neighbors and
crime is considered out-of-town'
news.
"This town has a lot of promise,”
he said. “There’s oil here. Free trade
(with towns across the Mexican bor-
der, 16 miles away) could benefit us.
We’re an agricultural community
and agriculture needs water.
“The dump could ruin the only
Page 11
SIERRA BLANCA - Tumble-
weeds sometimes roll in off the
desert and through the center of
town The high school is so small it
plays six-man football. Local
stores carry blank bank drafts for
regular customers.
Visit this far-flung Trans-Pecos
farming community and the term
"burg" comes alive. It seems an
unlikely place for a major policy
battle over nuclear power.
But when the Texas Low Level
Radioactive Waste Disposal Au-
thority meets Monday in Austin to
consider purchase of a 16,000-acre
ranch just south of town, odds are
this remote hamlet will find itself
in the eye of a storm of contro-
versy.
The - ason: plans to bury thou-
sands v barrels of nuclear waste,
from hospital syringes to filters
from nuclear power plants, 40 feet
under the sands of the Faskin
Ranch.
The authority, charged by Con-
gress and the state Legislature
with the task of finding a place to
store the waste, says acquisition of
the land a few miles south of the
Hudspeth County courthouse is a
vital step to staying on schedule.
If the land is purchased and the
site checks out, they predict a
clean, safe facility — and a local
economic mini-boom.
Town leaders agree. Although
not openly touting the idea, they
say it’s important to make sure the
positive aspects of the waste facil-
ity — the term that proponents
prefer — will be exploited. It
means jobs and business for this
impoverished, barren wasteland.
But a small core of protesters
say the dump - the less flattering
term they prefer — is unnecessary,
unhealthy and unwanted.
They claim big business and bad
government forced it on them,
perhaps part of a three-pronged
conspiracy to turn West Texas and
eastern New Mexico into a na-
PAGE 2, HUDSPETH COUNTY HER ALD-Dell Valley Review, FEB. 21, 1992
Waste Not, Want Not
purpose was not
to harm the peo-
ple In El Paso or
Hudspeth
County," he
said. "But it’s
the type of issue
where there's
always going to be someone who
opposesit.
' “We reached a compromise with
3 the county attorney from El Paso.
: And then I also visited in my office in
: Austin with two or three of the
- county commissioners of Hudspeth
: County. They had another area they
) wanted (to see the dump) in. They
, wanted it in their county.”
1 Authority planners, Shelley said,
felt they could find a suitable site in
the compromise area.
Shelley continued: “There was go-
ing to be a lot of revenue for Hud-
speth County. There was going to be
an awful lot of money for their
, infrastructure, for roads and sewers
and lots of things they’d never have
money for without this site being
located there."
Victory for Hudspeth County?
Not quite.
In August, In what residents here
• call a “backroom deal," the Legis-
0 lature passed House Bill 2665.
o Among its provisions:
C ■ Required location of the dump in
= a 370-square-mile area in Hudspeth
A County, No other site in the state
9 could be considered, regardless of its
= geology and suitability.
9 ■ Any judgment issued against the
S authority would be nullified if an
■ The authority could only be sued
in Austin, 500 miles from cash-
strapped ranchers who might want
to fight the project
State Rep. Dan Shelley, R-Crosby,
defended his bill, saying it was un-
popular but necessary.
Fort Hancock was a good site, but
the lawsuit and
other political
problems took it
out of conten-
tion.
“My whole
Serving Dell City and Hudspeth County
290Trail West Park, P. O. Box 659, Dell City, Texas 79837
Second class postage paid in Dell City, Texas 79837
Subsidiary MARY-MARY, INC.
Mary Louise Lynch—..—......______...... Editor Publisher
Susan Barker......................................Assistant
C. Warren....-.-------------------------.-.........CrowFlat Editor
Bernice M. Elder.............................Sierra Blanca Editor
Linda Pol.........--------------------------.-..-- Ft Hancock Editor
Sally Brown.-----------------------------.........Court house News
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
can change things."
Local leaders say Addington and
like-minded residents are a mis-
guided minority.
"If I thought for a minute that
there was going to be danger to the
people of Hudspeth County, I’d be
fighting it hard," said Hudspeth
County Judge Billy Love. "But I
don’t see a danger. The people
opposed to it haven’t convinced me
there are any problems."
Ruben Alvarado, authority chief
engineer, says he isn’t surprised
the facility has drawn opposition.
He wants townsfolk to give him the
chance to prove the job can be
done correctly.
The seeds of the fight were first
planted in 1930 when Congress
mandated each state take care of
its own low-level radioactive
waste — generally everything nu-
clear except spent reactor fuel
rods.
The law was intended to take the
pressure off three existing sites —
in Nevada, South Carolina and
Washington — which had been
taking all the nation’s waste.
The authority was created and
placed in charge of finding a waste-
site. From 1983 to 1985, it shifted
its attention among several sites:
first Dell City, which is 70 miles
north of here, then to McMullen
and Dimmit counties in South
Texas.
By 1986, the authority identified
Fort Hancock, a town of similar
size as this and located 26 miles
west of here, as the site. A field
office was established and site
studies started.
- But the city of El Paso, feeling
a the site could threaten its water
supplies in the event of a radiation
2 leak, filed suit to stop it. Hudspeth
- County subsequently joined the
3 fight. An El Paso judge ruled for
2 the citv and county in early 1991.
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Lynch, Mary Louise. Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 27, Ed. 1 Friday, February 21, 1992, newspaper, February 21, 1992; Dell City, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1602328/m1/2/: accessed July 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .