Surprised by the judges' ruling, opponents have theorized that it's a delay tactic to postpone the license until after the election, when the pressure is off Bush. Up till now, Bush has been successful at winning over Hispanic voters, but his support of the dump has led some Mexican politicians to compare him with California Governor Pete Wilson, who supported a referendum to deny illegal immigrants education and medical care.
Meanwhile, other states are stalling on finding their own dump sites, perhaps in hopes that someone else will go first. Economist Gregory Hayden -- a commissioner for the Central Interstate Compact, which encompasses a region from Louisiana to Nebraska -- made national headlines in 1997 when he issued the report questioning the need for any new dumps at all. "New disposal facilities are not needed and would not be financially viable," Hayden predicted.
Hayden's reasoning is based largely on the fact that volumes generated for disposal have decreased "precipitously" since 1980 and are now about 11 percent of what they were then. Though overall, the number of curies of radioactivity hasn't declined much, high costs of disposal have led waste generators to compact their waste before disposing of it -- which in turn has made disposal costs rise as dumps seek to make up for lost volume.
According to Hayden's report, the Barnwell facility has sufficient capacity for 29 years, even if waste volumes do not continue to decline. The Richland, Washington, facility, which serves only the 11 states of the Northwest and Rocky Mountain Compacts, is licensed through the year 2063 and has capacity for at least 260 years. Envirocare, a facility in Utah that accepts extremely low-level waste, has 47 years of capacity.
"The only driver for new sites," concludes Hayden, "has been the compact law, not demand."
Of the nine existing compacts, five have postponed or canceled their siting processes. The Southwest Compact's chosen site, in California, is tied up in court. The Central-Interstate Compact has applied to license a site in Nebraska's poorest county. In the Southeast Compact, North Carolina is considering defunding its siting process. The Midwest Compact has become practiced at passing the buck: When South Dakota was selected as the dump state, its residents turned out in record numbers to vote to leave the compact. Illinois was the next state selected; it pulled out as well, because other compact states refused to assume shared liability for the waste. Michigan left because the siting process threatened to violate its own environmental laws, and compact commissioners voted to cancel the search for a site in Ohio, the current Midwest Compact dump state.
If Texas's natural resource commissioners approve the license, the next stop is the Texas Legislature, where Jacobi's agency has been under fire for spending money too freely. Representative Rob Junell of San Angelo, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, says lawmakers were peeved that the agency was spending money on construction -- such as digging the experimental trench -- before the dump is approved. Jacobi will ask the Legislature next session for a $48 million advance to start construction. But Bush has called for the Legislature to pass a resolution limiting waste to the three compact states in 1999 -- a move that would probably cause Maine to pull out of the compact, if it held up legally. If Maine pulls out, the entire deal is in jeopardy, according to Junell.
The recent judges' ruling has galvanized opponents. Two weeks ago, 86 environmental groups and several Mexican officials signed a letter asking Bush to keep his word that if the site places residents in jeopardy, the project will be scrapped. Ortega and Reyes, meanwhile, have not softened their skepticism.
"It's not going to last as long as the pyramids, I know that," says Ortega, the rancher, standing in the eroding trench.
The trench, Jacobi explains, was dug more than a year ago, and the soil has not been reworked. That's why it is so parched, crumbly and dusty. The clay that will enclose the buried waste will be highly compressed, wetted and "pretty much impermeable," he says -- though it will be 100 times more permeable than the lining of an industrial landfill.
As fragile as the trench appears, so remain the politics. And just as politics, not science, guided the siting of the Sierra Blanca dump, politics could prove its undoing. Bush could end this thing with a single declaration, and that may be the biggest hope for opponents.
"Mr. Bush has a family, and he no doubt loves his children," says Ortega, father of a three-year-old daughter. "Well, we also love our children. I say to Governor Bush: 'We are not just jackrabbits and snakes out here. We are human beings.' "
E-mail the authors at shaila_dewan@houstonpress.com and at eskenazi@ibm.net.
