In West Texas, a Dallas Company Fights to Bury Radioactive Waste

On its Web site, Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists LLC sells itself as an “innovative and cost effective [solution] for the proper and safe management of radioactive, hazardous, and mixed waste.” In other words, the company with its HQ in Three Lincoln Centre on LBJ Freeway wants to bury some nasty stuff out in the Panhandle, claiming it’s got the “good geology” to back it up.

Only, some folks near Andrews County — just north of Odessa, just east of the Texas-New Mexico state line — ain’t buying it, and this week are heading to Austin to protest the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality‘s granting WCS a license to bury Cold War-era radioactive waste from Ohio in the company’s 1,338-acre site in Andrews. WCS says it’s dry as a bone out there — no way that crap will seep into the soil and move around. To which a former TCEQ commissioner says, Not so much. As in: “There is water there in that clay and water is going to move that waste around.” Other key phrases from the story: “uranium enrichment,” “hazardous waste landfill” and “shuttered weapons processing plant.” I’ve read this comic book; it doesn’t turn out well. –Robert Wilonsky