North Carolina Sued Over Rejected Waste Dump

By Cat Lazaroff

RALEIGH, North Carolina, June 4, 2002 (ENS) - Four southern states and a regional waste commission are suing the state of North Carolina for its opposition to a planned low level radioactive waste dump within North Carolina's borders. The suit accuses North Carolina of failing to meet its obligations as a member of the Southeast Compact Commission, a group charged with building the regional radioactive waste repository.

Many medical and scientific procedures produce low level radioactive wastes that require proper disposal. (Photo courtesy University of Maryland Environmental Health and Safety)

"North Carolina did not live up to its promise to Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia and the other two states in the Compact," said James Setser, chair of the SCC. "The member states and the Compact Commission have a moral and a legal responsibility to ensure that North Carolina fulfills its obligations to all of the members of the Southeast Compact and the citizens of our region."

The lawsuit is the latest action taken by the Compact members to enforce sanctions imposed against North Carolina by the SCC in December 1999.

"North Carolina must be held accountable for its failure to provide a site for disposal of low level radioactive waste for the southeast," said Alabama attorney general Bill Pryor. "Alabama is committed to live up to its obligations and we expect nothing less from North Carolina."

The Southeast Compact is an agreement among seven states - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia - to jointly manage the region's low level radioactive wastes. South Carolina, originally a member of the Southeast Compact, withdrew in June 1995.

Everything from medical wastes to smoke alarms to certain kinds of old glass and ceramics can contain low levels of radiation. (Photo courtesy Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection)

Congress passed a law in 1980 making each state responsible for disposing of low level radioactive wastes generated within its borders. The Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act authorized the creation of regional compacts under which states can combine their wastes at a single site to save resources.

Three existing waste sites in Nevada, South Carolina and Washington were told they could stop accepting radioactive wastes from outside their compact regions after other regions had time to build their own disposal facilities.

The SCC chose North Carolina as the host state for the southeastern region's low level radioactive waste disposal site in 1986, and planning was begun to build the dump along the border of Wake and Chatham counties.

In July 1999, North Carolina lawmakers decided to withdraw the state from the Southeast Compact, and end construction at the proposed radioactive disposal site south of Raleigh. The SCC had cut off funding for the project in 1997, and North Carolina officials said they had concluded that the region no longer needed its own radioactive waste dump.

Supercompaction technology can compress barrels of radioactive solid waste to one-fifth their original size for easier disposal. The photograph shows this technology in use at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. (Photo courtesy Department of Energy)

The SCC first asked North Carolina to pay $90 million to the Southern Compact in December 1999, but North Carolina refused. In July 2000, the SCC asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, but the nation's highest court denied the Compact's motion, saying the Compact's member states would have to file suit themselves.

On Monday, four of the member states did just that.

"The decision to file a lawsuit against another state is not one to be made lightly," said Virginia attorney general Jerry Kilgore. "But, the circumstances here have left us no choice. The size of the sum involved, the refusal of North Carolina to make payment and the need for an environmentally safe, long term answer to the problem of low level radioactive waste, make this dispute appropriate for a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court."

The Southeast Compact members say the North Carolina dump site is needed to handle the wastes common to the region's nuclear power plants, medical needs and other industries. But that argument has failed to sway other proposed hosts of compact disposal sites across the nation.

Protests by California cancer patients helped end plans to build a low level radioactive waste dump in Ward Valley. (Photo courtesy Greenaction)

Just three licensed disposal sites for low level radioactive wastes now exist in the U.S. Barnwell, located in Barnwell, South Carolina, accepts waste from all U.S. sites except those in Rocky Mountain and Northwest compacts.

Hanford, located in Hanford, Washington, accepts waste from the Northwest and Rocky Mountain compacts. Envirocare, located in Clive, Utah, accepts waste from all regions of the United States.

"There is a growing national crisis in LLRW management. North Carolina, Nebraska and California have all failed to build a waste site," said the SCC's Setser. "People want the benefits of radioactive materials, such as medical procedures and smoke detectors, but politicians lack the will to put the needed facilities in their states."