Mexican Lawmakers Protest Proposed Texas Nuclear Dump

The New York Times October 22, 1998 Mexican Lawmakers Protest Proposed Texas Nuclear Dump

          AUSTIN, Texas -- With the Texas state environmental agency set to
          meet on Thursday to decide whether to license a proposed dump
          for storing out-of-state low-level nuclear waste about 20 miles from
          Mexico's border, a group of Mexican lawmakers has been in Austin since
          Saturday trying to persuade the state to relocate the proposed site.

          "Even if it's a low-level risk, why are they burying all this material so close
          to the border where it will affect our water?" Carlos Camacho Alcazar, a
          Mexican congressman who represents the border city of Ciudad Juarez,
          said inside a cramped mobile home parked a few dozen yards from the
          governor's official residence here.

          Camacho, a member National Action Party, arrived in Austin with more
          than a dozen other Mexican lawmakers as part of their continuing effort to
          meet with Gov. George Bush. Two of the lawmakers have been fasting in
          anticipation of the vote, by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation
          Commission.

          Although Camacho and several other Mexican lawmakers met this week
          with the Texas Secretary of State Alberto Gonzales, and asked for a
          meeting with Bush, the governor has refused.

          Linda Edwards, a spokeswoman for Bush, said that he had already met
          with all of the governors of Mexico's border states and that he had
          discussed the project with them.

          "This is a regulatory process," Edwards said. "It's not appropriate for
          political leaders to intervene in a scientific regulatory process. Governor
          Bush believes the people of Texas want regulatory issues to be based on
          science and public health and safety and not on politics."

          If the project is approved, as is expected, the town of Sierra Blanca -- 90
          miles southeast of El Paso, with 600 residents, two-thirds Hispanic, and a
          per capita income of $8,000 -- would be the site.

          It would make Texas the fourth state with a low-level radioactive waste
          site. The others are South Carolina, Utah and Washington. The Sierra
          Blanca site would receive low-level radioactive waste from Maine and
          Vermont under a compact that was approved last month by Congress
          and signed by President Clinton.

          Camacho asserts that if the permit is approved, "West Texas is going to
          turn into the trash dump of the world and we consider that racial
          discrimination."

          David Frederick, a lawyer for the Sierra Blanca Legal Defense Fund,
          points out that Bush has said he wants to get 40 percent of the Hispanic
          vote for his re-election bid. "I don't see how he's going to get it if his
          appointees approve the license for the dump," said Frederick, who said
          the permit should be turned down for technical reasons.

          In July, two state administrative law judges ruled that the license for the
          waste site should be rejected because it did not include a thorough
          geological survey of the region. The judges also said the dump could
          degrade the quality of life for residents of Sierra Blanca, despite the
          economic benefits from such a project.