Exclusive: Perry sought to sideline nuclear waste site critic
Rick Perry works hard to do favors to benefit a small group of wealthy contributors, and the citizens of Texas run the risks. Who would trust him with a whole country?
(Reuters) - Texas governor Rick Perry tried to sideline a state commissioner who opposed expanding the scope of a nuclear-waste landfill owned by one of the governor’s biggest political donors, Reuters has learned.
Bobby Gregory, owner of a wildlife ranch and landfill company south of Austin, had opposed a plan to let 36 states send nuclear waste to a 1,338-acre site in Andrews County.
On the other side of the issue was billionaire Harold Simmons and his company Waste Control Specialists LLC, which stood to gain millions of dollars from accepting out-of-state shipments. Simmons had donated over $1 million to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns.
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Reuters has learned that late last year, after it became clear that the commission might block Waste Control’s request to truck in waste from around the country, Perry’s appointments chief, Teresa Spears, offered commissioner Gregory an alternative job — a prestigious appointment as a regent of a state university.Under Texas law, Gregory could not hold two state-appointed positions requiring Senate approval at the same time, and so taking the regent job would have required him to leave the waste commission.
The Texas Observer noted in November, 2010 that the likely risks of the waste disposal deal that Perry orchestrated to benefit his political donor will be underwritten by the citizens of Texas for generations; in fact for the next 50,000 years.
As early as fall 2011, the state of Texas could become the proud owner of millions of cubic feet of radioactive waste from all over the nation. Under state law, as soon as this “out-of-compact” waste is accepted for disposal, the state – not Waste Control – assumes both ownership and liability over the waste forever.
The Sunset Commission flagged this potentially huge liability problem in its report on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality:
Texas, and not the Compact Commission nor the disposal facility licensee, holds liability for compact waste brought into the state. Low-level radioactive waste can be radioactive for a long time, and potential future contamination could not only have a severe impact to the environment and human health, but to the State, which bears the ultimate financial responsibility for compact waste disposal facility site.
In other words, if the dump leaks (and TCEQ geologists and engineers have said it probably will) the taxpayers of Texas will foot the bill. “If something happens 50 years later the state of Texas is on the hook,” said commissioner Wilson. Or 50,000 years from now since many of these radionuclides have half-lives measured in the tens of thousands of years.
Sweetheart deal allows Harold Simmons to reap profits while putting state at risk