(TEXAS) A proposed nuclear waste repository expansion near Andrews has become the focus of dueling geologists and scientific reports. Scientists from Texas Tech University in Lubbock and the University of Texas in Austin have offered widely differing opinions on the geology and safety of the site.

In August, Waste Control Specialists filed an application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to excavate two new cells and contract with the Texas-Maine Compact and the U.S. Department of Energy. The landfill would handle six million cubic yards of low-level radioactive waste and another 600,000 cubic yards of hot waste. It already stores 600,000 cubic yards of low-level waste. The company could potentially earn $500 million in its first 10 years of operation, with five percent going to Andrews County's government. The new cells would be 500 feet long, 300 feet wide and 75 feet deep.

In 1999, Dr. Alan R. Dutton, a hydrogeologist formerly with the UT Bureau of Economic Geology, reported that the High Plains Aquifer underlies the Waste Control Specialists. Dutton questioned a 1996 report by Tech Geosciences Professor Tom Lehman, which contended that the project presented no danger to groundwater. Lehman then worked with Tech Civil Engineering Professor Ken Rainwater to present a 2003 refutation of Dutton's findings.

Dutton's 75-page review contended that geological maps do not "unambiguously identify any area of Andrews County where the High Plains aquifer is absent. The aquifer material is thin at the WCS site."

Dutton also questioned the age and formative process of the "red bed ridge" where the landfill is located, and noted that the 600- to 800-foot-thick formation may not be as effective of a buffer between nuclear waste and groundwater as WCS has claimed. He noted that a proposed Envirocare Co. nuclear waste site, which was abandoned after WCS filed a suit against Envirocare, was located on the same red bed clay ridge eight miles from WCS, and overlaid two aquifers.

WCS officials contended that a more recent report by Lehman and Rainwater debunks Dutton's findings, saying that Dutton's report was based on old data that lacked specificity on the aquifer's location in relation to the site.

The Lehman-Rainwater report found the red bed clay deposits under the site "restrict or prevent the flow of groundwater through them, forming an aquitard or aquiclude of ideal material in which to confine waste materials and isolate them from contact with groundwater."

The professors found that the facility's design will permit the storage of waste materials in a location where no groundwater exists and there is no possibility of aquifer leakage.

Source: Midland Reporter-Telegram

For more information, contact the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, (512) 239-1000, www.tceq.state.tx.us.