By Anne Marie Mackler, FNS Editor

Texas Natural Resources Commission (TNRC) will decide on October 22 whether to approve the highly controversial construction of the Sierra Blanca Nuclear Waste Site in Sierra Blanca, Texas. The three-member commission, appointed by Texas Governor George Bush, will conduct a public discussion in the Texas capital and then announce their final decision. Sierra Blanca is 90 miles southeast of El Paso and approximately 20 miles north of the U.S. Mexican border.

On September 20, President Bill Clinton signed the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact bill into law.  This measure allows Maine and Vermont to ship their radioactive waste to Texas, in particular, Sierra Blanca.  While the president's signature was well received by the office of  Senator Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, State Representative Norma Chávez, D-El Paso, was disappointed that Clinton "did not take a stronger stance on environmental justice."  Chávez fears that the bill "leaves room for all 50 states" to dump in Texas.

Many groups from both sides of the border have continued to protest the construction of this site, including Green Peace, various non-governmental organizations (ONGs), officials from offices and agencies at all levels of the government and the Bishop Renato Ascencio Léon of Juárez who calls the U.S. Congress' approval of the bill "senseless." The site is considered by those opposed to it as both dangerous and  racist.

On September 8, El Norte reported that according to a number of specialists, some major concerns about the site include the fact that plutonium, which loses its radioactivity only after 500,000 years, is one of the materials to be sent to Sierra Blanca; also, the site is very close to the Rio Bravo, which leads directly into the Gulf of México, therefore underground erosion and leakage could compromise the site's safety; and, finally, that Sierra Blanca is located in an area with a history of high level seismic activity. In the last 70 years there have been 64 earthquakes which registered above 3.0 on the Richter scale. It would take an earthquake over 7.6 to break the radio active storage containers and cause a leak.

Building the site is also considered an act pointedly against minorities and low income residents. Sierra Blanca is home to approximately 800 low income American mostly of hispanic origin. According to Manuel Robles Flores, Director of the Binational Coalition Against the Sierra Blanca Disposal Site, this issue is "about injustice and racism towards poor communities."  Cd. Juárez Mayor-elect Gustavo Elizondo Aguilar also questions the site. "If this disposal site  isn't dangerous, as they say, then why not construct it on the Canadian border, which is much closer to the states of Vermont and Maine?"

It is also believed that construction of Sierra Blanca breaks international treaties including a peace agreement from 1983, La Paz, Baja California, made by Mexico and the United States which says that neither country will construct projects less than 100 kilometers from the common border that could effect the atmosphere.

However, El Diario reported on September 7 that the National Nuclear Security and National Commission of  Water concluded that the project follows Mexican laws and international requisites of security.  A group of Mexican national secretaries (Foreign Affairs, Energy and Environment, Natural Resources  and Fishing) agreed that the site doesn't represent any danger to the population or environment of México as long as it is constructed and operated according to the procedures recommended by the U.S.

And in Hudspeth County, Texas, where Sierra Blanca is located, Judge James A. Peace believes the proposed site will be "a  great boost to the county."  He finds the waste site "no more dangerous than those refineries" in El Paso.  Already, the county has built a park, purchased fire trucks and buses and improved the school lawn and football field.  Texas will receive $55 million for the long-term storage of nuclear refuse from both Maine and Vermont.

Nonetheless, those who are firmly against the construction of the site have conducted a number of protests in September including one on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. in an effort to sway legislators from sending the bill to President Clinton. On September 2 protesters approached Chihuahua Governor Francisco Barrio Terrazas, PAN, during the  inauguration of the American Córdova International Bridge and asked for his help.  On September 5,  El Diario published a letter from Barrio to President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Léon, requesting that Zedillo ask Clinton to veto the bill he ended up passing on September 20.

More protests are planned for October in the continuing effort to stop the construction of this highly disputed nuclear waste site including a march in New York city on October 5 at the United Nations.

Sources: El Diario, El Norte de la Ciudad