Beyond Nuclear's 8th set of public comments, re: Docket ID NRC-2016-0231, and report number NUREG-2239, NRC's ISP/WCS CISF DEIS -- re: Environmental Justice (EJ), Environmental Injustice, Environmental Racism, Radioactive Racism
This proposal is a severe violation of environmental justice. ISP/WCS is targeting west Texas, and southeastern New Mexico, where many of the surrounding communities in the area are majority Hispanic, or close to it. The Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation (itself previously targeted for a CISF, first by the U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Negotiator, and then by Private Fuel Storage, LLC, its container-provider none other than Holtec!) is not far away. Numerous other Indigenous Nations also have deep traditional and spiritual connections to the land ISP/WCS is targeting for this CISF. Southeastern NM is relevant to this EJ discussion, as the ISP/WCS CISF would be just 0.37 miles from the NM state line. Eunice, NM, a majority LatinX city, is the nearest population center near the targeted ISP/WCS CISF site, just a few miles away. Water flows from the WCS site, back into southeastern NM, another potential EJ impact, if and when that water flow becomes radioactively contaminated, as due to contaminated, leaking, defective, failed, or otherwise problematic containers holding highly radioactive, irradiated nuclear fuel at -- or in transport to -- the ISP/WCS CISF, or as due to a severe accident or intentional attack involving one or more irradiated nuclear fuel containers at -- or in transport to -- the ISP/WCS CISF, etc.
While a lot of money has been made in the Permian Basin -- in both NM and TX -- from fossil fuel and nuclear industries, that wealth is not and has not been equitably distributed nor shared with the local LatinX and Indigenous population. Thus, any statistical shenanigans involving average, median, or mean wealth levels in the area are inappropriate (along the lines of "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics"). There are serious pockets of poverty throughout the southeastern New Mexico and western Texas region, and the rest of the states as a whole, including along irradiated nuclear fuel transport routes inextricably linked to the ISP/WCS CISF scheme. In fact, New Mexico ranks towards the very bottom of all 50 states in numerous demographic measures of health, wealth, education, etc. And Public Citizen Texas Office executive director Adrian Shelley testified at the Oct. 6, 2020 NRC call-in verbal comment session re: this DEIS, about the major EJ burden along impacted transport routes in Texas alone, associated with this ISP/WCS CISF scheme.
Thus, there are very significant environmental justice issues involving low income and/or people of color communities in southeastern NM and western TX, being targeted for this dump.
See this map posted online here:
It is entitled "Water, Air, and Land: A Sacred Trust."
Although the map focuses on NM as a state, it can be seen on the map, that the ISP/WCS CISF proposal is included, even though it is in TX, due to its very near proximity to southeastern NM. The map explicitly mentions, depicts, and points to "Waste Control Specialists (Texas dump) Proposed High-Level [Radioactive] Waste storage site." Per the map key, also designated at the WCS site, by symbols, are: "Sites contaminated with depleted uranium"; "Sites contaminated with nuclear materials"; and "Sites contaminated with hazardous materials". Thus, the national so-called "low" level radioactive waste dump at WCS (which already also "stores" highly radioactive GTCC "low" level waste, with proposals to simply dump it there permanently), which accepts Class A, B, C, and GTCC "low" level radioactive wastes from scores of states, and also dumps hazardous chemical wastes from multiple states, is already an EJ burden to western TX and southeastern NM. The proposed ISP/WCS CISF would only serve to make the EJ burden significantly worse.
Again, including NM in this discussion is entirely appropriate, as mentioned above -- the ISP/WCS CISF would be located just 0.37 miles from the NM state line, as NRC's DEIS itself reports; Eunice, NM, a majority LatinX city, is just a few miles away, and is the nearest population center; and hazardous radioactive releases from the ISP/WCS CISF, whether contaminating flowing water, blowing air, blowing soil, the food chain, etc., would certainly impact southeastern NM, downwind and downstream, up the food chain, and down the generations, just as it would impact western TX, and beyond.
Focusing just on southeastern NM, and extreme western TX, the map shows the following dirty, dangerous, and expensive nuclear industries present:
Waste Control Specialists (Texas dump) and proposed spent fuel rod storage site (the already present WCS dump is a national dump-site for so-called "low" level radioactive waste; its sibling irradiated nuclear fuel CISF would hold up to 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste);
Eden radioisotopes (proposed reactor);
URENCO USA (uranium enrichment plant) -- this was stopped in Louisiana, and Tennessee, in the 1990s and early 2000s, due to its environmental justice violations, but unfortunately was rammed through, including by NRC rubber-stamp, despite best efforts by a broad environmental and environmental justice coalition, to stop it;
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (dump) -- WIPP had a supposedly impossible leak to the environment on Valentine's Day 2014, leading to a three-year shutdown, and $2 billion in recovery costs -- nearly two-dozen workers at the surface were exposed to ultra-hazardous alpha radiation inhalation doses, as are countless residents downwind, as plutonium and other trans-uranic pollutants are very long-lived hazards -- the highly controversial WIPP site was widely resisted in NM -- it is the only geologic repository for radioactive waste in the country -- a promise was made at the time of WIPP's opening, that if NM took military plutonium and TRU disposal at WIPP, the state would not be targeted for high-level radioactive waste disposal or even storage in the future -- the Holtec/ELEA CISF scheme breaks that promise;
International Isotopes (DU hexafluoride de-conversion facility--on hold) -- but the risk of its actual construction and operation is yet another potentially foreseeable cumulative impact that must be accounted for.
Gnome-Coach Experimental Test Site -- an underground nuclear weapon detonation!;
and of course the Holtec International proposed spent fuel rod storage site -- the subject of another, closely related, NRC CISF DEIS. Holtec/ELEA's CISF would only be about 40 miles from the ISP/WCS CISF. Holtec/ELEA's CISF would be located in southeastern NM, midway between Hobbs and Carlsbad, as the "Sacred Trust" map cited and linked above clearly shows.
Of course, all those nuclear facilities located in southeastern NM could well, and almost certainly would, have hazardous radioactive pollution impacts on people, and other living things, in western TX, as well. As but one example, the TRU (transuranics, including plutonium) environmental release from WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) in southeaster NM, just 16 miles from the Laguna Gatuna site targeted for Holtec/ELEA's CISF, very likely impacted Texas downwind, with hazardous TRU fallout. As certain plutonium isotopes, such as Pu-239, have hazardous persistence measured in the hundreds of thousands of years, such impacts will extend that long into the future; people and other living things could be exposed to that hazardous Pu-239, contaminating dust, surface water and groundwater, the food chain, etc., for the next 240,000 years, in both southeastern NM, and western TX, due to the environmental release at WIPP, that was supposed to have been "impossible," before it actually happened on Valentine's Day, 2014.)
That long list of hazardous, polluting nuclear facilities in just southeastern NM, or immediately on the border in extreme western Texas, is a daunting one, in terms of environmental justice burden, environmental injustice, and radioactive racism.
The Holtec/ELEA CISF should be included in this NRC EJ analysis, and otherwise in the DEIS, for the Interim Storage Partners/Waste Control Specialists CISF, as the two CISFs would be only 39 miles apart (this distance according to Holtec CEO Krishna Singh, at his license application unveiling press conference on Capitol Hill in early April 2017; although NRC's Holtec DEIS says 45 miles apart). So should the WCS national "low" level radioactive waste dump. In fact, the largely Hispanic community of Eunice, NM is only about five miles, or less, from WCS, TX. It is the nearest town. And certain surface, and perhaps even ground, water flow pathways, flow into NM from the WCS, TX site.
Just the list above represents a tremendous nuclear pollution EJ burden for southeastern NM and western TX. The Holtec/ELEA and ISP/WCS CISFs would represent major additional nuclear pollution and risk burdens, on top of what is already borne by the low income and/or people of color communities residing in southeastern NM and western TX, as well as to Indigenous Peoples Nations, which have been displaced from their traditional lands in southeastern NM and western TX, although they retain legitimate cultural, spiritual, and even legal (such as treaty, and traditional use) claims to the land there.
Of course, southeastern NM and western TX is also burdened with a very large fossil fuel pollution burden, as the map also shows. The Permian Basin oil and gas fields are the busiest/most concentrated in North America, and the second busiest/most intensive in the world, after only the Middle East. In fact, some now claim that the Permian Basin has surpassed its Middle Eastern competitors, in terms of fossil fuel extraction intensity. This is an additional, major EJ burden on southeastern NM and western TX.
But, as the map shows, the list of historic and still ongoing nuclear abuses of NM is even longer, including:
Los Alamos National Laboratory has been making a large-scale, concentrated radioactive and toxic chemical mess of its neighborhood since 1943. This is especially an EJ burden for the Pueblo Indian communities listed on the map, Los Alamos's neighbors who have lived there since time immemorial, long before 1943. Nowadays, as with the Trump administration proposal to expand plutonium pit production at Los Alamos for new nuclear weaponry, the nuclear abuses continue and expand there.
As shown on the map, the smoke plumes from the Cerro Grande Fire (May 2000) show that not only New Mexicans, but even people in other states downwind, including Texas, were exposed to radioactive (including plutonium) and toxic fallout and inhalation doses. And the Las Conchas Fire boundaries (June 2011) shows that such risks continue, and worsen, in an age of global warming mega-droughts in NM and TX.
The Trinity Test Site (first nuclear explosion), which occurred on July 16, 1945, haunts the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, 75 years later. They have never been compensated for their suffering and losses, as documented at their website: <https://www.trinitydownwinders.com/>
Please note that the radioactive contamination in the plumes from the Cerro Grande Fire, the Los Conchas Fire, and the Trinity nuclear weapon test blast, could well have impacted Texas downwind, or still could do so in the future. After all, the radioactive contaminants include hazardous isotopes with persistence measured in the hundreds of thousands (Pu-239, for example, or millions (I-129, for example), or years. If those plumes already directly deposited such hazardous radioactive contaminants in TX, the impact has already begun, years or even decades ago. But even if the contaminants fell short of Texas, they could still reach Texas, over the long time spans into the future that they will remain hazardous, as due to blowing winds carrying contaminated dust, flowing waters carrying contamination, food chain contamination, etc. The risks and impacts from such cross-border hazardous radioactive contamination will continue for countless generations into the future, a further reason that all these NM-based and TX-based EJ violations must be taken into analytical consideration by NRC in its EIS, as a synergistic whole, not in isolated silos. Such isolated silos analysis would represent illegal segmentation under NEPA.
Sandia National Laboratories, and Kirtland Airforce Base's Kirtland Underground Munitions Storage Complex (1,900+ nuclear weapons) also puts Albuquerque at risk. The Mixed Waste Landfill puts Albuquerque's drinking water supply at risk.
Then of course, there is the uranium mining and milling region of northwestern NM, and the Four Corners area. This is of course a largely Native American region, including the Navajo/Diné, numerous Pueblo Indian tribes, and even Utes, as in Colorado. As the map lists, there are a large number of nuclear pollution sources just in this quadrant of NM:
Shiprock Mill and Disposal Cell;
Ambrosia Lake Mill and Disposal Cell;
UNC (United Nuclear Corporation) Mining and Milling, Church Rock Mill -- Church Rock was the scene, on July 16, 1979, of one of the worst radiological releases in U.S. history, when an earthen dam failed, releasing a large amount of radioactive and toxic uranium mill liquid waste into the Rio Puerco River, which traditional Navajo/Diné shepherds utilize for drinking and irrigation water (note that this marks the second mention of a nuclear disaster in NM that has happened on July 16th -- along with the Trinity blast, above; NRC's choice of July 16, 2018, to docket the Holtec/ELEA CISF application for licensing, and announce it in the Federal Register, marked a ghoulish new low of tone deafness and lack of compassion at the agency, itself an EJ violation);
(Quivira) Ambrosia Lake Mill & Disposal Site 2;
Phillips Mill;
Homestake/Barrick Gold [and Uranium] Mining Company Mill & Disposal Site;
(SOHIO) LBAR Mill Site;
Jackpile Mine;
Cebolleta Project (mines and mill);
Anaconda/ARCO Bluewater Mill & Disposal Site.
The open pit uranium mine located on the Laguna Pueblo is the largest on the planet. Its downwind and downstream pollution emissions have harmed the Laguna Pueblo, its immediate neighbors, as well as others downwind and downstream.
And as if the nuclear detonation site in southeastern NM was not enough abuse, there is also one in northern NM -- the Gasbuggy Experimental Test Site.
The Ute Mountain Ute tribe is mentioned in the extreme northwestern quadrant of the map. The Ute Mountain Ute have the dubious distinction of "hosting" (unwillingly) the White Mesa uranium mill, a highly polluting radioactive facility where many nefarious activities take place (radioactive waste "processing," storage, and even disposal, done under the supposed excuse of uranium extraction from waste streams imported from across the continents, and perhaps even overseas).
As I mentioned during my oral comments on the NRC webinar/call-in on June 23, 2020, in the very closely related NRC's Holtec CISF DEIS public comment proceeding, such a list as the one depicted on the map above is nothing short of nightmarish. It represents a health, safety, environmental, and economic catastrophe for the indigenous peoples of NM, as well as other low income and people of color communities in the Land of Enchantment, but also LatinX and Indigenous Peoples in TX.
Again, NM's inclusion in NRC's EJ analysis on this ISP/WCS CISF proposal is needed, given how close the TX site is to NM, and can and will impact it over long time periods.
NM has already suffered a bad enough nuclear nightmare since 1943, one that continues to the present day. The Holtec/ELEA CISF, and the ISP/WCS CISF, for that matter, represent the straw that breaks the camel's back -- one more nuclear abuse and EJ violation too many.
Of course, as the map also shows, NM has suffered not only a nuclear nightmare. The fossil fuel pollution in the northwestern and southeastern quadrants of NM is also concentrated and severe. As is the fossil fuel pollution in western TX.
Just one more recent example of the eco-disasters this area has suffered includes the Gold King Mine toxic waste water release of 2015, epicentered near Silverton, CO. It was caused, ironically enough, by human error perpetrated by none other than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and its contractor, Environmental Restoration LLC of Missouri.
The trickery employed in both Holtec's Environment Report and NRC's DEIS, as well as in ISP/WCS's ER and NRC's DEIS, in order to find no EJ impact, is to only compare southeastern NM (and only out to a radius of 50 miles from the Holtec CISF site, at that), with the rest of the State of NM, and similarly, to only compare western TX to a limited broader region. But of course, comparing s.e. NM near Holtec to the country as a whole, would show a much greater concentration of Hispanics and Native Americans, than is typical of the rest of the country as a whole. NRC's 50-miles out from Holtec's CISF radius focus, and then only in comparison to the rest of the State of NM, blinds it to the bigger picture of the country as a whole. Combined with the fact that NM as a whole ranks towards the very bottom of all 50 states on many socio-economic indicators, NRC's willful blindness to the EJ impacts of the Holtec CISF proposal is an outrage. NRC's own behavior is an EJ violation, as is Holtec's CISF proposal to begin with!
The NM Environment Department pointed out this fault in NRC's EJ analysis in the Holtec DEIS, in point #5, on pages 11 to 12, of its 9/22/20 written comments to NRC. See the NMED comments, posted online here: <https://www.env.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2020-09-21-NMED-Holtec-draft-EIS-comments-to-NRC-Final.pdf>. They clearly show that NM is a majority minority state, with a full 60% of residents being Hispanic or Latino, or American Indian, compared to only 19.6% of residents of the U.S. as a whole, being Hispanic or Latino, or American Indian. Thus, NM is more than three times more populated with LatinX and/or Indigenous persons, than is the U.S. as a whole. And yet both Holtec/ELEA, and ISP/WCS, have targeted NM, or its border, with highly radioactive waste CISFs. This seems to be an EJ violation on its face. And yet NRC is willfully blind to this, and is poised to rubber-stamp licenses for both CISFs, despite the "extra large" EJ violation that would represent, to borrow the phrase from a member of the Nuclear Issues Study Group, who made a verbal comment during an NRC Holtec CISF DEIS verbal comment session.
Similarly, NMED pointed out that Persons in Poverty in NM number 19.5% of the population, while Persons in Poverty in the U.S. as a whole number 11.8% of the population. Thus, NM has a poverty rate nearly twice that of the U.S. as a whole. And again, both Holtec/ELEA, and ISP/WCS, have targeted NM, or its border, with highly radioactive waste CISFs, despite this region, at least in the case of the State of NM, suffering a poverty rate twice the national average. Again, this seems to be an EJ violation on its face. And yet NRC is willfully blind to this, and is poised to rubber-stamp licenses for both CISFs, despite the "extra large" EJ violation that would represent.
Similarly, as Adrian Shelley of Public Citizen's TX Office verbally commented on the Oct. 6, 2020, NRC call-in re: the ISP CISF DEIS, NRC's EJ analysis in this proceeding is also badly flawed, and intentionally blinded to the actual EJ impacts, including from transportation of irradiated nuclear fuel throughout western TX.
Violations by NRC itself of EJ is further underscored by the experience of Alliance for Environmental Strategies in the NRC ASLB licensing proceeding in the Holtec case. AFES is a largely Hispanic EJ group in s.e. NM. It intervened against the Holtec CISF, raising EJ contentions. Incredibly, the ASLB and NRC never even clearly acknowledged or recognized AFES's legal standing to bring such contentions. But both ASLB and NRC did reject AFES's EJ contentions outright -- the supposed excuse for not having to rule on AFES's legal standing. Such ASLB and NRC behavior is, in itself, a blatant EJ violation, on its face!
Rose Gardner, a co-founder of AFES, also joined with Beyond Nuclear as a member and supporter in the ISP CISF ASLB licensig proceeding. This helped Beyond Nuclear win legal standing in the ISP ASLB licensing proceeding. After all, Rose Gardner's lifelong home, in Eunice, NM, is just 4 miles from the targeted ISP/WCS CISF site in TX. But even then, the ASLB in the ISP CISF licensing proceeding, rejected Beyond Nuclear's contention, yet again nipping in the bud Rose Gardner's, other Beyond Nuclear members' and supporters', and Beyond Nuclear's objections to the ISP/WCS CISF. Beyond Nuclear has appealed the ASLB's ruling to the NRC Commissioners, but they have yet to rule on the appeal, after many long months.
It is worth noting that Holtec's previous attempt at a CISF was targeted at the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah. Holtec would have been the container supplier -- 4,000 Holtec containers, to "temporarily store" 40,000 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel at the surface. A consortium of a dozen nuclear power utilities comprised Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS). Despite opposition by traditional Skull Valley Goshutes, such as Sammy Blackbear, as well as Margene Bullcreek, leader of Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia Awareness (or OGD Awareness, Goshute for "Mountain/Timber Setting Community"), a grassroots group of traditional tribal members opposed to the dump, the PFS license was rubber-stamped in the end by NRC. When that happened, flying in the face of opposition not only by the State of Utah, and a coalition of nearly 500 environmental and environmental justice organizations across the country, Kevin Kamps (then working at Nuclear Information and Resource Service; Kay Drey also then served on the NIRS board of directors) dubbed NRC the Nuclear Racism Commission. These strong words were justified, for NRC had just commissioned a radioactively racist facility, committing a severe environmental injustice. More information on the ultimately successful resistance to the PFS dump is posted on-line here: <http://archives.nirs.us/factsheets/pfsejfactsheet.htm>. Also posted there is the list of nearly 500 environmental and EJ groups opposed to the PFS CISF at Skull Valley Goshutes.
In fact, before PFS targeted the Skull Valley Goshutes for a CISF, it had targeted the Mescalero Apache in southeastern NM. This followed the U.S. DOE Nuclear Waste Negotiator's own concerted but unsuccessful targeting of both Mescalero Apache, NM as well as Skull Valley Goshutes, UT for a CISF. Such shameful environmentally racist targeting of Native American reservations for CISFs is also documented at the website link provided immediately above.
It should also be noted that TX bears an EJ burden of nuclear facility risk and pollution, although not included on the "Sacred Trust" map focused on NM. An example in west TX itself is the Pantex DOE facility, near Amarillo, TX, where many thousands of nuclear warheads are stored and handled, for assembly or disassembly. Thus, large quantities of high explosives, fissile nuclear explosive material, and other hazardous and radioactive substances, are stored, transported to and from, and handled and processed there, representing a very large impact and risk.
NRC should engage, or be complicit, or collude, in no more such environmental injustice and radioactive racism, in this region, such as the Holtec/ELEA CISF in NM, and the ISP/WCS CISF in TX.
Please address your woefully inadequate "hard look" under NEPA, re: this health-, safety-, and environmentally-significant, as well as legally-binding, EJ subject matter above.
And please acknowledge your receipt of these comments, and confirm their inclusion as official public comments in the record of this docket.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kay Drey, President, Board of Directors, Beyond Nuclear
and
Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear
October 8, 2020