The Texas Observer

Voters in Andrews, the West Texas oil-town that’s ga-ga for radioactive waste, have an interesting proposition before them as they go to the polls this week. They’re being asked by Waste Control Specialists - who’s paying for the election - to authorize the issuance of $75 million in general obligation bonds to finance the construction of Waste Control’s radioactive waste dump. Even for a company that has a long record of ballsy moves, this one takes some major cojones.

Harold Simmons, who owns Waste Control, is the 146th richest man in the world, according to Forbes, down from 66th last in 2008. Even after losing $3 billion, the man is still worth $3.6 billion. But there he is, going before the people of Andrews (poverty rate: 16 percent) like a pauper with an open palm. Hubris, thy name is Harold Simmons.

It’s worth asking if some voters will understand what they’re voting on. The ballot, as approved by the Andrews County Commissioners Court, refers to a “solid waste disposal facility.” No mention of radioactive waste.

County Judge Richard Dolgener says he stands behind the wording.

“I feel [t]hat the ballot language is correct when the court voted on it to be placed on the ballot,” he wrote in an email and referred further questions to the county’s bond counsel, who did not respond to a phone call.

Granted, folks in the Andrews area have been hearing about Waste Control’s plans for radioactive waste for quite some time and may be well aware that they’re voting on an issue connected to that. On the other hand, a 2006 public opinion survey by Austin-based pollster Baselice & Associates produced some surprising results. (TCEQ ordered Waste Control to do a more scientific poll after the company submitted interviews with the town’s business and political elite, who were almost universally in favor of radioactive waste disposal.)

Some even think it’s a local landfill.

The company says it needs taxpayer-backed municipal bonds because credit is too expensive otherwise. At least a few people in Andrews who have supported the company through the years are now saying tough titty. One couple, Rhonda and Tom Stark wrote to the county and Waste Control:

My wife and I have an infinite respect for the work WCS does for the county and also, importantly for our country. We believe in nuclear power and responsible environmental protection.

My issue with you is the hasty, high pressure sales pitch and lack of disclosure about WSC’s [sic] and Valhi’s financial state.

Waste Control says the deal won’t cost the county a dime and that if something does go awry, the county will be left holding $500 million in stock and assets. But the Starks think the deal is still too risky. In an email to the Observer they pointed to the collapse of Valhi stock and Fitch’s downgrading of the company’s credit rating to ‘junk’ status. They also question the true value of WCS’ “assets” that the county would presumably own in the event of a bankruptcy.

“What’s the value of land, buildings and equipment contaminated by radioactive waste?”

Still, Waste Control continues to have the full faith and credit of the town’s business and government leaders. Here’s an excerpt of a recent Andrews County News letter to the editor from one Bob Stewart, Andrews businessman:

If you don’t think this is a credit problem, then you need to go back to the homework deal. There is a good reason that he is a Billionaire—why pay 16 percent when he can get 7.75 percent from Andrews. That is just good business!

Erle Nye, the controversial former head of energy company TXU, today was appointed the new chair of UTIMCO — the investment arm of the University of Texas.

Nye replaces multi-millionaire Robert Rowling, who abruptly resigned last week in the middle of a contentious hearing in the Senate Finance Committee. The state senators were berating Rowling about bonuses UTIMCO had doled out despite a down year. You can read our report on that hearing here.

Nye is a former CEO and board chairman at TXU Corp., a giant Dallas-based company that was bought out in 2007. Nye’s tenure as CEO at TXU ended in 2004 following a financial crisis at the company that collapsed the stock price and nearly knocked the firm into bankruptcy. Some shareholders lost their life savings when the stock tanked.

In 2004, the Observer reported on a whistle-blower lawsuit in which a former TXU insider claimed that Nye and other TXU executives knew about the company’s impending financial problems and intentionally misled investors and Wall Street analysts. Several executives, including Nye, sold TXU shares not long before the stock price tumbled in late 2002.

Before taking over the top job at UTIMCO, Nye had led its ethics committee.

At the Public Utility Commission meeting this morning, there were a few we’re-gonna-miss-ya tears for outgoing commissioner Julie Parsley, but none for the thousands of Texans having their electricity shut off in the face of stifling heat and sky-high rates. Once again, the three commissioners appointed by Gov. Rick Perry — including newcomer Donna Nelson — proved that their faith in the free market is unshakable.

Consumer groups and several Texas lawmakers have asked the PUC to declare an emergency moratorium on disconnections for the remainder of the summer. The moratorium is needed, the petitioners say, to protect folks, especially the elderly and ill, from life-threatening heat. Exact data on the number of disconnections due to non-payment this summer are spotty, but AEP — which covers most of South Texas — reports that it cut power to twice as many customers in June as last year.

The three commissioners, led by Chairman Barry Smitherman, rejected the moratorium, instead opting for a rulemaking project to explore the issue further. Smitherman, an inveterate deregulation proponent and author of If Jesus Were An Investment Banker, insisted that the competitive electricity market had already responded to the problem. He pointed to the six electric providers — including the three big ones, TXU, Reliant and Direct — that are offering voluntary programs.

“I think this is the way it ought to be in a market where parties differentiate themselves by services and price and features that they offer,” Smitherman said.

Commissioner Nelson said she was concerned about “perpetrating [sic] the notion that we’re the government and we’re going to step in cases like this when it’s a competitive market.”

But what has the “competitive market” for electricity produced so far? Planet-cooking coal-fired power plants; sky-high rates; a string of bankruptcies; cockamamie metering schemes; high-risk Wall Street buyouts; confused customers; political turmoil; and now the slow shredding of a universally applicable safety net for the most vulnerable people. The PUC’s response: Let the Market sort it out!

It appears that more radioactive waste will be dumped in West Texas.

We’re the first to report that Waste Control Specialists, Harold Simmons’ radioactive waste outfit, received a key license today from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The agency didn’t even bother to put out a press release on this important regulatory decision. I learned about it from a Waste Control press release picked up by MarketWatch. To their credit, Waste Control posted the license on their Web site — something TCEQ inexplicably failed to do.

Waste Control has been angling for years to build a national radioactive waste dump near Andrews, Texas. You might remember that TCEQ’s own experts stated in internal memos — and later to the press — that the landfills were “highly likely” to leak into the groundwater. In May, TCEQ issued a final license for one of the landfills, the so-called byproduct rad-waste dump. Waste Control will begin construction of that landfill shortly.

Today, the agency issued what it terms a “final draft license” for the larger and more radioactive of the two landfills - the “low-level” radioactive waste facility. The license as it’s written now would permit Waste Control to dispose of 2.3 million cubic feet of waste from other states and a whopping 26 million cubic feet of federal rad-waste, largely from the Department of Energy’s Cold War-era weapons programs. Those volumes are unchanged from the “initial draft license,” an earlier version which TCEQ shared as a “courtesy” with Waste Control last December. Along with the license, TCEQ issued a voluminous (382 pages) environmental assessment. Sources close to the agency say the TCEQ engineers and geologists have been under tremendous pressure from their bosses to produce a sanitized environmental report.

I haven’t had time to read either the license or the environmental assessment in any detail yet, but one thing did catch my eye. As noted, the issue of whether radionuclides will eventually leak into the groundwater has been a major point of contention. Waste Control has said the “redbed” clays underlying the landfill are virtually impermeable. The staff have pointed out that the company’s own data show that groundwater is within fourteen feet or less of the sides of the landfill. Not too comforting considering the agency must consider the flow of water 50,000 years into the future. The environmental assessment, one would assume, would make a final determination on this matter.

No such luck, it seems.

In the assessment, the author merely notes that “predictive modeling” must be relied upon to “demonstrate” that groundwater will not leak into the dump over the next 50 millennia. The license requires Waste Control to “predict” future hydrological conditions to “assure” that the landfills remain dry. [Italics mine]. Shouldn’t this sort of modeling have been done already? Isn’t the whole point of a regulatory review - especially a gargantuan environmental report — to determine risks before a license has been issued that would allow for more radioactive waste?

More to come.

Did anyone catch state Rep. Myra Crownover’s op-ed in the New York Sun on Friday? I doubt there are many readers of the Sun in Crownover’s North Texas district, but the piece wasn’t really intended for her constituents anyway. In her op-ed, Crownover, who co-owns a drilling company, joins the chorus of Republicans screaming “Drill Here, Drill Now.” Even in that crowd — in which pandering and misinformation have been commonplace — Crownover manages to distinguish herself. Crownover argues that Texas has much to teach the nation about “energy, the economy, and the environment.”

Among her boldest assertions is that oil drilling in Texas has had no environmental impact. Crownover writes:

There is debate in Congress right now as to whether the Atlantic and Pacific Coastlines should be opened to offshore drilling. In Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, we have been producing millions of barrels of oil for years with no environmental consequences. Offshore drilling safety is so advanced that even during Hurricane Katrina not one drilling rig in the Gulf experienced a significant environmental event.

You heard the representative: there have been NO environmental consequences from oil production in the Gulf. Zero. Crownover goes on to state that Hurricane Katrina didn’t cause any “significant” environmental problems related to drilling rigs either.

Both assertions are flatly contradicted by numerous media accounts and reports from the federal government, only a Google search or phone call away. Just take hurricanes Katrina and Rita, events that happened in the last three years. For example, a Houston Chronicle investigation found:

[T]he two storms caused at least 595 spills, incidents that released untold amounts of oil, natural gas and other chemicals into the air, onto land and into the water. The quantity and cumulative magnitude of the 595 spills, which were spread across four states and struck offshore and inland, rank these two hurricanes among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. Some have even compared the total amount of oil released — estimated at 9 million gallons — to the tragedy of Exxon Valdez.

I called Wilma Subra, the technical assistant for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), to get her assessment of Crownover’s belief that Katrina produced no major oil problems. “There were a large number of rigs totally lost,” she said. “They’re not there anymore. There were a large number of spills. There were pipelines that run from the rigs to the shore that were disrupted. The oil had an impact on aquatic organisms… You can go along the coastal areas and still find residual oil.”

While it’s true that drilling rigs are safer and cleaner than they used to be, spills still occur with some regularity. In 2006, a pipeline linking a rig to the land leaked 21,000 gallons of oil offshore of Galveston. Sometimes oil outfits intentionally and illegally discharge waste into the Gulf. And what about the barge on the Mississippi that recently leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel oil into the river? Or how about the oil spill from a leaking pipeline in San Leon, Texas that happened just today?

It’s as if Crownover is living in some alternative universe.

But you can’t really blame her. The drilling-is-safe/”not-one-drop-spilled” meme has caught fire in the GOP ranks, bandied cavalierly about by John McCain, Fox News talking heads, and a hundred others who’ve read the talking points. Texas elected officials, who speak with some authority about the oil bidness, have gotten in on the act. For example, Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames-Jones, whose agency regulates the oil and gas industry, writing in the Washington Post, urged federal policymakers to “cast off ’70s thinking and learn from the recent experiences of energy-producing states such as Texas.” The impacts on sensitive areas like ANWR, she said, would be “minuscule.”

Contrary to the belief of some, repeating something that is untrue over and over does not make it true.

Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Round Rock) says he’s not a “gimmicky guy.” Then what was he doing chasing drivers around at a Shell station in Austin this morning for the benefit of the media?

Like many of his House Republican colleagues, McCaul is trying to capitalize politically on sky-high gas prices. So this morning, the congressman — dressed in a white knit shirt and loafers — buttonholed drivers at the pump, telling them about his “all of the above” energy plan, which includes developing renewable power (wind, solar, etc), “clean coal,” nuclear energy and “safe, environmentally sound” drilling in ANWR and other protected areas - with emphasis, it seemed, on the latter.

The congressman also collected receipts from folks that he plans to send to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who opposes increased drilling.

Most people, when McCaul prompted them, said they supported new oil exploration. But there were some surprises. One man, who put $38.50 of gas into his Honda Fit (40 mpg!), said he thought high gas prices were “a good thing” because they “will change habits.” He suggested to McCaul that subsidies for the oil and gas industry ought to be used instead for research into alternative fuels. Many drivers wanted to talk about the promise of renewable power. “Oil’s not going to be around forever,” said Karen Delle-Ford of Cedar Park. We should be looking at “friendly fuels” like wind and solar, she said. But McCaul pressed her about new drilling. As long as it’s “environmentally safe,” she said.

Polls show that Americans are softening their opinion on offshore drilling. A recent CNN poll put support for the measure at 69 percent. So it seems this whole “Drill Here, Drill Now” gambit is actually working for the GOP. But there is little evidence that ramped-up domestic oil production will have much of a near- or long-term effect on oil prices. The Department of Energy estimates that opening ANWR up to exploration will reduce the price at the pump by only a few cents. But McCaul insisted the market would respond immediately if Congress acted. He pointed to the drop in oil following Bush’s lifting of the executive ban on exploration of the outer continental shelf.

Meanwhile McCaul’s opponent, Larry Joe Doherty, is ridiculing the congressman’s energy plan. Jon Niven, a Doherty staffer, was on-hand at the Shell station with a poop sheet that tallied McCaul’s votes against alternative energy and the $107,000 he’s taken from Big Oil.

One driver was suspiciously on-message. Without prompting, the woman began profusely thanking McCaul and the Republicans for their efforts. She even wrote a snappy note to Pelosi on her receipt: “Dear Nancy, Hope you enjoy your vacation. Get back to work.” The local TV guys were eating the made-for-TV moment up. But, as it turns out, the “random” driver was Rosemary Edwards, the chairwoman of the Travis County Republican Party and occasional donor to Republican candidates. Edwards said she just happened to be driving by and saw McCaul.

Happens to me all the time too.

Van Jones, founder of Green For All, brought a much needed breath of fresh air into the stale atmosphere of Austin’s convention center, which contained the hung-over, sparse remains of the Netroots Nation blogger crowd Sunday morning.

“Wake up. And stay up!” Jones commanded the subdued audience upon taking the stage.

More than his jokes or energy, it was his forward-looking message — a challenge to the progressive bloggers to move beyond their like-minded critiques toward positions of action and leadership — that stirred things up.

“You all got a problem, because y’all are about to win,” Jones said. “Now, you have to prove your ideas are good for governing, not just protesting.”

Jones also issued a warning. Using the Carter presidency as an example, he said the Left must be careful about its excitement over the Obama presidency.

“You can probably get him elected, but not reelected,” said Jones. “Not unless we get really smart about his reelection right now.”

A Democratic president and Congress will leave conservatives with nothing to do but run their mouths, at a time when the new leadership will be inheriting a country that’s heading for stagflation, just as when Carter took office, Jones said.

And Jones fears the result will be a right-wing backlash and years of conservative rule, just like after Carter left office.

To beat stagflation, energy prices must come down, Jones said. The conservatives’ solution is drill and burn, and “we are getting our butts whupped by this drill, drill, drill mantra.” This, he says, is because the green movement is and will continue to be a target of conservatives who label it an elitist movement that leaves the working classes behind.

“It is up to us to say ‘this is not a movement we are going to do to poor people, it is a movement we are doing for poor people,’ he said.

The movement is not dependent upon new technology or new policy, but politics, Jones said. To win, green advocates must change the nature of the debate by promoting the positive aspects of energy reform, like job growth, rather than accentuating the negative, like global warming.

Winning also requires action, not just talk about the problem, said Jones—Action like advocating for the Green Jobs Act and Green Block Grant, and participating in the nationwide green jobs mobilization campaign he’s launching September 27.

As the national landscape changes, the role of the blogosphere is changing. And, as the final keynote speaker, Jones told bloggers their future task requires increasing inclusivity. “You can’t save the polar bear without saving the poor children too. It is one movement,” he said.