The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is scheduled next week to consider updating its regulations to reduce a specific fee for disposal of radioactive waste at a state-owned facility operated by Waste Control Specialists.
With approval from the commission, the curie inventory charge would be cut from $0.40 per millicurie (1/1000th of a curie) to $0.05 per millicurie for waste shipped to the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact facility in Andrews County.
That new amount in the Texas Administrative Code chapter on radioactive substances rules would be the maximum paid by waste generators in the compact’s member states – currently just Texas and Vermont – and the minimum paid for waste shipped from any other state. Both groups would then potentially save money in their shipments to Texas.
The Waste Control Specialists’ request is intended to further increase its competitiveness in the national market for disposal of low-level waste – particularly after reductions in other charges expired last fall, according to the TCEQ notice for the March 20 request.
The rulemaking replaces a July 2019 petition from Waste Control Specialists that covered the curie inventory charge and other items, which was subsequently withdrawn. It will be formally proposed during the April 8 meeting of the three commissioners, followed by publication on April 24 in the Texas Register and a potential hearing on May 18. The public comment period is planned for April 24 to May 26, with adoption of the new rule nominally on July 1.
The Compact Waste Facility has operated for eight years on Waste Control Specialists’ nearly 1,400-acre property along the Texas-New Mexico border. It is available for disposal of Class A, B, and C low-level wastes from Texas, Vermont, and 34 other states that are not members of a separate regional waste-disposal compact.
Texas is both the owner and licensor for the compact facility, with WCS the operator and licensee. From its opening through the end of September 2019 it received 121,744.83 cubic feet of waste from member states and 710,641.06 from nonparty generators.
Waste Control Specialists lost millions of dollars for its former owner, holding company Valhi Inc., before its January 2018 sale to private-equity firm J.F. Lehman & Co. The Dallas-based company’s earnings figures are no longer made public, but it has continued to look for opportunities to both reduce costs and increase revenue by attracting more customers.
The various fees and charges for disposal in the compact facility, set by the state, have been one such opportunity.
The Texas Legislature in 2017 passed a bill that cut the disposal surcharge from states outside the compact from 20% to 10% and cut off the 5% state fee for all waste shipped to the facility to Sept. 1, 2019. An amendment to an unrelated Texas Senate bill on domestic abuse in the latest legislative session would have extended those rebates to Sept. 1, 2021. However, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed the bill last June, complaining that the breaks for Waste Control Specialists had been shoehorned into a “laudable effort to address domestic violence.”
“The licensee has stated that the lower curie inventory charge is needed to stay competitive after the surcharges on disposal of nonparty compact waste changed from 16.25% to 31.25% on September 1, 2019,” according to the notice.
Waste generators pay several charges and surcharges for disposal at the Compact Waste Facility, encompassing a base disposal charge with costs broken down by waste volume, type, and radioactivity; a $20,000 weight surcharge for shipments above 50,000 pounds; a dose-rate surcharge of $400 per cubit foot above 500 roentgen per hour; and a $75,000 irradiated hardware surcharge. None of the other charges would be revised under this proposal.
The state collects revenue from the Waste Control Specialists operation via the 20% surcharge on disposal of the total contracted rate for material from non-compact states, along with the 5% surcharge on the gross receipts from both the Compact Waste Facility and a separate facility for federal waste. Another 1.25% surcharge pays for operation of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, while Andrews County takes in revenue from a 5% surcharge from the gross receipts from the compact and federal waste facilities.
Next week’s meeting is closed to the public to help prevent the spread of the respiratory disease COVID-19, which as of Thursday had killed more than 4,500 people in the United States. The meeting will be available by telephone, at (844) 368-7161, meeting code 435007#. It will also be webcast live.
