Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
4/24/2015
The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission approved unanimously last week the proposed rule update to its exportation and importation rules, Compact Executive Director Leigh Ing said this week at the Low-Level Waste Forum in Alexandria, Va. The Texas Compact is currently undergoing a general rules update with a focus on better tightening its regulations on importation and exportation of waste. Also included in the update is a reworking of the Compact’s policy under rule §675.23, which adds language stating that the Compact’s policy is to “promote the health, safety, and welfare” of its citizens as well as to “distribute costs, benefits, and obligations among the party states.” According to Ing, the proposed rules should be in the Texas Register next week, starting a 45-day public comment period. Following the public comment period, the Compact will address any outstanding issues and vote on a final rule, which Ing expects to go into effect sometime in September.
The proposed rule includes clarifying language to help make the export and import process easier for both the Compact and for generators, according to Ing. Among the changes, the proposed rules removed all the isotopes reporting, streamlined the amendment process, changed the origin reporting process, and aligned the exporting process more closely to the importing process. On some of the changes, Ing remarked: “We removed all the isotopes reporting. That was a big nightmare for folks. We talked to TCEQ and the Compact Facility, and there is no need to do that from those perspectives or any other perspective, so we took that out.” She added, “We are no longer going to ask for state by state where you are bringing waste in from. We are now just going to have recordings as compact by compact, and unaffiliated states or territories.”
Management Proposed Rule Not Included
Ing also indicated that §675.24, the section regarding the importation of exempt waste to Waste Control Specialists’ RCRA hazardous waste landfill, known as the management rule, still needed more work and was not included with the other proposed rules. “One thing the rules did not do at this stage in the proposal is address the concept of management,” Ing said. She added, “Taking a look at the concept of what we wanted to do to management, what we really discovered we wanted to know—our commissioners were pretty unanimous about this—is a sense of what was coming into our Compact for management. But we don’t necessarily want people to have to apply for that like they do for disposal.” Ing indicated that this process was still being worked out, but that the Compact was leaning towards certain notification requirements for the waste.
Previously, Texas Compact Commissioner Linda Morris also said that the purpose of any management rule would be more geared toward notification than tracking. “Regarding §675.24, which we are tentatively calling ‘The Management Rule,’ that needs more work,” Morris said back in January. She went on to say, “Adding my personal comment, I don’t really feel like ‘management’ captures the rule. With §675.24, what we are trying to do is really more of a notification process, a tracking process, that we want to accomplish with this rule. We are going to do a little more study and some more meetings with other agencies to make sure we are doing what we want to accomplish.”
Last September, EnergySolutions used the new rule draft language to raise questions about the legitimacy of Waste Control Specialists’ ability to accept exempt waste in its RCRA hazardous waste landfill. EnergySolutions has argued that the new language in the updated policy statement proved the WCS exempt waste cell was antithetical to Compact policy, bringing the exempt waste issue into a larger spotlight within the Compact’s rule update. WCS, for its part, has argued that the exempt waste does not affect the financials of Class A waste disposal, and may actually improve them. WCS also argued that the public safety issue was well-covered by TCEQ’s stringent regulatory requirements. The Texas Compact agreed to add the issue to its update along with other waste that falls under the ‘management’ umbrella—waste that is low-level, but is not being disposed of in the Compact facility.
