Thursday, June 6, 1996

Children March Against West Texas Nuclear Waste Dump

By MICHAEL HOLMES Associated Press

AUSTIN - Several hundred demonstrators, many of them children, marched on the Governor's Mansion Wednesday to urge that the state not build a nuclear waste dump near the West Texas town of Sierra Blanca.

"Stop the dump," they chanted in English and Spanish as they neared the mansion.
The crowd also displayed handmade signs reading, "Nuclear Dumps Aren't Healthy for Children,"
"Whose Back Yard?" and "Save Sierra Blanca."

One person shouted, "Put it in the Governor's Mansion."

The state is looking at building the radioactive waste dump near Sierra Blanca, about 80 miles southeast of El Paso and 16 miles from the Rio Grande.

The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission this spring issued a favorable environmental assessment of the project. The agency is taking public comments on the proposal and is expected to decide in about a year whether to license it.

Opponents say they are worried about the safety of the facility and point out that it would be located over a buried fault in an active earthquake zone.

"They're dumping it over our water supply and the babies, they could get sick," said 10-year-old Joshua Ramirez of Sierra Blanca, one of Wednesday's marchers. "We don't want the dump."
Many of the demonstrators were from Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, the largest city downstream on the Rio Grande from the proposed site.

That city's mayor, Emilio de Hoyos Cerna, met briefly with Gov. George W. Bush.
Speaking through a translator, the mayor said he told Bush of the safety concerns raised by the prospect of the dump.

"The environment doesn't belong to one group, it belongs to the entire world. It is everybody's duty to try to defend it," he said.

Karen Hughes, Bush's communications director, met with the demonstrators and said the state needs to find a safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste.

"Gov. Bush welcomes the childrens' concern for the environment and he shares their concern for the environment," Ms. Hughes said.

"We are trying to do the responsible thing in Texas for our environment by looking at ways to dispose of the waste that our universities and hospitals and medical facilities generate," she said.

The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority says the dump will handle waste from universities, medical facilities and nuclear power plants. Texas has entered an agreement to accept material from Vermont and Maine, which state officials say gives Texas much more control over the site.

Ms. Hughes said that agreement "allows Texas to control its own destiny. It will limit the amount of waste that will come into Texas, and it prevents us from being a dumping ground for the rest of the country and far bigger states."

Many residents of Hudspeth County support the dump, said James Peace, the county judge. "With the planning and everything, I do not see any health hazards or anything," he said in a telephone interview.