New Texas Nuclear Waste Dump Site and the Billionaire behind it.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-04/republican-donor-simmons-seeks-rule-to-fill-texas-dump#p1

This article published in Bloomberg Business Week discusses a nuclear waste dumpsite in West Texas that has already been built, and is currently in the process of seeking government approval to be filled. For this to happen the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must change some federal rules for dumping such waste. This would be a multi-billion dollar industry, and a certain proponent of the site is doing everything he can to influence authorities through lobbying, donations, and other methods to make that happen.

The article also discusses the man behind the dump, Harold Simmons, an 80-year-old native Texan hailing from the small northeastern town of Golden whom made his Bloomberg estimated 6.5 billion dollar fortune through involvement in a number of businesses and industries, many of which were not exactly environmentally friendly. He was a former executive at NL industries, once called national lead company, who conducted lead mining in America for well over a century and were the leading source for lead in paint products like Dutchboy, before they diversified into titanium dioxide based paints, atomic bomb elements, ball bearing slides, solder, pipes. By the 1950’s National lead had mostly stopped mining and instead imported its lead and bought ore from mines in the Adirondacks, Quebec, Norway, Cuba, and Australia. The company also made products used in castor oil, oil drills, airplanes, and rayon. In the 1970’s many of their weapons plants were tested and proven to be contaminated areas, including a national lead plant in Fernald Ohio that produced high-level uranium. A decade later in the 1980’s, a subsidiary of national lead agreed to a multi-billion dollar cleanup plan. The article details the innumerable political donations and lobbying that Simmons has handed out throughout the second half of this century to secure his industrial business interests. Simmons’ has been in trouble before, by 1974 he had been indicted and acquitted for both wire and mail fraud, and was targeted by a lawsuit leveled against him by the United Auto Workers union for his handlings of their pensions. More popularly he was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to take over Lockheed to drain its pension fund, which was over financed by about 1.4 billion.  He coined the banking approach of “all debt and no equity” a philosophy of capital management wherein he discovered, and I quote: "Small banks in Texas were casual about getting the maximum use of their funds. . . banks were the most highly leveraged thing I saw. They borrowed most of their money and really didn't need much equity except for purposes of public confidence." Realizing that banks could be bought largely with borrowed money and one could be used collaterally to acquire he set out to "buy a bunch, because one bank could be used to finance another. All debt and no equity." His financial dealings are as shady as his industrial.

Unfortunately, we have this waste and something must be done about it. There are federal dumping sites but Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Policy has advised government officials that a new dumping area for radioactive waste  (other than the Nevada Yucca Mountains site) is needed, and in 2010, a leader from within Simmons’ Waste Control Specialist company invited public officials on the commission to visit the west Texas site which they propose is the ‘ideal’ geological space for long-term storage of such waste.

Former Texas environmental official, Glenn Lewis, who resigned from his position out of protest over Simmons’ powerful lobbying influence within the state, and lamented that Simmons was likely to find a way to influence the federal avenues of power to get approval to start filling the dump with radioactive waste: Whatever federal switch has to be thrown to get uranium into the hole, believe me, it will be thrown; that’s how Harold Simmons works.”  Chuck McDonald, a spokesman for Waste Control Specialists, said “there really is no connection between Mr. Simmons’s personal political giving, which he has said he is doing because he believes very strongly in pro-business and free enterprise, and anything WCS is doing.”

The article raised a question for me over what we can really do about nuclear waste, and how much influence people like Harold Simmons and the industries they represent have. Simmon’s is Opera Winfrey’s neighbor in Montecito California and has made an appearance on her show, but certainly not to tout his environmentally unfriendly role in industries, it was to talk the prized sweet potato festival of his hometown. He does do a considerable amount of charity but those contributions are shadowed by his political donations to the GOP, while Obama has been in power Simmons has shown his willingness to reach across the aisles with bipartisan support, however, the money does not come without an agenda.  We inevitably generate the waste through our reliance on nuclear power, which begs the question of how we can safely and responsibly dispose of it?  Although it does not contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions that so many are more concerned with in this era of high climate change consciousness, nuclear power and the waste it generates obviously hold many environmental dangers and public health concerns of their own.

Karen Hadden, the director of the Austin-based SEED Coalition, an environmental advocacy group that supports clean air and water in Texas and opposes the site was quoted: “The money is so huge, and the political pressure is so strong -- that’s what we’re dealing with here…Harold Simmons wants it to be a nuclear mega-mall." This is admittedly a difficult issue because it is hard to determine where nuclear waste can be safely and responsibly stored, however, I imagine that Simmons’ site, which is not far from Andrews County, Texas whose capital which has a population of around 15,000, could be facing some environmental and health concerns as a result of this waste. How can Justice be preserved for people and the environment when these industries and billionaires behind them have so much influence?