A federal court on Friday agreed to review the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s call to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a proposed interim storage site in west Texas, according to case filings.
Before the weekend, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals carried NRC’s Nov. 3 motion to dismiss Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s suit against the agency over the proposed Interim Storage Partners (ISP) site in Andrews, Texas, which it licensed in September. The commission argued that Paxton’s suit lacks jurisdiction because Texas took its case to court without adequately participating in agency-level licensing proceedings.
As of Tuesday morning, the court hadn’t yet ruled on the motion to dismiss. In a separate filing Friday, the court instructed Texas to file its next briefing by Dec. 29.
Paxton’s team on Nov. 15 said “the agency has exceeded its power” by licensing the proposed ISP facility. The state attorney general pointed to letters sent to the commission by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) opposing the site as examples of adequate state participation in the site’s licensing process.
The public has yet to get anything else in the way of an argument from Texas. Paxton said Nov. 15 that the state was still developing “its attack on the Commission’s authority to issue the license.”
ISP, a joint venture between Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and Orano USA, is looking to build its proposed site at WCS’s existing low-level waste disposal facility in Andrews.
Meanwhile, the state of New Mexico is fighting its own war on interim storage on two fronts.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas announced his own challenge to the proposed ISP site in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Nov. 15. Balderas is already suing NRC over another proposed interim storage site owned by Holtec International and planned for Eddy County, N.M. That suit, docketed in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico, is also on hold pending a motion to dismiss from the commission.
