The state of New Mexico is expanding its legal campaign against spent fuel storage with a new lawsuit challenging a proposed interim storage facility in Texas, according to a press release Monday.
State attorney general Hector Balderas and the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) asked a judge in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to review the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to license Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) proposed interim storage site in Andrews, Texas, according to a news release published Monday.
“The NRC has rammed through this approval of a nuclear waste dump just outside of New Mexico’s border in violation of the clear intent of Congress and without due regard to the risks and expenses it would impose on our State,” Balderas said in the release.
In his argument, attached to the press release, Balderas said that NRC’s environmental impact statement (EIS) for the proposed Texas site runs afoul of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The agency’s EIS “has satisfied neither statutory nor regulatory requirements and its record of decision eschews reasonable consideration of environmental impacts” of the proposed site, Balderas argued. At press time Monday the case had yet to be docketed with the Tenth Circuit.
New Mexico is also locked in a legal battle with NRC over another proposed interim storage site in its own state. A separate suit filed by Balderas over Holtec International’s planned site in Eddy County, N.M. is awaiting judgement in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico, where NRC has asked a judge to dismiss the case.
Updated 11/15/2021 at 4:38 p.m. Eastern time with Balderas’s press release and argument.
