Waste Control Specialists now estimates that its disposal facility will be operational on Jan. 3, 2012, President Rod Baltzer said at the Texas Compact Commission meeting held in Austin, Texas yesterday. “We have submitted all of the requirements to [the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality], the 60-day clock started for most on November 4, so we expect the facility to be open January 3,” Baltzer said. However, a variety of administrative processes that the Compact and state regulators have yet to complete could keep WCS from actually receiving significant quantities of waste at the site until March 2012.
In addition to the 16 pending amendment requests to WCS’ license that TCEQ is working through, the agency has to complete a rulemaking process examining inadvertent comingling of wastes at out-of-compact processors. The current limit, set by the Compact, is 5 percent. Susan Jablonski, director of the radiation division of TCEQ, told the Compact Commission yesterday that TCEQ’s commissioners will meet to discuss the rulemaking Dec. 7 and would finalize the rulemaking no sooner than mid-2012. The Compact also has to draft forms for out-of-Compact generators to apply to send waste to WCS, and will examine amending its bylaws to better align with laws the Texas legislature passed in June governing LLRW sent to WCS at a workshop scheduled for Nov. 22 in Austin.
In addition to all that, WCS itself threw a monkey wrench into the timing of administrative procedures when it submitted a substantially revised rate application package to TCEQ Nov. 8. “A new rate filing package has been filed and we’re concerned with what that means,” Rene Ruiz with the South Texas Project told the Compact Commission yesterday. The TCEQ had been set to issue maximum rates—which would trigger the beginning of the year-long contested rate hearing process, which many in-compact utilities are waiting on before agreeing to send waste to WCS—by the end of this year, but the new rate application package could potentially start the entire rate setting process at TCEQ over again. TCEQ’s Jablonski told the Commission: “It was a surprise to us. I don’t know what its impact might be.” Ruiz said, “We’re concerned that that’s going to delay the amount of time to come to a rate that would come after a contested rate.”