A bill that would have banned storage of high level waste in Texas was yanked ahead of a scheduled floor vote in the state’s House of Representatives for being “substantially and materially misleading,” the state Speaker of the House said.
H.B. 2692, proposed in March by state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R), got tossed back into committee not because of its proposal to ban high level waste storage, but because of apparent confusion over the changes it would have made to low-level waste-storage fees — both of which have ramifications for Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas, part of Landgraf’s district.
On Wednesday afternoon, a procedural motion by Rep. Tom Craddick (R) ground debate on Landgraf’s bill to a halt for more than an hour, after which Texas House Speaker Rep. Dade Phelan (R) announced that the measure didn’t adequately address “provisions governing the manner in which a new waste disposal fee comparison is made for purposes of determining a fee rebate.”
For now, the bill is back in the state House Environmental Regulation Committee, according to the legislature’s records. Landgraf chairs the panel, which hadn’t scheduled any meeting on the bill at deadline Thursday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
If Landgraf’s proposed measure became law, not only would the storage of high-level radioactive waste be banned in Texas, but certain state fees associated with storing low-level waste would be eliminated.
Waste Control Specialists operates a low-level waste disposal site in Andrews County, Texas, in Landgraf’s district. The company is also waiting for federal approval to build an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at the Andrews site, for which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently working on an environmental impact statement.
Landgraf said he was “mystified” by what he called “a pretty substantial interest” in his proposed measure from the full legislature.
“I’m sorry for all the attention that this has gotten, because it was never my intention for this to be a contentious issue,” Landgraf said.
