Compact feud ends

Nebraska settles nuclear waste suit

The 18-year fight over where to dump Kansas’ low-level nuclear waste ended Monday with a phone call.

Nebraska State Treasurer Ron Ross used the phone to make a $145.8 million wire payment, thereby settling Nebraska’s lawsuit with The Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact, which includes Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

The compact, which originally included Nebraska, got its start in 1983 after a 1980 federal law required states to form regional compacts or be individually responsible for their own low-level radioactive waste.

But no compact dump site was ever built and it seems unlikely one will be. Currently, the country’s low-level waste is primarily handled by private facilities in South Carolina, Utah and Washington state.

“We don’t intend to pursue a regional waste site at this time,” said Joseph Harkins, Kansas’ commissioner on the compact. “There doesn’t appear to be a need to develop another waste site at this time.”

The dump would have held radioactive castoffs such as tools from nuclear power plants, needles from hospitals and clothing from research labs.

Kansas sends its low-level radioactive waste to sites in Barnwell, S.C. and Salt Lake City. The state shipped about 1,240 cubic feet of waste to the two sites in 2004, according to compact statistics. The amount shipped has steadily increased. Kansas shipped about 829 cubic feet in 2003 and 164 cubic feet in 2002.

Large payment

The Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact won a federal court ruling against Nebraska three years ago after the state refused to license a waste facility in Boyd County, not far from the South Dakota border.

Last year, Nebraska agreed to the settlement, which also relieved it of its obligation to house the dump.

If attorney Bob Eye, Lawrence, had his say, Nebraska wouldn’t have made the $145,811,367 payment to the compact.

“Nebraska shouldn’t have to be paying a penny,” he said. “The good news is we’ve avoided sacrificing another piece of good land.”

Eye represented a group of residents in Boyd County opposing the waste facility in their back yard. He said the land for the potential dump site was “completely unsuitable.”

“It was in a wetland,” Eye said. “Wetlands and radioactive wastes do not mix.”

But compact officials insisted Nebraska officials didn’t allow the facility because it was politically unpopular.

“They simply decided they didn’t want the waste site there,” Harkins said. “And a judge decided they were interfering with the application process and that’s why the state made the payments back to the other four states.”

The $145.8 million payment, the single largest known in Nebraska history, equates to about $83 for every man, woman and child in the state.

The bulk – $115 million – will go to the utility companies that paid most of the money during the licensing process. The four states will share $4 million, with the site contractor US Ecology receiving $12 million. Smaller claims for money were to be discussed at the compact’s meeting in January.

Harkins said the compact’s commission reserved action on $15 million of the settlement.

Compact history

Legal wrangling between the compact and Nebraska ended in 2002, when U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf in Lincoln ruled that former Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson, now a U.S. senator, engaged in a politically motivated and orchestrated plot to keep the dump from being built in Nebraska.

Kopf had ordered Nebraska to pay $151 million.

Nebraska left the compact in July 2004.

As part of the settlement agreed to last year by then-Gov. Mike Johanns, Nebraska agreed to drop its Supreme Court appeal of Kopf’s decision and pay $141 million, which with interest has since grown to $145.8 million.