Simmons once told D CEO editor Glenn Hunter that if he landed the right permits, one of his companies could easily net another $200 million a year profit. Well, today, after 14 years of trying to get the state to allow him to bury radioactive waste in West Texas (shown left), it’s finally happened. February’s issue of D CEO (on newsstands soon, if not now) describes how Simmons and his company, Waste Control Specialists, worked the State Legislature and the people of Andrews County, Texas, to grease the skids.The story was one of the more unconventional D CEO features we’ve done because Harold Simmons wasn’t doing interviews on this – I suspect he didn’t want to jeopardize the years of work by saying the wrong thing, or something like that. Regardless, we forged ahead and wrote around him, pulling material from his biography (“Golden Boy: The Harold Simmons Story”) as well as the people of Andrews County, Texas, and interviewing Simmons’ lieutenants. It’s an interesting read, if I do say so myself (I guess I just did).
Basically, what happened today is that:
– The TCEQ board of commissioners denied opponents like that Sierra Club a chance for a hearing to air their issues with building a radioactive waste landfill at that location (mostly, they’re worried about water contamination and erosion).
– and the board granted Waste Control a final license to bury low-level radioactive waste on their site.
This opens the way for Dallas-based Waste Control to start work on the disposal site, which would be the only one of its kind in the state, and one of three in the United States. Right now, low-level radioactive waste (such as worn-out water filters from nuclear reactors) are usually stored on site. Simmons hopes his firm will be able cash in on the disposal needs of the federal government, as well as the needs of Texas and Vermont (which has agreed to ship its low-level radioactive waste to Texas).
The next magical question: Are we going to see more trucks rolling on Texas highways and byways sporting nuclear symbols? My bet is yes. Will I be less inclined to tailgait said trucks? Again, yes.
