I wrote the other day about a conversation I had with TCEQ regarding the permit TXU is wanting to have about storing low-level radioactive waste at the Comanche Peak site. (They're already doing it, this is a renewal). TCEQ also told me that plans are to, instead of storing at Comanche Peak, take the waste to.... Andrews County. In fact, TCEQ has already issued a draft permit for that purpose. But it seems that Andrews County citizens don't want it either.

Environmentalists and residents want the state to reject a proposal by a Dallas-based company to bury tons of radioactive waste in West Texas, a move some fear is the first step to making the state a dumping ground for dangerous pollution.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a draft license last month to allow Waste Control Specialists to bury low-level radioactive material at its plant in Andrews County, northwest of Midland on the New Mexico border. If approved, the company will bury tons of waste, already at the site, from a long-abandoned uranium-processing plant in Fernald, Ohio, near Cincinnati.

Waste Control has been trying since 2004 to get approval to bury 3,776 steel drums of uranium tailings -- finely ground contaminated sand left over from the chemical process that extracts uranium to make nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The waste is encased in concrete inside the drums, each weighing 20,000 pounds, and would be buried in sealed landfills on the 1,340-acre site.