Article for Vermont Law School "Forum" September 9, 1998 |
Alexander Lee is a first-year student from Brookline, MA. He apologizes
for not talking about the weather, which was worthy of note this week.
In his spare time, he helps run a small non-profit, called Project
Laundry List. Stay tuned.
This column could as well be titled: "Why I Voted for Fred Tuttle in the
Primary".
The issues surrounding the Texas-Maine-Vermont Compact made the front
page of the Boston Globe last Tuesday, so why shouldn’t they make the
front page of The Forum? The Compact is a legal issue after all. In
fact, it violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President
Clinton’s 1994 Executive Order on environmental justice, and the 1983 La
Paz Agreement. The latter, of course, was meant to halt the
proliferation of maquiladores—polluting, low-paying industrial sites
along the United States-Mexico border. Like every treaty that the United
States has ever made with its indigenous people, we do not intend to
honor this one with the brown people to our south. The Mexican Congress
has voted unanimously against the dump, but to little avail.
Maybe you know nothing about this Compact. In brief, the Compact will
allow transportation of Maine and Vermont’s “low-level” nuclear
waste—much of which is highly toxic and should be classified as
high-level waste—to an impoverished community in Hudspeth County, TX,
called Sierra Blanca. The National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, and
hundreds of environmental and human rights groups have opposed the
Compact. It passed through the House a couple months ago and the
conference committee’s version, stripped of two critical amendments, was
ratified by the U.S. Senate on September 2, 1998.
All three of Vermont’s “progressive” legislators—Sanders, Leahy, and
Jeffords—irresponsibly and unresponsively voted for the Compact. All
three attribute their support to Governor Dean and the Vermont
Legislature’s support for the Compact. (A straw vote in the State Senate
shows that a considerable majority of its thirty members would like to
vote again on the Compact, now that more information is available. The
truly honorable Elizabeth Ready from Addison County has taken a
leadership position in opposing the Compact, but, unfortunately, it is
probably too late.)
All three of our Hon.(?) federal delegates say that our state
geologist, Larry Becker, has demonstrated with “sound science” that
Texas is a more appropriate place for burial of low-level nuclear waste.
First of all, these elected officials ignore above-ground, on-site,
monitored, long-term storage, which is a viable option. Second, while
Texas in general may be better suited for burial of low-level waste,
Sierra Blanca in particular is situated on a fault in the most
tectonically active area of the state. The site is 16 miles from the Rio
Grande River and lies within its watershed.
To this line of reasoning, Sanders et al. reply that it is a matter of
state’s rights. They assert that the Texas legislature chose Sierra
Blanca—a poor, Spanish-speaking, Hispanic community on the Rio
Grande—and Congress did not. The Compact, they say, does not specify a
locale. This is a thinly veiled cop-out. Nobody honestly believes that
the Texas Legislature will review and change its decision. A vote for
the Compact is a vote for the Sierra Blanca dump site, plain and simple.
The most avid libertarians and could undoubtedly see through such
uncharacteristic kowtows to “states rights” policy.
When a child makes a mess, it is fairly standard practice for a parent
to ask the child to pick it up. Thirty years-ago industry promised that
a solution to the nuclear waste problem lay just around the corner.
Today that solution is still not here, but instead of taking personal
responsibility for the mess that it has created, Vermont is poised to
send its waste on a dangerous 2,400 mile journey in unmarked
tractor-trailers to West Texas’ poorest county.
The chances of an executive veto are slim because Senator Leahy, who
would sit on the Judiciary Committee if Clinton (or his penis) were to
suffer an impeachment trial, has been an avid supporter of the Compact.
I join Father Ralph Solis, the priest of Sierra Blanca’s church; Bishop
Armando Ochoa, D.D., of the El Paso Diocese; and thousands of other
Americans who pray for justice. What other recourse do we have
left...besides maybe the courts?
Sierra Club office, same address
BY ALEXANDER LEE
10 Waterview Road
Colchester, VT 05446
phone 802 658-1908
fax 802 660-4366
phone and fax: 802 651-0169
888 729-4109
Vermont.chapter@sierraclub.org