New England's pay toilet.

• Author: Blakeslee, Nate
• Position: Fight against US radioactive waste dump in Sierra Blanca, TX - On The Line - Brief Article

In 1991, the state of Texas drew a box around a small section of Hudspeth County in the far western part of the state and announced its intention to build a low-level radioactive waste dump there.

Maine and Vermont, both looking for a site for their waste, soon joined in. The national nuclear industry has thrown its weight behind the Sierra Blanca project, which could eventually become a repository for the nation's nuclear dumpers.

But the state of Texas wasn't prepared for community opposition.

"We already have the world's largest sewer dump," says local rancher Bill Addington, referring to the Merco Joint Venture sewage sludge operation, which spreads 250 tons of imported New York City sewage per week on ranch land just north of Sierra Blanca. "When the state came calling again, we said we weren't put here to be New England's pay toilet." Addington, whose grandfather helped found Sierra Blanca, has worked tirelessly against the dump, educating himself and his neighbors about radioactive waste, exposing the strategy of the state's disposal authority, and rallying support in other small West Texas towns.

The activists are drawing attention to a 1983 state-sponsored study that was explicit about targeting areas with high minority populations for waste dumps. "Hispanics, particularly those with little formal education and low incomes," were singled out. The Texas government may have had this study in mind when it chose Sierra Blanca, a low-income, predominantly Mexican American farming and ranching community of about 800 people near the Mexican border. The dump would sit less than twenty miles from the Rio Grande, in the state's most active earthquake zone, and above an aquifer.

After six years of work, Addington's group has grown into a statewide coalition that...