Видео: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=lh_HI-CYyGs

 

R: My name is officially Robert Wilson. Everyone calls me Bob, because everyone does that. I am a lawyer, I was licensed years ago in Texas, I practice law.My legal practice since the mid-70s has included dealing with radioactive materials and radioactive-materials licensing.Originally for uranium mining and spreading out to different devices and source manufacturers. I won't bore you with all the history. That's one of the things I do. The other thing I do is kind of interesting, it's water law. Both those things come into being. I'm still kind of practicing, I don't actively practice. My position on the Commission is as Chairman, I've been on the Commission since the commissioners in Texas were named in November of 2008.And so I'm one of two of us who have been around for that long.

 O: What is the mission of your Commissions and yours as chairman?

R: The Commission is an agency that oversees the operations of a compact.And under U.S. law, because of interstate commerce, people who do things in one state can continuous operate in another state, because of interstate commerce, for various reasons.But there is an exception to that.If two states have an agreement, and that agreement is recognized by congress, then those states can limit the commercial activities, things that just happen in those two states. So when Texas decided that it wanted to establish low level waste sites, and it did that in 1981, in order to exclude waste from any other state from coming in, or from all other states from coming in, they entered into a compact with the state of Vermont, and that does something, and I'm going to use the technical legal term, it interrupts the dormant commerce clause under the US constitution. So our primary job is to have a site in Texas that's open to generators of low-level waste in Texas and Vermont.And then if they want to ship somewhere else other than that site, they have to talk to us and get an agreement.If somebody who is not in Texas or Vermont wants to ship to the Texas site, they have to have an agreement with us before they can do that or else they can't bring it in for disposal atthe Texas site.

O: Is it correct that the Commission protects Texas interests?

R: That's half of it.Texas and Vermont.We're there to protect generators in Texas and Vermont to make sure they have a place to go with their low-level waste. And then if somebody is not in Texas and Vermont and they want to ship in, we can allow that under certain circumstances that the Texas Legislature set into law, and then we set.

 O: May I ask you to speak a little bit about the decision-making process?Today there were no conflicts.But maybe there have been in the past?How is the final decision made?Is it the Commission members or consensus?

R: The requirement under the Compact is that it cannot be an official act of the Compact Commission unless five of the eight members are in favor of it.There have been times when one or two members have disagreed and so we had to have a vote, a record vote, to determine if there were five votes in favor of the commission taking an activity.Most of the time, this group of commissioners, as opposed to the first group, does not have disagreements about that, because of the way we divide the work.We have a lot of confidence in John Salsman of the technical issues on the technical committee.We have questions that could come up about details and occasionally things get modified in votes of the commission, based upon the explanations we receive on the details.But the essential question is will we allow people to import waste into the compact for disposal and if so, what are the conditions, and if so, what are the limits that we impose on that.We generally ... the disagreements have come because of some things that happened in the Legislature, that they specify terms in the license. We don't issue the license. But we recognize those provisions and there can be disagreements over interpretations of what those provisions are.

 O: Who is the person or organization who provides the election to your Commission?

R: All of the members of the Texas members of the Commission, there are six from Texas and two from Vermont, and Vermont has an alternate. The Compact itself, the language of the agreement, says that Texas has six commissioners, and Vermont has a proportional number, but they have currently two. One of them, Jane Sanders, is here today, is an alternate fromVermont.Texas can appoint alternates. But the governors of each state appoint us. We're not elected. In Texas we serve for staggered six-year terms.So each one of us, we have an appointment date, separated by two years, but each one of us is appointed for a six year term. The governor also designates the person to be chairman.I was designated in 2011 and I still serve as chair.

O: Thank you.

R: You're very welcome.

 A: I would like to ask about the placement of this site twenty years ago? Who was the main person? The state, federal government?

R: To do what?

 O: It is a question about who chose this place where the repository is?

R: The Texas Legislature when it passed the law, it had an obligation under the Compact, under the agreement with Vermont, to develop a site.And I'm going to give you a brief history.Texas created the agency in 1981 to take this on. In 1993, the Texas Legislature passed an agreement with Vermont. It got ratified in 1998 by Congress.So that there was an agreement in place, a Compact is the term that existed between Texas and Vermont for the establishment of this site.That was in 1998. In 1998 the organization that was formed in 1981 to do the job had an application that failed. And so they went out of existence. So from 1998 to 2003, Texas had the obligation to develop a site, but no way to do it, because there was a prohibition in Texas law against a private company having a license to do this particular task. And so the law changed in 2003. When the law was changed in 2003, the Legislature specified a whole bunch of conditions on geographic location. They wanted it away from the Mexican border, they wanted it away from the coast, and a whole bunch of other things.So WCS made an application, it was the second one that's actually been made for a site, the first one failed for a site out in Sierra Blanca, which is in West Texas, for this one they went to the local community, they already had facilities there, the local community agreed to back it, and that made a huge difference. But they picked the site and then of course they filed an application in 2004. The license took five years to develop and issue.

 O: Is it correct that your Commission is like a supervisor of the business process?

R: OK, we have an oversight on who sends waste in and who sends waste out. That's our primary function. We have some other functions. But we generally don't get involved in the business of operating the site. We don't know how much revenue it generates, we don't care.We don't know what the contracts look like for disposal. It's not up to us.It's up to the site operator and the regulatory agency, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, we're kept out of all that. So we have a right to say, it doesn't matter to us if they contract with Tennessee Valley Association to bring in all sorts of stuff.Before that contract can be put into effect, they have to get an agreement from us.

 O: Thank you.