This booklet is about nuclear waste disposal, and also about how society deals with important social issues involving scientific and technical problems. The audience to whom this work is directed is. the general public. The geologic and entire scientific communities are awakening to the fact that our communication of scientific observations and interpretations to the general public is inadequate. Scientific societal issues are complex and challenging. This booklet seeks to address these issues under the guise of nuclear waste disposal. Given the nature of the problem, this work is not comprehensive and all inclusive.

To the residents of the El Paso-Juarez region, the idea of nuclear waste is very remote. High electric rates enforce the realization that the El Paso Electric Company draws some of the electricity for El Paso, Juarez, and Las Cruces, from the Palo Verde nuclear plant west of Phoenix, Arizona. Few realize that hospitals and research institutions generate a large amount of the low-level nuclear waste, which is at issue here. In Texas, most of the waste to be buried was generated in the eastern and southeastern parts of the state.

The residents of the El Paso-Juarez region should understand ideas contained in the map, Figure 1. The proposed Fort Hancock Low-Level Nuclear Waste Site has arbitrarily been moved 50 mi further east, because El Paso yelled loudly. The placement of this burial site somewhere in west Texas is a foregone conclusion. Please take the time yourself to place on Figure 1 the location of the future low-level site near Sierra Blanca. You should know where it is.

Not well known to the general public is the fact that Mexico has already established and carried out a nuclear burial south of Juarez. In 1982, the largest radiation accident in North America happened in Juarez, Mexico, and, once discovered, the contaminated rebar (reinforcing steel used in construction, furniture and other uses) was buried in the desert sands southwest of
Samalayuca, Chihuahua (see Fig. 1).

Finally, another nuclear waste site exists in the El Paso-Juarez region, and that is the WIPP Site near Carlsbad, New Mexico, designated by the U.S. Department of Energy, for low-level radioactive waste (Fig. 1) and for radioactive material generated by the Department of Defense in bomb manufacture. This is referred to by Dennis Powers in Chapter 3.

The El Paso-Juarez area is isolated from the rest of their respective countries and states, and a paranoid person might view Figure 1 and decide that the region was being unjustly put upon. The possibility of such political maneuvering cannot be denied. General scientific reasons do exist for the concentration of nuclear waste sites as illustrated in Figure 1. Perhaps the most important thing is the lack of rainfall. In addition, there is the small population density. Finally, the potential of danger from radiation damage from a low-level waste site is less than potential damage from a hazardous waste site. Legally, low-level sites have to plan for 400 years in the future, a time during which the radioactive isotopes, which have short half lives, have largely disintegrated and are no longer harmful. An additional potential danger, however, is that the radioactive material disintegrates into heavy metals such as lead which themselves are toxic. Dispersion and redistribution of this material must be better understood. However, in hazardous waste sites, many dangerous chemical do not have half lives -- they last forever. Chromium, lead and mercury do not disintegrate.

Radioactivity and other things nuclear are topics which draw more fear than respect from the general public, although it is a useful phenomena in most hospitals and used in much scientific research. This is an area where it is believed that the nuclear industry has an unfulfilled mission of education.

When a radioactive chemical element decays, it changes into a lighter element called the "daughter". Energy is given off in this process in several different forms. The rate of decay is the half-life. Most rocks have a small amount of radioactivity. These concepts are illustrated in Figure 2a and Figure 2b. This energy can be beneficial by generating electricity or curing cancer, or it can be destructive as in a bomb or as a contaminant to the environment. The extensive use of radioactivity by society creates radioactive waste. Society has in general not decided where to bury this waste, and the present booklet is about this decision process.

Danger from the waste can be of two forms: 1) damage, genetic change, or death to biologic species, including humans, from the high energy radioactivity, and 2) toxicity of radioactive or daughter metals and gases.

The burial of nuclear waste is idealized in Figure 3, whereas Figure 4a and Figure 4b, and Figure 5, illustrate potential interruptions to quiet burial caused by the geological hazards of the region. These hazards include earthquakes and faulting, volcanic eruptions, rainfall and flooding, groundwater movement, and a rising water table level. Questions about the degree of likelihood of each of these potential hazards creates geological controversy.

A statement of the general nuclear waste problem is presented in the next chapter of this booklet, a reprint of an article in Geotimes, the "Time" magazine of geology. Low- and high-level nuclear waste are different problems, and it is only low-level waste which is being considered for west Texas. Aspects of the waste site selection process are given in chapter IV by Dr. Dennis Powers, who has 16 years of experience in helping to solve various nuclear waste problems. Additional information is given CHAPTER IX.

As stated above, this booklet is about how scientific data is transferred to the general public, and how successfully the transfer and its understanding are accomplished. Chapters III, V, and VI are directed towards these issues, as seen through the minds of three professors at UT El Paso. They have done an excellent job presenting their work on this most interesting question. Issues such as these are vital to our society today. Our dysfunctional family (Chapter V) must develop better contemplative and communicative activities, and free ourselves of the burdens of such extreme self-centeredness. The common good is a democratic value upon which we should have more focus.

Upon completion of this booklet, it was sent to the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority for an "in kind" contribution. Lawrence Jacobi, Jr., General Manager, has spiritedly provided the material in Chapter VII. Mr. Jacobi regrets that this present volume is not more thorough and should be more extensively researched. However, the intent of the editors is for a short booklet directed towards the general public. The Mexican government has reviewed the scientific data generated concerning the proposed site so close to their border, but excerpts of that report cannot be included at this time.

Archeological resources of the region are discussed in chapter VIII. This provides explanations of features in the area that are of interest to the general public. The inclusion of this topic is intended to emphasize the many things of interest which can be present in such a desert site. Nearby in some of the same rock units giant tortoise fossils were discovered several years ago and portions of mammoth skeletons have also been found.

Lynda Lynch (private citizen, advocate, artist and Hudspeth County native) wrote the Chapter X article entitled 30 Miles of Dust, Hudspeth County Nuclear Dump Moves but Goes Nowhere.

Finally, the geology and hydrology are the data, the 'facts', and in the present booklet these have been taken and summarized largely from recent scientific studies paid for by the Texas State Low Level Nuclear Waste Authority. The studies were carried out by the Bureau of Economic Geology of the State of Texas. These are short, objective, scientific documents, summarizing studies of specific questions or targets. Often it is difficult for the general public to understand the relevance of this information to scientific issues, and the present volume does not pretend to provide a complete geological understanding to the general public. The volume of scientific literature is large and not all of it could be referred to here. Results of some studies are summarized in Chapter XI.

This booklet is also designed to serve as a guidebook to the Fort Hancock area itself, although it is evident that site will not be utilized by the Texas Low-Level Nuclear Waste Authority for disposal purposes. The past-Governor of Texas, Ann Richards, overruled the Texas Low-Level Nuclear Waste Authority on this issue, and it was suggested that the site be east of Sierra Blanca, 50 mi east of the now discarded Fort Hancock site. An artistic rendition of this action is featured on the cover of this booklet. Study of the area is now deemed to be in vain, but the situation can be used as a the site location change. Chapter XI gives a brief guide to features in the Fort Hancock region. With respect to the desert , two different opinions are common: 1) it is a beautiful area and ecosystem, 2) it is ugly and dead. You must visit the area to decide for yourself, and to ponder more deeply the issues at hand. Field trips can be made to the area, and eventually to Sierra Blanca. Such trips are a rewarding way to face and better understand the issues.

The nuclear and nuclear waste communities as a whole must develop better ways of communicating with the general public. Governmental/political authorities at times dictate actions against the will of minority polarized opinions; however, often these minority opinions can be reasoned with by communication and education. The U.S. Department of Energy stated recently that it recognizes that certain social issues are important to radioactive waste management as well as technical issues, and, no social issue "commands as much attention and is as widely regarded and far reaching as the question of public trust and confidence". To this goal, the DOE initiated the first meeting on May 14, 1991, of the Advisory Board Task Force to Ensure Public Trust and Confidence. Texas has not yet been rewarded by such open-mindedness. Indeed, hopefully an extreme opinion was expressed by Texas State Senator Bill Sims: "I'll be dead by the time it leaks" -- and he will be buried far away.

Acknowledgments
The sponsors and publishers of this booklet, the El Paso Geological Society, Department of Geological Sciences, and the Energy Center, are thanked for their support of this public education effort. The Society is a not4or-profit organization of El Paso citizens and professionals interested in the geological sciences, and the Department and Center are a part of The University of Texas at El Paso.

The authors of the chapters of this booklet contributed their expertise and time to make this booklet possible. Geotimes granted permission for the reproduction of Chapter II. Pam Hart provided continuing office assistance, Sandra Ladewig kindly gave editorial assistance and word processing skills. Kathy Goodell proof read the final volume. All of these people are thanked for their efforts. 

 The fate of low-level radioactive waste disposal in the United States is an issue that is gaining controversy as states grapple with the federally mandated site-selection process. The current national search for disposal sites began in 1980, when Congress passed the "Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act." This bill required individual states or groups of states - compacts - to manage and dispose of their own low-level waste, and a deadline of 1986 was set for sites to begin accepting wastes. At the time the act was signed into law, commercial sites in Beatty, Nev., Barnwell, S.C., and Richland, Wash., accommodated all wastes.
 

COMPACT MEMBERSHIP
Compact	State
Northwest	Alaska, Hawaii, Washington*+, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Montana
Southwest	California*, Arizona, North Dakota, South Dakota
Midwest	Michigan*, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri
Central Interstate	Nebraska*, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana
Central Midwest	Illinois*, Kentucky
Appalachian	Pennsylvania*, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware
Northeast	Connecticut*, New Jersey*
Southeast	North Carolina*, South Carolina+, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida
* Host State  + Active Site

By 1985 Congress realized that insufficient progress was being made to meet the upcoming deadline and passed the "Low-Level Waste Policy Amendments Act." This bill extended the final deadline for operating sites to Jan. 1, 1993, and set up intermediate milestones and penalties for states and compacts that procrastinated.

Site selection is proceeding more slowly than mandated by the 1980 and 1985 federal acts. There are many reasons for these delays, not the least of which are state and local politics and a lack of public confidence in the ability of scientists and engineers to design and build environmentally safe disposal sites for radioactive waste.

The site-selection process is generally similar from state to state. Host states are set for all compacts. Site-selection criteria are set in each host state and unaffiliated state. A state-wide exclusionary screening procedure leads to the identification of candidate areas and finally to the selection of several potential sites for detailed site characterization. If a site meets siting criteria, a license application is then submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or approved state agency. As of late 1990, progress toward the 1993 deadline is highly uneven among states and compacts. Arid Western host states are locating potentially suitable sites more. rapidly than states in the more humid climatic regime east of the Mississippi River: For example, in 1988 California joined Arizona, North Dakota, and South Dakota to form the Southwestern Compact, and the Ward Valley site in the Mojave Desert was designated as its proposed site. A license application has been submitted and the facility could begin operating in 1991. Favorable hydrogeological characteristics of the site include 6 in of annual precipitation and the 650- to 700-foot depth of the water table.

The Central Interstate Compact has made considerable progress toward construction of a facility in Nebraska. Three sites were characterized and the Bufte site in north-central Nebraska was selected. The license application is now in the review stage. The Bufte site has a buffer of 500 to 1,000 ft of Cretaceous shale between the waste and the area's main aquifer, the Dakota Sandstone. The water table is shallow, (15 ft) but the proposed facility design consists of above- ground vaults.

Texas, an unaffiliated state, has chosen a site 40 mi southeast of El Paso at the eastern edge of the Hueco bolson, a major basin-and-range graben. Annual rainfall at the site is nine inches, potential evaporation is 73 in, and the water table is 500 ft below land surface. Groundwater quality is poor in the Tertiary and Holocene alluvium underlying the site, and the site has no hydraulic connection with bolson sediments that serve as aquifers. Formal designation and

licensing have been postponed by a lawsuit filed by El Paso County. The estimated date for facility operation has been pushed back to 1996. The Northwest Compact is unique in that its states will be served after the 1992 deadline by the existing site at Richland, WA. The Rocky Mountain Compact is negotiating with the Northwest Compact for use of the Richland site after its current site at Beatty, NV, closes in 1992.

High water tables, more abundant rainfall, and higher population density have made site selection more difficult in the east. Public and political resistance to siting have been intense in Michigan, the host state for the Midwest Compact. In 1989, three candidate areas were chosen in Pleistocene glacial lake beds. Two of these were excluded quickly after identification of more wetlands than mapped originally. The final candidate area in southeast Michigan was subjected to more detailed scrutiny. This site is underlain by up to 150 ft of low-permeability lacustrine sediments over Devonian black shale. Despite these favorable characteristics, the water table is near land surface and flooding is common. The site was therefore excluded, and evaluation was initiated on the remaining 78 areas not ruled out by the statewide exclusionary screen. In 1990, two events further clouded the process. First, the Midwest Compact voted to deny funding for simultaneous evaluation of the 78 sites. Second, officials from the three current host states threatened to refuse access to Michigan waste unless siting criteria were made less stringent by the Michigan legislature. Michigan has challenged both of these actions.

In the Central Midwest Compact, two Illinois sites have progressed through site characterization. The Martinsville alternative site includes a thick sequence of glacial sediments containing multiple discontinuous sand and gravel beds. Three-dimensional ground-water modeling has been successful in simulating ground-water flow within the complex stratigraphy of the site. The ability to model and monitor site performance is a federally mandated requirement of site selection.

Closure of the Barnwell site in 1992 will require development of a new site for the Southeast Compact. Four favorable site areas have been identified in the host state of North Carolina. In April 1990, two of these were selected for site characterization. The anticipated opening of the site is delayed until Jan. 1, 1995.

Two compacts in the northeast have not yet named candidate areas or sites. The Appalachian Compact, with Pennsylvania as its host state, has finalized siting criteria, as have New Jersey and Connecticut, which form the Northeast Compact. The Northeast Compact is atypical in that both member states will be host states.

Several unaffiliated states in the northeast have not yet reached the site characterization stage. Site selection in Maine differs from other states in that volunteer candidate areas have been solicited from local governments and private industry. Evaluation of these areas will be simultaneous with areas identified by a systematic screening process. Five potential sites in south-central New York were identified in 1989. These sites are located in areas of fine-grained till overlying shale. On-site precharacterization studies scheduled for early 1990 were postponed due to citizen opposition. A new amendment to the state legislation changed the siting process in several ways, including a requirement for approval of a facility design before site selection.
 

Congress adopted the Low-level Radioactive Waste Policy Act in 1980 requiring the States either to enter into an interstate compact for the establishment of a common disposal site or to develop their own site. Either way, the Act required that the waste disposal facility be on line by 1993 (91 U.S. Stat. 3347,1980). In compliance with the federal law the Texas General Assembly adopted the Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority Act in 1981 (67 Tx. Leg. R.S. 713, 1981).

Though the law did enable the Authority to contract with an "interstate agency," the provisions of the original Act reflected the clear intention of the Legislature that the disposal site should be in Texas. Not until 1991, after the Authority site selection process had been rebuffed by both the State Court and Legislature, did the law makers seriously consider the possibility of joining an interstate compact. Senate Bill 552 authorized the State to enter into such a compact under certain conditions, even to locate a common disposal site in Texas (72 Tx. Leg, R.S. 2095, 1 991).

However, no such interest was evident in the formative years of the Authority. The Authority, first established in 1982, is headed by a six member board including one physician, one lawyer, one health physicist, one geologist, and two representatives of the general public, appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Senate. The site selection process commenced in 1983 with a survey of the geology, hydrology, archeology, demography and land use of every county in the State. An environmental engineering consulting firm, Dames and Moore, was hired by the Authority to conduct the study. Two counties in South Texas, McMullen and Dimmit, emerged from that study with what were called the "best" sites. Strong local opposition, however, prompted that region's State Senator, Judith Zaffirini of Laredo, in the 1985 legislative session to propose changes in the site selection criteria which would have the effect of eliminating those two "best" sites from consideration. Zaffirini, a member of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, waited until Committee Chairman Tell Santiestaban of El Paso was away from the capitol to push her proposals through the committee where they had been pigeonholed by Santiestaban. The 1985 site selection amendments subsequently adopted, pointed the Authority away from McMullen and Dimmit Counties in South Texas to Hudspeth County in Far West Texas by: 1) prohibiting the location of a disposal site within 20 mi upstream or up-drainage from a water reservoir, 2) relieving the Authority of the obligation to select the "best site", and 3) giving preference to an "equally suitable" site on land owned by the State (619 Tx. Leg. R.S. 2479, 1985).

It was the state land preference in the 1985 amendments, along with repeal of the "best site" criteria, which shifted the focus of the Authority to far West Texas where most of those state lands are located. The 20 mi reservoir setback rule had the effect of eliminating the originally preferred South Texas sites, but it also applied with equal logic to the subsequently favored site at Fort Hancock in Hudspeth County (Plaintiffs' Closing Argument 1990, p. 19).

Legislative revision of the site selection criteria triggered the Authority to launch a new search, this time for a "suitable site" rather than the "best site." Interpreting the amendment to eliminate, for all practical purposes, all but state owned land, the new Dames and Moore study was restricted to land held in the permanent school or university funds, and Hudspeth County has more of such land that any other county in the State.

Fort Hancock, which lies along Interstate 10, 48 mi east of the El Paso city Limits, was not identified as one of the "relatively more suitable sites" in the original Dames and Moore siting study. A cursory and informal in-house search by the Authority staff in the Spring of 1985 identified five apparently suitable sites, all in Hudspeth County (Hussey 1986). The Fort Hancock site was one of those (Plaintiffs' Closing Argument, 1990, p. 12). According to the Plaintiffs in the 1990 case County of El Paso v. Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority:

The Fort Hancock site was first identified in April, 1985; studied continuously by TLLRWDA beginning no later than July, 1985 to the present; first incorporated in a formal document by the TLLRWDA in October, 1985; chosen by the Board of directors as a potential disposal site in November 1986; and proposed by the board as the "most suitable site" in November, 1989 (Plaintiffs' Closing Argument, 1990, p. 3-4).

The Authority was required by the 1981 statute to select at least two potential sites by 1986. To meet the deadline, the Board in 1986 selected the Fort Hancock site in southern Hudspeth County as its clear choice, and a northern Hudspeth County site which previously had been rejected by the Board as geologically too complex. In effect, the Board Included the northern site as a "ringer" to meet the two site requirement, but leaving Fort Hancock as the only viable choice (Frownfelter, 1991b).

Former El Paso County Attorney Luther Jones was elected County Judge in November, 1986. When the Authority Board designated Fort Hancock as a "potential disposal site," Jones called upon newly elected County Attorney Joe Lucas to initiate legal proceedings against the Authority (Jones, 1991). Lucas selected as Special Assistant County Attorney and lead counsel in the subsequent lawsuits an attorney with substantial experience in environmental and nuclear regulatory law. Darcy Frownfelter had become familiar with the problem of low-level radioactive waste disposal while legal counsel to Idaho Governor John Evans' Office of Energy. Evans was Chairman of the Subcommittee on Nuclear Power of the National Governor's Conference, the major concern of which was low-level radioactive waste disposal, and Frownfelter chaired the staff committee. In El Paso, specializing In water law, he was a logical choice to represent the plaintiffs and was retained early in 1987 (Frownfelter, 1991b).

On February 20, 1987 he asked 34' District Court Judge William Moody, sitting in Hudspeth County, for a declaratory judgment against the Authority's interpretation of the statute governing the disposal site selection process (Frownfelter, 1991a). Judge Moody immediately issued a temporary restraining order, and on March 2' a temporary injunction prohibiting the Authority from proceeding with site selection until he could hearths declaratory judgment request on its merits (Opinion, 1987, p. 1).

Specifically, the Authority was enjoined from:

1.Selecting the two potential sites in Hudspeth County pursuant to Section 3.07(a) [of the Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority Act].

2.Selecting any site in the State pursuant to Section 3.06 and Section 3.07 which is not the "best site."

3.Selecting any site pursuant to Section 3.06 and 3.07 which is within 20 ml upstream or up-drainage of any reservoir project that has been constructed.

4.Preferring state owned lands and selecting sites pursuant to Section 3,06 and Section 3.07(a) (Opinion, 1987, P. 4).

Five months later the Texas Legislature, in special session, changed the site selection criteria to meet much of Moody's injunction (70 Tx. Leg. S.C.S. 87, 1987). According to the Eighth District Court of Appeals, to whom the Authority had appealed the District Court Decision:

• The "best site" location criteria urged by appellee has been changed to require the Authority to select [a] suitable site....

• The "State Land Preference" requirement which was conditioned on funds being specifically appropriated under Section 3.07A(a) has now been amended abolishing the prerequisite funding ... (Opinion, 1987, p. 5).

By September of 1987 Hudspeth County had joined El Paso County in the legal challenge to the Authority, along with Hudspeth County Conservation and Reclamation District No. 1, Hudspeth County Underground Water Conservation and Declamation District No. I and a number of Hudspeth County ranchers. El Paso's standing In the case was based upon the fact that the Fort Hancock site lay less that 15 mi from El Paso County, that it lay along the natural growth corridor of the El Paso urban area, and that it sits above ground water reserves needed by the El Paso metropolitan area (Lucas, 1991). The addition of plaintiffs from Hudspeth County greatly strengthened the standing of Plaintiffs, though El Paso County still bore the legal expenses.

Meanwhile, the El Paso County Attorney's Office was gearing up to battle the Authority on a wide range of site selection standards. Geologist Mark Turnbough, who had discussed the Fort Hancock site with candidate Luther Jones prior to the 1986 election, was selected by Jones to put together a task force of scientists and engineers to conduct an independent investigation of the Fort Hancock site (Turnbough, 1991). Experts in geology, geomorphology, hydrology, archeology, demography, land use and wildlife management were employed to study, and if findings warranted, challenge the findings of the Authority in regard to site selection criteria.

Selected in May of 1988 to coordinate the efforts of experts in many scientific and engineering specializations and make comprehensive independent evaluation of the Fort Hancock site on behalf of Plaintiffs was the Phoenix firm Sergent, Hauskins and Beckwith, consulting geotechnical engineers usually representing the applicant in licensing proceedings (Turnbough, 1991).

Gayle Garner was named First Assistant County Attorney in January, 1988, then joined Frownfelter in preparing the case against the Authority in August, 1989. An amended petition was filed in Judge Moody's Court in May, 1990, following a two year moratorium in which scientific investigations were conducted by both sides (Frownfelter, 1991b). Trial was held September 6-22, 1990. Plaintiffs challenged the Authority's choice of the Fort Hancock site on grounds that it violated the site selection standards adopted by the Board:

1.The site is located in what is called an area of complex geology: it is the only area in Texas with any earthquake potential, scarcely 95 mi from the epicenter of the Valentine earthquake of 1931.

2.The site lies on a 100 year flood plain, directly up-drainage and 10 mi away from that major international waterway, the Rio Grande River. Further, it lies in a recharge zone for the Hueco Bolson which is the major source of water for the El Paso/Juarez metropolitan area.

3.The site sits astride a natural growth corridor for the El Paso metropolitan area.

4.It lies within 3 mi of the Alamo Canyon/Wilkey Ranch National Register Archeological District and several other rock art preserves which may one day be listed in the National Register.

5.The Fort Hancock site lies wholly within or adjacent to the 3 mi protective zone of a wildlife management area operated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department under a lease agreement with the General Land Office.

6.The site contains one wetland designated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Another such wetland is located just north of the Authority's choice for low-level radioactive waste disposal (Plaintiffs' Closing Argument, 1990).

Defendants relied primarily upon procedural grounds to defend their position:

1.El Paso County lacked standing to sue since it has no extraterritorial jurisdiction.

2.The doctrine of sovereign immunity protects the State from being sued without its consent, except on federal constitutional questions, and the one constitutional question raised by Plaintiffs, the equal protection of the laws clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, protects private but not corporate persons.

3.The District Court lacked jurisdiction since the Legislature provided for judicial review only at the conclusion of the licensing process.

4.It was the Legislature's intent, in setting standards for site selection, that the Authority apply the standards flexibly, in accordance with its professional judgment; in other words, that the administrative agency charged with the responsibility of administering a legislative act, is best qualified to interpret that act.

5.In any case, the Plaintiffs were premature in their suit since the Authority had made no final choice of the disposal site and therefore none of the Plaintiffs had suffered any injury from the site selection process (Defendants' Final argument, 1990).

Defendants made no real effort to rebut the factual allegations of the Plaintiffs except to minimize their significance or the ability of Plaintiffs to interpret the facts. Their entire case seemed to be based upon the assumption that the Disposal Authority Act of 1981 had empowered the Board and its staff as the sole authority on low-level radioactive waste disposal and that any challenge to that authority was not only contrary to legislative intent but impertinent as well.

Judge Moody found for the Plaintiffs on January 21, 1991 and issued a permanent injunction against selection of the Fort Hancock site by the Authority (Final Judgment 1991). Rather than moving immediately to appeal the District Court decision, the Authority followed the strategy which had worked so well in 1987. State Representative Dan Shelly of Houston, home of the Texas Light and Power Company, which generates most of the State's low-level radioactive waste, introduced legislation which would have had the effect of nullifying Judge Moody's decision. House Bill 2665, referred to the House Environmental Affairs Committee, directed the Authority to select the Fort Hancock site "notwithstanding any other law . . ." and to make application to all state and federal agencies from which licenses must be obtained. The Texas Department of Health was given 30 days from receipt of the application from the Authority to act on the application. The bill further provided that any future judgment, injunction, declaration or writ issued against the Authority by District Court would be suspended upon the filing of an appeal to any higher court, and only the Texas Supreme Court would have the authority to reinstate the judgment pending appeal. Finally the bill provided that, in the future, action could be brought against the Authority only in Travis County (the State capitol) District Court (Shelly, 1991).

If adopted and upheld by the State Supreme Court, the Shelly bill would have nullified Judge Moody's order because the injunction was directed against the Authority's site selection criteria and process which would have been superceded and overriden by the Legislature's site declaration(Garner,1991b). According to First Assistant County Attorney Gayle Garner, had H.B. 2665 been adopted in its original form, El Paso's only recourse would have been:

• to file a new lawsuit charging the Legislature with intruding upon the authority of the Court and thereby violating the Separation of Powers doctrine of the State Constitution,
• in an administrative hearing, to contest the Authority's subsequent license application to the State Bureau of Radiation Control, where the sole issue would be the suitability of the Fort Hancock site without reference to any other site, or
• to challenge the probable conclusion of the Bureau of Radiation Control back in State Court (Garner, 1991, p. 3.)

The committee, however, failed to honor the agreement. While Shelly and Garner were back home consulting with their respective principals, the committee met and voted the Shelly bill out with a recommendation for approval by the full House. Shelly urged Garner to continue the search for a compromise, an urging seconded by El Paso Senator Peggy Reason, who felt that the Senate leadership would support such a compromise.

Attorneys Garner and Frownfelter, along with geologist Turnbough, after consultation with El Paso and Hudspeth County Commissioners Court and the Authority staff, identified a 400 mi' area at the extreme northeastern edge of Hudspeth County within which could be found the requisite geologic, hydrologic and archeologic characteristics. Shelly objected to the lack of a fail back provision in the El Paso substitute, to reinstate the Fort Hancock site if the compromise proved unsuitable, and he ultimately opposed the compromise on the House floor (Garner, 1991b, p. 4-5).

Shelly offered his original bill to the full House membership, while El Paso representatives Pat Haggerty and Nancy McDonald introduced amendments to substitute the Fort Hancock site with the compromise site from northeast Hudspeth County. Haggerty led the floor fight for adoption of the amendments. His argument focused upon two points: (1) that the Legislature would be violating the Separation of Powers doctrine of the Texas Constitution if it adopted the original Shelly bill because of the latter's apparent intrusion upon the authority of the court system, and (2) that the Authority itself had concluded early in the process that Fort Hancock was not a good site and it made little sense to reverse that original conclusion, particularly when the compromise offered what seemed to be a far superior site (Haggerty, 1991).

Haggerty's argument was bolstered behind the scenes by the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization (EPISO), led by Sister Maribeth Larkin, in its alliance with other Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in Texas. The alliance had opposed selection of the South Texas sites in 1985 when Larkin was associated with the Valley Interfaith CBO in Westlaco, Texas, because the Authority seemed to be "dumping" on Mexican American communities. Similar opposition to the Fort Hancock site was placed near the top of the alliance's 1991 legislative agenda (Larkin, 1991). As a result the Governor and Lt. Governor, as well as members of the Legislature, were heavily lobbied.

Governor Ann Richards who received strong support from the CBO alliance in the 1990 elections, went so far as to suggest to the Authority that it seek an alternative site (Richards, 1991), a suggestion the Authority Board rejected (Resolution, 1991). However much Governor Richards may have supported the CBO alliance in its opposition to the Fort Hancock site, her attraction to the Houston and Dallas power companies was apparently stronger, for she resisted all attempts to extract a veto pledge from her (Garner, 1991c).

The House vote of 81-41 in favor of the El Paso amendments came as something of a surprise considering the intense floor fight waged by Shelly and the Chairman of the Environmental Affairs Committee, Robert Saunders of La Grange, for the original H,B. 2665. The victory can be attributed to the lobbying efforts of Garner and CBOs behind the scenes, the El Paso House delegation working the floor, and the skillful argument of Haggerty (Garner, 1991c).

The amended bill cleared the House on May 22, five days before the end of the legislative sessions. With time running out, the Authority Board and lobbyists for the Houston and Dallas power companies agreed to support the House-passed version in the Senate where, from her position on the Natural Resources Committee, Senator Rosson had already lined up the support of Lt. Governor Bob Bullock and the ranking member of the Senate, Chet Brooks of Pasadena (Garner, 1991b, p. 5-6). The measure was placed on the Senate "fast track" and emerged three days later with two necessary but noncontroversial procedural amendments which nevertheless required routine House confirmation. Governor Richards signed the bill into law on June 16, 1991, presumably ending the threat to Fort Hancock (72 Tx. Leg. R.S. 2579, 1991).

Conclusion
The facts in the case of the Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal site selection process give rise to several critical questions about the way in which public policy is adopted and administered in Texas:

• Is the State Legislature and bureaucracy competent to deal with public policy questions involving scientific findings?
• Is the Legislature so fragmented that it is incapable of identifying and representing the general public interest?; or
• Does special interest politics so inure legislators to payoffs from special interests that they have lost the will to stand for the common good?

The recurring error in the Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority's site selection process was the assumption of politics as usual, where special interests choose up sides and the loser gets the dump site as booby prize. The Legislature played lip service to scientific integrity by requiring that the Authority be dominated by scientists and that their siting studies follow clearly defined scientific standards. However, when those scientists and their standards pointed to a site unacceptable to certain special interests, the Legislature rewrote the standards as necessary to guarantee that the political acceptability of the site would override scientific acceptability (Jones, 1991). Then, rather than insisting upon a site which would meet the scientific criteria, the scientists and engineers of the Authority followed the course of political expediency. It is unfortunate, but not unexpected, that scientists turned bureaucrats behave more like bureaucrats than scientists. The evidence is convincing that, in their minds, members of the Authority staff settled on Hudspeth County because of its political expediency long before there were any studies of its suitability; indeed, at a time when the only evidence, the original Dames and Moore survey, suggested its unsuitability (Plaintiffs' Closing Argument, 1990).

The subordination of general public interest to special interest in this or any other contemporary public policy issue can be traced to the lack of any kind of institution in Texas government which is capable of identifying and representing that general interest. The same technology which produces radioactive waste has also turned Texas into a highly diverse society. Representatives elected in both the House and the Senate must certainly defend the interests of their particular locale or region against the demands of other areas, but Senate and House leadership could promote the common interest were party organization, to which such leadership historically has been obligated, alive and well. However, in Texas, as across the country, the grass roots party structure is in shambles, forcing candidates who have won a place on the party ballot to turn to big money special Interests to fund increasingly expensive election campaigns. Governors, elected by a statewide constituency, are in a better position to identify and represent the general interest, but they too must depend upon special interests to fund statewide media campaigns and find themselves obligated to special rather than general interests in the policy making process.

In the Texas search for a disposal site, Governor Ann Richards did ultimately come down on the side of the general public interest, but she did so to fulfill an obligation to one special interest, the CBO alliance, and her commitment to that interest was limited by her obligation to another special interest, the Houston and Dallas power companies. Senator Rosson lays the blame for the whole site selection debacle upon (1) the "arrogance which permeates the utility industry," and (2) upon the federal government's failure to impose site selection standards and exercise oversight of the siting process (Rosson, 1991). Representative Haggerty blames the legislative process: Legislative sessions are too short to conduct the State's law making business, lot alone exercise the proper oversight of such agencies as the Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority (Haggerty, 1991).

Texas was saved from legislative, bureaucratic and special interest irresponsibility by the political leadership of County Judge Luther Jones, County Attorneys Joe Lucas and Gayle Garner, State Representative Pat Haggerty and State Senator Peggy Rosson, as they represented the special interests of Far West Texas, and by the willingness of the El Paso public to commit 2.75 million dollars to the mobilization of the massive scientific and legal expertise necessary to shock the Court and the General Assembly into recognition of the problem. It was, after all, the expert scientific analysis of the Fort Hancock site and expert legal presentation of scientific findings which convinced the Court and the Legislature of the Authority's error. What is most sobering about the case is the demonstration that science must compete with special interests on the latter's terms if it wishes to influence public policy on such critical environmental issues as ozone depletion, global warming and radioactive waste disposal. One wonders if the public is ready to finance science PACs so as to "buy" the support of legislators. The alternative Is serious reform of legislator compensation and elections, including campaign finance, so as to eliminate the extraordinary influence of special interests. One wonders if the public is ready to reform the system.

References
Bennett, W. Lance, 1991, The Governing Crisis: Media, Money and Marketing in American Elections: St. Martins Press, New York, 256 p.

'Defendants' Final Argument, 1990, El Paso County v. Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority, 34th District Court of Texas, No. 2588-34 Nov. 19.

Final Judgment, 1991, El Paso County v. TLLRWDA, 34th District Court of Texas, No. 2588-34, April 25.

Frownfelter, Darcy, 1991a, Interview, July 11.
Frownfelter, Darcy, 1991b, Interview, September 26.

Garner, Gayle, 1991a, Interview, July 16.
Garner, Gayle,1991b, Memorandum to the Author, October. 15.
Garner, Gayle, 1991c, Interview, October 18.

Haggerty, Pat, 1991, Interview, September 10.

Hussy, James, 1985, Memorandum to Sal and Ruben, July 20.

Jones, Luther, 1991, Interview, August 2.

Larkin, Maribeth, 1991, Interview, July 19.

Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980, U.S. Stat. 3347.

Lucas, Joe, 1991, Interview, July 26.

"Opinion of the Court',1987, Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority. EI Paso County, 740 S.W.2d 7 (Tx. App. -- El Paso 1987).

"Plaintiffs' Closing Argument", 1990, El Paso County v. TLLRWDA, 34th District Court, No. 2588-34, Nov. 19.

"Resolution", 1991, Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority Board of Directors, April 2.

Richards, Ann, 1991, Letter to Lawrence R. Jacobi, Jr., March 1 5,

Rosson, Peggy, 1991, Interview, September 13.

Shelley, Dan, 1991, House Bill 2665, Texas General Assembly, March 8.

Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority Act of 1981. 67 Tx. Leg. Regular Session 713.

Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority Act of 1981, 1985 Amendments. 69 Tx. Leg. Regular Session 2479.

Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority Act of 1981, 1987 Amendments. 70 Tx. Leg. Second Called Session 87.

Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority Act of 1981, 1991 Amendments. 72 Tx. Leg. Regular Session 2095, 2529.

Turnbough, Mark 1991, Interview, October 2.

Introduction
Locating a site for a significant project or facility results in either a conjunction or collision of political and technical needs. Fear, greed, political agendas, real and perceived effects, regulations, law, and technical criteria can provide a volatile mix, as can be observed in any number of projects, including radioactive waste disposal, where a site must be found. Technical aspects of locating a site commonly are poorly presented and understood, contributing to the volatility.

I will discuss my experience and understanding of the process of locating and studying a site based on three radioactive waste disposal projects: 1) the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) project located east of Carlsbad, NM; 2) the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority (TLLRWDA) attempt to locate a site in Hudspeth County, TX; and 3) the Yucca Mountain Project (YMP) In Nevada.

The WIPP is intended as a disposal site for transuranic waste which has been produced through the nation's nuclear weapons programs. Most of the waste is also low level and can be handled without elaborate protection. I began work on the WIPP in 1975, before the present site was selected. As an employee, and later as a division supervisor, at Sandia National Laboratories, I was responsible for much of the early investigation of the present site. I continue to work on the geology of the site as a consultant.

The TLLRWDA is responsible for locating and characterizing a site, within Texas, for the disposal of low level radioactive waste generated by various sources, such as hospitals and commercial nuclear reactors. The Rio Grande Council of Governments (then West Texas COG) sponsored a committee or panel of volunteer members to examine the site selection process and studies of the specific site$ in west Texas. I served on this committee and provided a review of the process and sites, as they were known at that time.

The YMP is a project for the disposal of high level commercial radioactive waste, such as spent fuel rods from commercial power-producing reactors. The site under investigation is in southern Nevada, at the southwest corner of the Nevada Test Site, For more than a year and a half, I have been chairman of an international external review panel examining reports in which it is claimed that the site is unsuitable because of the potential for groundwater to rise hundreds of feet above its present level in response to earthquakes.

The processes by which these sites were selected differ considerably overall but have some common elements.

A Site Selection Process
There are several steps to be taken to try to find a suitable site for a project or facility.

In the first place, we must identify the need for the project: locate a place to build a high-security prison or locate a site to isolate radioactive waste. Such needs are readily identified; there may be some conflict over the need (e.g., are high-security prisons the proper solution to the problem of having desperados among us?), but these are not the conflicts which usually arouse you, me, and our neighbors to action over a specific location.

The next step usually is to identify some initial factors which can be used to narrow the search from the world in general to a reasonably-sized piece of ground. Such factors usually mix a variety of needs ranging from technical to political and may not be totally defensible. When we were trying to find a new site for the WIPP in 1976 (after rejecting an initial site after 3 boreholes were drilled), all areas within 2 mi of deeper boreholes were eliminated initially due to unresolved concern about the effects of dissolution of salt around boreholes (Griswold, 1977; Powers et al., 1978). A radius of 1 mi was later believed to be adequate based on further studies.

These initial factors serve as screening devices: we eliminate areas from consideration on the basis of a variety of features including common sense geological factors and political factors. We include areas which have the positive or minimum characteristics necessary for the facility or site. So the factors may be either inclusionary or exclusionary, but they are designed to reduce the area to be further examined to a manageable size.

A common exclusionary factor common for sites or facilities involving some possible hazards is to locate the site away from population centers. If something goes awry at a facility, human exposure to hazards should be less at a remote site. Such a criterion for the TLLRWDA eliminated much of the eastern part of the state early in the process. A more cynical view is that avoiding areas of high population density is a political necessity; areas like west Texas have fewer votes within the Texas legislature to oppose a site or affect the conditions placed by the legislature on the site selection. In this case, both a common sense technical screening parameter and political reality produce the same effect. People opposing a site location can perceive the technical screening parameter as simply a device to mask political motives.

When a possible site for the WIPP was searched for during the early 1970's, a positive criterion was that thick salt beds had to be available. Much of the U.S. does not have salt beds under the surface. Areas under parts of Michigan, Now York, the Gulf Coast, west Texas and New Mexico, parts of eastern Kansas and Oklahoma, western North Dakota, and eastern Utah have significant salt beds. Kansas and some other areas were eliminated in general by factors such as poor records of drilling, high population, and land use.

Further examples of these screening criteria might include:
 

Initial site characterization of one or two locations will usually reveal more direct evidence that the basic site characteristics are as believed from the evidence available before direct investigation. These efforts might include one or two deeper drill holes, some shallower hydrologic investigations, and a mix of geophysical studies appropriate to show some of the basic site characteristics.

If the initial site investigations confirm the basic characteristics which were attractive during the screening process, the next step of detailed site characterization can begin. Several objectives are important during this phase:

• provide details of the hydrologic system at and around the site,
• determine geologic system in detail,
• investigate the geologic stability of the site,
• analyze the mineral/petroleum resources of the site,
• develop data which may be used for performance assessment,
• select the specific horizon or location for disposal site, and
• examine features which may be "fatal flaw"

The detailed site investigation which follows site selection should be the further basis for finally accepting a site or rejecting it, even after the site may have been examined for years. From a technical viewpoint, this is quite reasonable, though politics[ and economic factors make it important to try to determine as quickly as possible if a site is acceptable or not for the purpose intended.

Common Points in Opposing Sites
There are several common arguments or points which I have seen frequently offered as proposed "killers" for sites. Among these points, I would like to discuss three: 1) the "best site" case, 2) the "fatal flaw," and 3) guaranteeing a site is safe. Each has a certain appeal and is used in various forms during a site investigation.

Many believe or have stated that for purposes of radioactive waste disposal, the "best" site must be found. The point to screening criteria and activity is to avoid the expense and time of studying all of the U.S. or Texas, as the case might be, to find a suitable site. It is also totally impractical to find the "best site." It sounds highly principled to demand that the "best" site only is acceptable. There is, in principal, only one "best' site in the world for low level radioactive waste disposal. The "best" site might even be in Texas, but the money and time to find the "best' site will never be available. In fact, a site which effectively isolates the waste for the required period of time is just as good as the "best" site, and it is all that is necessary from a technical standpoint. The initial or screening criteria practically help us to focus on smaller areas which may be suitable for the needs of the project or facility. It does not sound nearly as good to have an "adequate" site as having the "best' site. In fact, the "best" site will never be demonstrated, and forcing the siting process to work toward the "best" site is effective as a filibuster. It will only delay solution of the underlying problem.

A "fatal flaw"' is usually conceived as some feature that is so significant that it, by itself, is sufficient cause to reject a site regardless of other conditions at the site. Of course the perception of what constitutes a "fatal flaw" is quite variable. An initial site for the WIPP was rejected after a third drill hole at the site revealed the evaporate beds were highly deformed and yielded pressurized brine and gas. The deformation alone was sufficient to reject the site, as mining for a repository would become much more unpredictable and expensive in these beds. The deformed beds were sufficient to reject the site because of conditions desired for mining, though by themselves the deformed beds might well have provided sufficient isolation. The pressurized brine and gas, however, at depths being considered for disposal would have raised further questions about isolation.

In the local fight against the proposed Fort Hancock site for disposal of low level radioactive waste, El Paso county officials believed "fatal flaws" included the earthquake hazard. There are two Interesting aspects to this "fatal flaw" argument. The first is that the disposal site and facility would not include any active systems, such as exist within a reactor or an industrial plant. It is quite likely that engineering design can compensate for the expectable earthquake hazard for this site. While ft is clear there are many areas of Texas with lower earthquake hazards, the earthquake hazard at the Fort Hancock site is not likely a "fatal flaw" which could not be overcome. Even more interesting is the fact that El Paso itself is located in an area with earthquake hazard like that at Fort Hancock. Yet there are no special provisions in the building code for earthquake hazards, and a new county courthouse was designed and built without special provision for earthquake hazard. This was done during the same period the county was vigorously opposing the Fort Hancock site where relatively few people now live or would have been occupied in running the disposal facility. What this illustrates is that "fatal flaws" most often do exist in the eye of the beholder.

I have frequently heard stated the question of whether we (that is, the investigators of a site) can guarantee the safety of the site for the future. An absolute assurance of safety is desired - that there is no possibility of failure. Death and taxes may be certain, but little else is. Most people want to be reassured that there is no risk associated with a site for radioactive or hazardous waste disposal, but would also not believe (and rightly so) any such assurances. Life is a risk, and it is not possible to eliminate risk. We accept certain risks every day associated with our homes, work, and recreation. The public perceives risk in complicated ways which have been discussed and researched over the years. There is no wish, however, to assume an additional risk over which we have no control, even though it might be miniscule. Thus there will continue to be a demand for guarantees of no risk associated with facilities such as radioactive waste disposal site.

Some Concluding Comments
The process of selecting a site and evaluating it, especially for radioactive waste disposal, is lengthy and complex. The site selection process should simply be a ay to find one or more likely candidate sites which can be intensively investigated to determine their final suitability to the required task.

Because the geologic and hydrologic systems interact in complex ways, sites are evaluated on their overall ability to isolate waste. This evaluation is commonly called performance assessment (PA), and it depends on complex modeling of natural processes. While evaluating the significance of processes which may contribute to isolation, some information and processes are found to little affect isolation while others are of greater import. PA can be incorporated with site characterization to help direct resources (intellectual and monetary) toward important problems, with less emphasis on secondary issues. This approach differs from focusing on the single "fatal flaw" by recognizing that the performance of the overall system is important and that one part of the system may compensate for another part (which might be considered a "fatal flaw" by itself).

While PA is a desirable approach, it may be very difficult for many to understand or evaluate the underlying principles, statistical methods, or information used in the analysis. Personal guarantees, "best" sites, and "fatal flaws" are more appealing because the issue commonly Is simply and conclusively stated. Only the "fatal flaw" has some validity, but is often based on widely differing perceptions of what constitutes a "fatal flaw." PA is more defensible as a technical approach, but it will not be appealing to the general public desiring an easily understood answer. It may be reassuring to note that PA will require that the question of suitability of a site will remain open much longer; a "fatal flaw" found during PA will be more subtle and may result from the combination offactors or effects not intuitively understood during early stages.

References Cited
Griswold, G.B, 1977, Site selection and evaluation studies of the Waste Isolation Pilot plant (WIPP), Los Modafios, Eddy County, NM, SAND77-0946. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM.

Powers, D.W., S.J. Lambert, S.E. Shaffer, L.R. Hill, and W.D. Weart (eds.), 1978, Geological characterization report, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) site, southeastern New Mexico, SAND78-1596. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM.

Prologue: "How Did We Get up Here on Stage?"
We are in the midst of a communication crisis of which we are only dimly aware. Science and technology have progressed to a level of complexity beyond the grasp of even an educated public. This public maintains a love/hate relationship with science and technology: an unrelenting belief in its ability to solve complex environmental problems that derive mainly from scientific and technological progress coupled with population density, while struggling to read the programming instructions for their VCR or while gazing absently at the cramped and mysterious contents under the hood of a late model vehicle that won't run. Media personnel, pressured by ratings, advertising budgets, the competition, and dwindling audiences, strive to bring us the latest news in short, comprehensible, and exciting segments. Meanwhile, politicians and policymakers are also trying to understand science. Legislation takes place beneath piles of technical reports, between public outcries and lobbyist whispers, late at night as voting deadlines approach, dozing through expert testimony, worrying about upcoming elections and jockeying for positions of even more power.

These four groups (scientists, citizens, journalists, politicians) are the social actors in an unfolding tragedy. Starring roles are played by science and citizenry, while the media and politicians are cast in supporting roles. The actors speak to each other, but they don't seem to understand what the other is saying. They view each other as adversaries, even as their own survival depends on the actions of their follow actors a dysfunctional family. And the actors are also schizophrenic; they argue with themselves and play more than one role. The scientist sits at his desk composing a letter to the editor. Joe Q. decides to run for office. The reporter decides to go back to school and study engineering so she can make more money. How may we understand what is happening in this play? Is it 'Waiting for Godot" or "No Exit", the "Myth of Sisyphus" or "Six Characters in Search of an Author"?

Setting: Hudspeth County, Viewed through the Eyes of Texas
The case of a low-level radioactive dump site in Hudspeth County, Texas, offers an example of a setting in which we can explore the motives and behaviors of the social actors cast in this drama.

Radioactive waste is being produced in Texas and every other state, but it is not being produced in Hudspeth County. The principal sources of radioactive waste are military and medical research, industrial operations, and nuclear power plants. Low-level wastes are defined as those having

... a half-life of 35 years or less or fewer than 10 nanocuries per gram of transuranics, and may include radioactive material not excluded by this subdivision with a half-life of more than 35 years if special criteria for disposal of that waste are established by the department [Texas Department of Health] (Vernons, 1991:1199).

If the terms nanocuries, transuranics, or half-life are not explained in one of the other papers in this collection, complain to the editors. At the present time, it is inconceivable that our society will stop creating radioactive waste materials; they are the by-product of progress.

In 1980, the U.S. Congress mandated that states, or groups of states, plan for and implement by 1986, a way of disposing of low-level waste they create. At that time three commercial sites in Nevada, South Carolina, and Washington were receiving all the country's low-level waste. (Kehew, 1991). In 1985, the deadline for state or compact (groups of states) sites to be operational was extended to 1993, primarily because the site selection process proved to be so controversial. However, several states have joined together to form compacts, and have made significant progress toward completion of waste facilities. Texas has remained unaffiliated, but is considering forming a compact with Maine, roughly 2500 mi away, and the site of the Yankee Maine Power Plant, scheduled to be decommissioned in the near future, though there may be reason to believe the older plants will not be decommissioned as scheduled (Associated Press, 1991).

Originally, the Texas waste site was to have been south of San Antonio on privately owned land, but a law was passed mandating the site be located on state-owned land which eliminated virtually all sites in central, south, and east Texas (Associated Press, 1991; Scharrer, 1991). As Hudspeth County became the focus of the search for a site, a site near Dell City and a site near Fort Hancock were identified. Opposition to the site from Dell City residents led to the initial choice of Fort Hancock, 37 mi from El Paso. However, a lawsuit filed by El Paso and Hudspeth counties, and a ruling by the governor against the Texas Low-Level Nuclear Authority have mandated a site further away from El Paso. Currently, site selection efforts are concentrated back on private land in the Sierra Blanca area, approximately 90 mi from El Paso.

The Actors: "It's's in My Backyard, It's Not Politically Correct
Scientific information aside, politicians in Austin are unlikely to choose a site near a dense, vocal electorate, even if this is where most of the waste will be generated. Why? Politics are driven by "elite" and "public" opinions. These opinions have consistently taken the "not in my backyard" approach to problem solving. What could have been more political than to look for a site in a remote place, thereby ensuring the safety and relief of citizens and elites in "real" Texas cities. Even more political was the choice of Hudspeth County, inhabited by a few farmers and ranchers and by Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico who would be less likely to have access to power brokers in Austin or elsewhere, who might not even be citizens or registered voters, and who might be unaware of the issues or the process or who might rather have jobs regardless of risk.

However, the decision to locate a waste facility in Hudspeth County must not appear to be motivated by lack of concern for any group, even our Mexican neighbors to the South, 11 mi from the Fort Hancock site. It must appear that the decision to locate the site on public land in Hudspeth County was reached in a most impartial and scientific way (Gamboa, 1990). Now the scientists are called in to testify. But what scientific information is relevant? Do we care about geological stability of the site, rainfall and flood probabilities, the nearness (the "oh so" nearness) of the Rio Grande, potential for contamination of underground aquifers, the hazards of transporting materials from east Texas (or Maine!), the possible loss of knowledge and artifacts from earlier cultures indigenous to the region, the safety of the containers in which the waste will be stored, or the potential health effects of some kind of "accident", or some other piece of information we haven't even considered? Not one scientist understands all these issues, and reputable scientists may even disagree on just one issue.

Experts are able to support any side in most political contests with testimony before executive or legislative committees, sometimes by drawing on different sets of facts, but much more commonly by giving different cognitive and evaluative interpretations to available facts (Etzioni, 1968:174)

So, perhaps scientific information is not all science, but a mixture of fact and values. And sometimes we may need value consensus more than we need fact consensus. Thomas Kuhn provides an excellent description of the process of change in scientific values in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

In some senses, societal actors use knowledge in much the same way as persons: Their internal structures often bias their views of the world and of their changing places in it, and they misunderstand each other and act in "unrealistid' ways - what most societal actors use as knowledge, we suggest, includes a mixture of facts and common sense, science and folklore, empirical observations, insights, and evaluations (Etzioni, 1968, p.136-137).

And, don't forget politics.

The Dialogue: "It's Not My Fault -- It's Yours. I Can't Understand You Anyway".  The public wants certainty, but the language of science is probability. Politicians want re-election and the media wants a story that is exciting and fits into the allotted time or space. How do these motives translate into language?

Let's analyze a message from two scientists representing very prestigious universities and published in Science, possibly the most prestigious general scientific journal. What is their message to the other social actors In our drama?

Part of the problem is that we rely on a mix of individual, corporate, and government decision to respond to risk. Our traditional coordinating mechanisms -- markets and government action -- are crippled by inadequate information, costly decision making processes and the need to accomodate citizen's misperceptions, sometimes arising from imbalances in media attention (p. 559).

This is a message that at first glance, seems true. Yes, these things do happen. But the real message is one of blame, pointing a finger at the other social actors for muddled thoughts and acts: policy makers, the public, and finally the media. How could any of these groups have the answers; they are not scientists? The authors continue, in an objective, reassuring, and patriarchal fashion to clarity for us, the ideal "scientific" way to assess risk. We had better listen:

For one-time-only decisions, from the standpoint of Bayesian decision making, the mean assessment of the probability of each outcome is all that matters, for that gives the likelihood with which the outcome will be received. For example, suppose that with option I there is a 10% chance that a 0.01 risk is imposed and a 90% chance that no risk is imposed; with option 11, there is a 1 00% chance of a 0.002 risk. Option I should be preferred, since its mean risk (0.1 x 0.01 + 0.9 x 0 = 0.001) is lower than for option 11 (p. 562).

Fine, if we understand Bayesian decision making, if we can specify our alternative risks so precisely, and it we are willing to let these two arrogant scientists make our tough decisions.

How do politicians talk? The following is a quote from Governor Ann Richards, concerning the recent (June, 1991) appointment of El Paso lawyer, Carmen Rodríguez, to the board of directors of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority. Prior to this appointment, no one from the El Paso region sat on the board.

I am pleased to appoint her to this board and am confident that El Pasoans will now have an increased role In the decision-making process. .... It was important to me that El Paso have a voice on the Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority Board. Carmen Rodríguez's legal background and experience will give El Pasoans that voice (Kidd, 1991).

If it was important that El Paso have a voice, why weren't they given one earlier.? The major decisions have already been made. El Pasoans should know that the governor is thinking of them and expecting them to remember this when election time rolls around. It also might be wise to consider whether the appointment of a young Hispanic female is a true gesture of inclusion in the decision making process, or whether the other board members will have the "ears' to hear this new voice.

Citizens' comments reveal distrust of both scientists and politicians, and a feeling of rage over their powerlessness in the process.

No matter how new the technology is that is going to be used in the dump, I think if there were any kind of guarantee they wouldn't be putting it out here. They would put it in the middle of Houston. They could put it in Ann Richards' backyard (Ella Kemp, quoted in an Associated Press article in the El Paso Times).

The "they" Ella Kemp angrily refers to are the scientists, engineers, and politicians. The following, citizen quote probably won't elicit much sympathy from either scientists or politicians.

We believe the majority of people in Hudspeth County are against the siting of this dump here, but many feel powerless on [sic] what can be done about it. Farmers and ranchers feel strongly opposed to this dump as they are very close to the land. They derive their livelihood from the land and cannot easily pick up and move (Bill Addington, quoted in an Associated Press article in the El Paso Times).

The media voice is garbled; key phrases are missing. We finish with more questions than answers. For example, an Associated Press article of September 17, 1991, mentions the political maneuvering that mandated the disposal site be situated on state-owned land. Five sentences later we are informed:

The Authority is [currently] studying a section located in the mandated area, on the Faskin Ranch owned by Statewide Capital, a Houston-based land management company.

Unless "statewide" qualifies as "state-owned", something important has changed or some sleight-of-hand has occurred. We are not informed. Was the story written this way, or did some zealous editor cut the critical link? ff so, was it in the interest of space or politics?

Each actor ridicules the others while mortified of ridicule directed at him. The public is ridiculed for not understanding scientific principles, for calling political attention to personal and familial safety concerns. Knowing he is not well-educated, he is often paralyzed. The media is almost universally scorned by scientists who are peeved by the suggestion that their life's work can be summarized in a paragraph or a short interview, especially by a person not similarly trained, and are seized with the fear that the reporter will make them appear ridiculous in the eyes of the public, or heaven forbid, their colleagues. Stepping out from behind the mask of objectivity and into the arena of political advocacy can ruin a scientist's credibility and his chances for funding (see Pool, 1990).

The reporter may be afraid to ask the scientists tough but important questions, or may be so awed by the complexity of scientific language that the tough questions remain inchoate. Politicians are ridiculed by everyone, from the public who voted for them to the scientists who testify in subcommittees, to the latest editorial or political cartoon exposing both private and professional gaffes.

The Plot: "We Have Met the Enemy, and..."
This play has two interconnected themes. The first is the free reign society has given to science to alter both our habits and our habitat. It is clear that our environment has been drastically, perhaps irrevocably, injured largely as a result of "progress". Moreover, the process of environmental degradation has accelerated in recent years, even though more public attention has been focused on this problem. Our attachment to technology has dictated that we face new and despicable alternatives. If hazardous waste is to be produced, we must dispose of it. Dispose is a word whose meaning deserves thought. It implies that the waste will disappear, but in reality, science has not yet perfected that magic trick. Our waste will be with us for a long time. We may not see it, but already we breathe it, eat it, and drink it.

The second theme is about responsibility and blame, trust and deception. Singularly, we did not create this mess, therefore we are not responsible. It is someone else's fault. As if self-deception were not enough, the actors have chosen to deceive each other. Each one speaks a foreign, if familiar sounding, language. True communication is not possible; in this play it appears to be undesirable. If each actor were to speak the truth in a common tongue, might the consequences be even more disastrous?

Costumes: "If Only I Could See Their Faces"
The actors are dressed almost identically, except for their masks. The scientists are wearing masks of objectivity and aloofness; they also wear silly crowns. The public mask is childlike and apathetic. Media wears the mask of a beauty queen; she carries a shovel, but appears not to understand its use. The politicians, though lean, wear the masks of fat men and they carry utensils in their pockets, waiting only for dishes.

Epilogue: "Whose Play is This, After All?"
The play is over. Who are we waiting for? Not Godot again? "The show will begin again in fifteen minutes", Sisyphus sighs. "Please remain seated. The exit is blocked; no one may leave", Sartre pronounces in sarcasm. The characters, having removed their masks, are casting about the audience for a new author. The audience is reluctant; they have never written a play before, they say. "But you wrote this one", scream the actors in unison.

References and Suggested Reading
Associated Press, 1991, Town Opposed to Nuclear Dump Plan: El Paso Times, September 17,
1991, p. 2B.

Barzun, J., 1964, The Glorious Entertainment: Science: Harper & Row Pub., New York NY.

Etzioni, Amitai, 1968, The Active Society: A Theory of Societal and Political Processes: The Free Press, New York NY.

Etzioni, Amitai, 1988, The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics: The Free Press, New York NY.

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If most El Pasoans knew that a radioactive waste dump was going to be built 90 mi from the city center or if they know that the dump idea got no further than the 34th District Court before it was tossed out of this corner of West Texas, chances are they know because of the local news media with all their haste, their lack of space or time, their lack of thoroughness. Both the credit and the blame for what we know and don't know about the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Authority's proposed dump site outside Fort Hancock is given to the media. How well did they do their job?

Not very well, say knowledgeable scientists. Not well at all, say two county officials. Not bad, says the chief county official. Good but not good enough, say three media editors.

Scientists are rarely happy with the news media and UT El Paso geologists are no exception. Diane Doser is not uncomfortable with media attention and media coverage, having spent substantial time in front of the cameras and microphones. While she was still a graduate student in 1983, her professor left town to examine earthquake damage in Idaho, leaving her to be interviewed live by the local television station that evening. Baptism by fire, she calls it.

I learned to start thinking in terms of, simple answers to questions. There's nothing wrong with that and I think more scientists ought to do more of it. It's important for the public to be informed on scientific issues and I'd rather a scientist give a simplified explanation than a non-scientist give the wrong explanation.

But willing as she is to talk to the media and as much as she knows about earthquake hazards in the area (she is director of UTEP's Seismological Observatory) including the potential earthquake hazards at the proposed waste site, Doser was never asked her opinion of the low-level waste dump.

The media seemed to focus on outside consultants. No one ever talked to me about earthquake hazards out at the site but they talked to some consultant from the University of Nevada at Reno. They call me about earthquakes in general or an earthquake that happened somewhere else, but they never called me about this.

While Doser and geology professor Phil Goodell say both the media and the scientific powers in Texas largely ignored UTEP scientists, that doesn't bother UTEP adjunct geology professor and research associate, Mark Baker. He says the news media don't cover science anyway; they cover personalities.

I have a different problem than Diane in that I usually don't give very short answers and tend to get misquoted more. I also tend to say things that have more qualifying statements that often get lost or changed. But I don't think you can get a scientific idea across in a newspaper story or a nightly news show. I think, at best, you can transmit an impression or a personality. You have a better chance in print. But even in print you don't get the full story. What upsets me is when I read or hear about an important piece of legislation concerning the waste site, I don't get what's in the bill; I get what went on around the bill, the personalities, the politics. I don't get facts; I get impressions.

Goodell says if the media understood the scientific issues better, they would be able to discuss the issues rather than the personalities:

I don't even think most of them have skimmed through the literature. They need to do at least a little bit of homework. There's a wealth of publications that have come out on this issue. They don't even have to read it. Look through the pictures. Look through the diagrams.

And, speaking of pictures, Doser says the media, particularly television, have used the same ones for three years. "Why not show a map? Tell us where it is. Have a geologist use a big map and show where there might be a magnitude seven earthquake."

Baker accuses the media of haste or laziness or both.

The press simply doesn't do its homework and it wouldn't have been that difficult in this case. There were four or five-page quarterly reports written for politicians on this issue and an annual report of about ten pages. It was neither difficult nor long reading and the press certainly had access to the reports. For the most part, they rely on the interview alone.

And only controversial or negative interviews at that, says adjunct UTEP geology professor, Dennis Powers. Powers recently completed the chairmanship of a national committee reviewing challenges to the Department of Energy's nuclear waste program at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. He says the press, but particularly television, loves to show up only when it's controversial or when someone has something negative to say:

Let's take a possible volcano eruption. You can have 99 people saying they're not sure or they don't think it will be terrible and one person saying it will be catastrophic and that's what will get the coverage. I have a "Chicken Little" theory of this: you can say the sky is not failing and be right 99 times out of 100. But the news media will only remember the one time you were wrong. on the other hand, you can run around like Chicken Little and say the sky is falling and be wrong 99 times out of 100. But the media will remember the one time you were right. This is the real problem with news coverage. The responsible scientist is out playing by the rules and the politicians who want to get reelected or the person who wants publicity so they can influence an issue are not playing by the same rules.

And the scientific method Itself seems antithetical to news coverage, says UTEP geology professor David LeMone and an advisor on the waste site for El Paso County:

I think it's very difficult to reduce a complex scientific problem to a very simple statement. What invariably happens is that the statement becomes distorted. You lose the parameters. General statements get you in trouble in science. They're used all the time in news.

What was not covered is as important to these scientists as what was covered, Baker, who was hired by the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology to conduct studies on the geologic impact of the waste site, believes the news media missed some good, and obvious, stories:

What is the definition of low-level waste? It is defined as whatever is not high-level. High-level is defined as spent reactor fuel rods and nuclear bomb parts. Anything that is not that is low-level. Pretty frightening, isn't it?

And if the potential earthquake damage is so significant at the site, why is it not significant in downtown El Paso, asks Doser:

If we consider earthquake hazards as a problem at the waste site, then why aren't we worried about, say, the construction of the new county courthouse, some of our freeway interchanges, our water supply, hospitals, and the same in Juarez? If there is a possibility of a big earthquake in Fort Hancock, there is a possibility of one here in the El Paso/Juarez area. The news media only looked at one small part of the earthquake problem.

Powers says laziness and sloppiness are only part of the problem. He accuses the news media of bias as well.

Regardless of many good intentions, I believe, at least as far as nuclear waste is concerned, that most reporters bring their own opinions into the story. And most of the time they are against the waste site and against nuclear energy.

Not so, say two county employees who fought long and hard against the waste site. Darcy Frownfelter and Mark Turnbough believe that bias was the problem but it was bias in the opposite direction. As they see it, the media tilted toward the state's point of view and away from that of the county, reporting the story as country bumpkin lawyer versus the big city lawyer, the big-time scientists from prestigious schools versus the small-time scientists from UTEP -- and the big city boys got the benefit of the doubt.

"The Authority portrayed themselves as people who were conducting the state's business and were being stopped by people who did not want the state's business conducted in their backyard," says Turnbough, a Ph.D. in environmental policy and a land use analyst working as a consultant for the county during Its fight against the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority.

We were thought of as malcontents and troublemakers who were trying to interfere with the Authority who was attempting to do the public good. We didn't have any status with the press because we weren't a state agency.

An attorney specializing in environmental affairs, Frownfelter was hired by the county as a special assistant county attorney to fight El Paso's legal battle against the state. Frownfelter is given much of the credit for defeating the proposed waste site. He agrees with Turnbough that the media gave too much weight and latitude to the Authority.

There is a tendency in the press that if a government official says something then it must be true. The press clippings are full of outrageous statements by Rick Jacobi, the general manager of the Authority, and the press never caught on that the Authority members never knew what they were talking about; they never went behind the statements.

What's ironic about this is that in the normal world of journalism, once a government agency has been found to be fudging a bit on the truth, the press normally zeroes in and goes after what really is behind the story,

says Turnbough.

In this case, once the state had been caught fudging on several stories, the news media basically went to sleep. And if it ever was a close call, and there were plenty, the press immediately assumed the Authority was right. They maintained that bias throughout the entire process. Only when a public opinion poll showed that El Pasoans were overwhelmingly opposed to the dump site did the press start to turn around.

The only exception to media bias, according to Turnbough and Frownfelter, was KVIA TV. Both the El Paso Times and the El Paso Herald Post are accused of giving the last word to the Authority.

It didn't matter whether it was an active fault you were talking about or a hundred year flood plain or a wet land or archaeology of any consequence or recharge of the ground water or fractures or fissures. It didn't matter what it was; if we told the press about it they were highly skeptical. So, they would call up Jacobi and he would say something like 'Oh, that's a desiccation crack or it's a drainage feature of the site and it's no big deal.' So the press would always give the Authority the last paragraph or the last segment of the story so they would always get the last word. Everybody but Channel Seven did this.

Like the scientists, the county spokesmen believe what was not covered was just as important as what was covered. "We used to talk about how any one of us would have loved to have gotten the assignment the Authority was given," says Turnbough.

They got a blank check and ten to fifteen years to find one crummy little site that was suitable for low-level radioactive waste. Think about it: ten years looking for less then 200 acres, less than a section of land, in a state the size of Texas that has as much vacant land as Texas and they still didn't do it right. That isn't a story? That should be a lot of stories."

And there never was a story on the board of directors of the Authority," complains Frownfelter.

For example, one board member was Jim Phillips. He's from El Paso. He's a prominent businessman. He was on the board up until 1987 during a very critical period. The Authority had selected another site in south Texas. Phillips made a motion to table that decision and, in 1986, to designate Fort Hancock as the preferred site. An El Pasoan did this. No one, ever, has covered that.

Luther Jones, former El Paso County Judge and the leader of the fight against the waste site, is more charitable towards the news media. Although he agrees that many stories were left uncovered and the media had a bias towards the Authority, the county's chief politician could hardly complain that science took a back seat to politics in this story.

I was viewing this whole thing from a political angle myself although I knew the scientific angle had to be right or we would never prevail. I wanted to increase the level of public awareness of the hazards to the region of being used as a radioactive storage area and so I was happy for my hyperbolic statements to be reported. Instead of the Authority answering back with a barrage of scientific data, they typically would answer back in the same political tone I used. They sounded like they were county commissioners themselves. And that's one of the reasons their credibility began to be questioned. Instead of calmly answering our statements with scientific data and explanations, they sounded like local politicians. People didn't expect them to operate in a political environment so the lack of coverage of the science involved was an asset to us and a detriment to them.

So, the El Paso news media are perceived to be, at the very least, inadequate in their coverage of the science, incomplete in their coverage of the politics, and, at the most, biased in favor of the Authority.

"Mae culpa," say media editors about the charges of inadequacy and incompleteness. "Hogwash," say media editors about the charges of bias.

Bob Moore is now city editor of the El Paso Times. Between 1985 and 1991, he was both assistant city editor or night city editor, assigning most of the stories on the proposed waste site. He admits that most of the newspaper's coverage was reactive:

Luther Jones, Darcy Frownfelter, Joe Lucas (county attorney), in particular, were very aggressive about getting out to the news media the information they developed as it became available -- various geological surveys, various moves by the Authority. So most of our reporting on this was driven by events. And those events were brought to our attention usually by the county attorney's office or the county judge's office.

Moore calls the Times' coverage good but not great.

I'd give us a 6-1/2 out of 10. I wish we had taken time to examine some of these issues on our own with some independent sources. We should have taken some of the evidence about the fault lines and the flood plain, and some of the other complaints the county had to some independent geologists and said, 'This is what the county is saying; this is what the state is saying; where does the truth lie?' Instead of doing that, we wound up with the county saying this and the state saying that without giving El Pasoans any real perspective.

Moore didn't go to independent observers because of time limitations and he didn't go to UTEP scientists because it didn't occur to him.

This was only one of many important issues that were evolving at the time. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a critical time period here and there were a lot of issues coming up. That was one of the more important ones and I wish we had done a better job on it. And here we have one of the best geology departments in the country sifting on our doorstep and we never tapped that resource. It just got lost in the shuffle as we rushed headlong into this really emotional issue. We got too caught up in the emotion of all of it and didn't step back and gain some perspective.

Bob Moore pleads guilty to covering the personalities better than the science. The Times now has a full-time science reporter but, even with that, he claims science is a continuing problem for daily newspapers:

It's so technical and so involved and goes right over most people's heads. A good science writer's job is to take all this technical information and present it in an understandable form without getting it entirely wrong. That's a difficult challenge.

As to the sloppiness, Moore pleads guilty there as well. He says he was stunned to learn that Jim Phillips had been on the Authority's board of directors until 1987:

And I think that my surprise at Jim Phillips is a good indication that we did not adequately cover the board. We focused on the legislature and I don't think we ever really realized that significance of the board at the time we were covering it.

But Moore makes no apologies for choosing politics over science.

This was a political story from the very beginning. The reason it wound up in West Texas in the first place was not a scientific but a political decision. And what eventually got it moved was not a scientific but a political decision. Moving it became more politically expedient than keeping it here.

And Moore hotly denies any bias towards the Authority:

Hogwash. Hogwash. I think, if anything, the complete opposite is true. People have said a lot of things about Luther Jones but the one thing I've never heard him accused of being was country bumpkin. Using the media was in his overall strategy and he did one of the better jobs I've ever seen done of manipulating the media to accomplish a political agenda. I think he was sincere and I don't blame him. But to say we short-changed the county is ridiculous. El Paso is a very isolated community and people here are much more likely to listen to somebody from here rather than somebody from Austin. And we certainly didn't need anybody to do a poll to tell us that the vast majority of El Pasoans were opposed to this dump site. You would have to have been a complete idiot not to have known that. So, if anyone, the state got short-changed in our coverage, not the county.

Karen Brehm, former city editor of the El Paso Herald Post, is shocked that her would be accused of bias.

Almost from the front end we tried so hard to be balanced. Personally, everyone in this newsroom I know of was opposed to this dump site. As citizens, we didn't want this on our back door and we took editorial stands to that effect. Because of our personal feelings, we tried very hard to get the response from the state every time. If anything, we expected criticism from the state. I never got phone calls accusing us of bias from either side so I think we were pretty balanced.

But there is much Brehm would change about the Post's coverage if she could do it again.

I wish we had done more interpretative articles, more in-depth pieces to provide perspective. I'm not uncomfortable following the news, but I think some of our coverage was too event-driven. Looking back, I would have liked to do an indepth piece on the nature of earthquakes or the nature of flood plains. And we should have profiled all the scientists at UTEP who were working on this issue. It was an oversight.

But, like Moore, Brehm is not uncomfortable with covering personalities. paper

We did cover a lot of personalities but that's because the players became important and that means the personalities were important. They attacked one another and we covered it. We revealed to the public these players as characters and maybe that's where the criticism stems. But we couldn't have ignored them, especially if they were In leadership positions in either opposition or support.

Brehm says her newspaper did a reasonably good job of informing the public on the issue.

On a scale of one to ten, I'd give us a good seven. The community understood from our coverage that low-level waste was an important issue. I think people know the basic issues now. You have to understand something inherent in newspapers: your daily story might appear to be shallow because it's only eight inches. But at the end of the month, look at the clip file and see how many hundreds of inches you've devoted to one issue. Then look at it at the end of the year and see if you've given the public what they need. Our former editor taught me this. In other words, give them a little bit every day. Studies have shown that readers don't like long stories and seldom read them. I'm not ashamed of the job we did.

KVIA TV was the only El Paso television station to cover the radioactive waste site proposal as an ongoing story assigned to one reporter. Lise Nielson was both a reporter and the assignment editor during the five years of the controversy. When she did not cover the story herself, she assigned it to one reporter and insisted that reporter stay on top of it. Nielsen says she knew, from the beginning, this was issue worth covering in

... more than a cursory manner. It had all the good elements for me: global implications, political machinations. I checked on this story all the time. I went out to the site.

But she knows the issue was not as thoroughly covered as it could have been. Some of that is her fault, she says, "I know I missed a lot of the subtler aspects of the political and scientific game being played. I know our coverage was shallow much of the time."

Some of it is the fault of the viewing audience.

People tune out on legislature video and boardroom video. It isn't exciting. It's important what these guys in a boardroom or the legislature say but it often isn't immediately interesting.

And some of it is the fault of the television medium itself.

We don't have much time to air stories. It takes all day to do a Fort Hancock waste disposal site story and then you have two minutes on the air. And what do you have to look at? The desert, the legislature, a meeting. We could have done better visually but this story would never have been as visually interesting as a hard news story. This story is hard to visualize. That's not an excuse but it's, a consideration.

And so it ends, this airing grievances, giving explanations, making amends, taking sides. What happens next time? The county government employees believe they were slighted and misjudged by the media. The media vehemently deny both so there seems to be no compromise possible between these two groups. The media accepted most of the criticism handed out by the scientists. The editors agree they covered too little of the science involved in the waste disposal story and vow to increase their science inches and expand their science perspective.

Is there nothing scientists can do to help them? When UTEP geologist were ignored as a source, they did not complain. When reporters missed the connection between possible earthquake damage to the waste site and possible earthquake damage to downtown El Paso, scientists remained silent. When reporters failed to ask precise enough questions of the waste authority on the type of waste to be buried at the site, scientists did not provide the right questions.

The problem is science itself. As Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann discovered, there is no mercy for the scientist who bypasses scientific publishing procedure and promotes himself. Diane Doser hinted to the media that they were too limited in their thinking about possible earthquake damage but was too uncomfortable to hand them the story of the same fault line at the waste site running through the middle of the new courthouse. No geologist picked up the phone and asked, "What about us?" when they were overlooked by reporters, or offered reporters a set of questions for the Authority.

That is unlikely to change. A scientist who offers unsolicited advice and stakes out a solo public opinion is a maverick and an object of suspicion to his peers. But the scientist need not stand alone. There was enough agreement among the UTEP geologists about the failings of the media that they could have stood together as a department and issued a statement or series of statements. And if that is still deemed too risky or too presumptuous, another formal layer can be inserted into the process. The scientists could submit positions singly or in groups to another set of scientists for review -- perhaps the Bureau of Economic Geology -- thus preserving the scrutiny required for good science while still offering the valuable source required for good journalism.

The stakes are too high in today's complex world for scientists to remain aloof and neutral. They must participate in providing science information or risk part of the blame when that information is wrong.

First, let me heartily congratulate the authors for putting together this booklet. Its stated purpose of educating the public about the scientific and sociological problems surrounding the radioactive waste controversy at Fort Hancock is laudable. The clash between scientists and the public is growing more serious all the time. I know firsthand.

I have dealt with this question for over 9 years on this project and for almost as long on the much maligned South Texas project nuclear power plant before that. I see It on almost any large construction project nowadays - be it a chemical refinery, a coastal resort, a dam or any other major development. My own neighborhood association Is opposing a nearby fire station because of "noise pollution" associated with the sirens on the trucks. I seems to me that public distrust of scientists, engineers and government technocrats has increased exponentially over the last 19 years. Clearly, something must be done.

This publication Is a good illustration of the problem. Even among the well educated professors who prepared these entertaining and Insightful papers, there is much confusion about the facts surrounding the selection and the downfall of the ill-fated Fort Hancock waste disposal she. I wish I had the time or the opportunity to set the record straight, but h seems to me that it is time to move on and tackle other more pressing problems.

I don't mean to say that this exercise is not useful. I found this collection of papers very interesting. I made It required reading for our entire staff. I sent ft to my Board of Directors and suggested that they should read it. I even sent It to the engineers and scientists who have worked on this project from time to time over the years. I called Dr. Byrd to tell her how much I enjoyed her analysis of the media coverage of the controversy. I had the opportunity to engage in spirited, but friendly, debate with Dr. Neighbor about his analysis of the politics surrounding the selection of Fort Hancock. But, I do regret that it is being rushed to publication without further research and editing. With just a little more work, this publication could be an excellent book-quality analysis of science and public policy.

Because everyone else did, I guess Its fair for me to speculate a little about what was right and what was wrong with the Fort Hancock site proposal.

First, let me talk about what was right about the proposal. To do so, I have prepared a chart comparing the three sites that were discussed during the trial. As you can see, in my opinion, each site had good points and some not so good points.- Could any one of them really be called the "best' site? I think not. All of the sites were 'suitable'. On purely technical grounds, any one of them would have been a good waste disposal site.

Given the opinion of the technical experts that good sites could be found throughout Texas, the state legislature exercised Its prerogative to rely on other factors to choose among them. It set out new selection factors. Give preference to state-owned land, they said. Stay at least 20 miles away from water reservoirs. Put R In the desert of west Texas, on barren land already owned by the state, where the population density is much lower than R is in east Texas. This pointed to a Hudspeth County site, and there is nothing wrong with that.

On the other hand, this manner of selecting sites, while perfectly legitimate, raises questions about the equity and the purity of the process. These somewhat intangible issues are very tough for the public to understand. When they do finally sort them out, they frequently do not like the results - especially if the result is the siting of an unwanted facility near them.

So, was the siting of the Fort Hancock site a result of a Machiavellian conspiracy by the Texas Legislature and Incompetent technocracy, as suggested by Dr. Neighbor in his analysis? No, of course not. It was the result of a combination of technical, sociological and, yes, political factors that made the Fort Hancock site the most suitable site for a mixture of all of these reasons. Given that the sites under consideration were all considered technically suitable, the Legislature was free to use other sociopolitical factors in arriving at their final decision.

Dr. Howard, in her sociological analysis, correctly points out that it is arrogant for scientists to assume that decisions about unwanted facilities can be made by using sophisticated mathematical formulas to precisely quantify risk. I couldn't agree with her more.

This is the path the Authority started to follow early in the site selection process. It is the path that we followed in advocating the Fort Hancock site. Remember the testimony at the trial? Hours of testimony by world class geologists about the recurrence intervals of earthquakes. Mind boggling scientific speculation about the movement of water 500 feet below the ground. Scientific semantics: was it an alluvial apron, an alluvial plain, or an alluvial fan? Not even the experts could agree. Numbing discussions about the 0.01 probability of a flash flood on the site. In reality, it simply did not matter. The real question was how do the people feel about the site? In the end, h was not a pure scientific decision, it was laced with value judgments.

For all the millions of dollars we spent gathering scientific data from the best scientists and engineers In Texas, the final decision came down to a political decision based on valued judgements. If the decision had been based only on scientific risk analysis, Fort Hancock would have been selected. But it wasn't. The final decision to abandon the site was driven by El Paso County Judge Alicia Chacon and Governor Ann Richards saying 'All right! Enough is enough! Let's find a site that is scientifically sound and acceptable based on the value judgments of the public." In the end, this meant moving the site a mere 30 miles farther away from El Paso.

In her analysis, Lynda Lynch, a longtime opponent of any site in Hudspeth County, calls this a farce. She berates the El Paso County officials and the El Paso media for calling this move a victory.

She's right. Moving the site was a shallow victory - not only for El Paso County, but also for the State of Texas. El Paso spent almost .000,000 to move the site just a few miles down the road.

Who actually won? Luther Jones didn't. The public turned him out of office anyway. Gayle Garner did. He avoided the possibility of having his victory in the district court overturned by the appellate court. A very real possibility. Darcy Frownfelter and Mark Turnbough did. They walked away with a winning reputation in the El Paso area. The State of Texas, and by "the State" I mean you and me and everyone else who lives here, didn't. For a measly 30 miles and saving the reputations of a few local politicians, the state squandered several millions of dollars in abandoning the Fort Hancock site. Was it worth It? I guess that depends on your value judgment.

What about the media? Did they accurately report the facts about these sites, about the process and about the personalities surrounding the controversy? I don't think so. Surprisingly, the opponents don't think so either. Of all the findings reported In these series of papers, I am most astounded by Dr. Byrd's report that the opponents felt the El Paso papers were biased In favor of the Authority. How absurd! The editors were definitely biased in favor of the local officials and the opponents of the site.

What can I add to the discussion by the editors themselves? The coverage was inadequate, if the purpose was to inform the public of the Intricate, complex details of the site selection. The focus on personalities, Instead of the scientific issues, was right, if the purpose was to sell tabloid type news. Many Important issues went unreported. Many trivial issues were over reported. News was event driven. The press was manipulated by local politicians, most notably by Luther Jones, But, on the whole, I have to agree with Karen Brehm. On a scale of one to ten, the El Paso papers deserve a seven for their coverage of the controversy.

In summary, I guess I can say I learned a few things, ['have a much more indepth knowledge of the workings of the legislative process, politics, our legal system, the business of journalism and the media. I have a deeper respect for the Important interaction between sociology and science. I firmly believe that students of engineering and science should be required to take courses In sociology and political science; and students of sociology and political science should be required to take courses in science and engineering. Maybe - just maybe - we can all find a common ground from which to work.

Only then will we be able to move forward.
 TABLE 1. SITE SELECTION

Selection Criteria	Tilden	Asherton	Fort Hancock
Geological Complexity	Not complex, but the presence of salt diapirs and growth faults needed evaluation.	Not complex, but the presence of sandstone and nearby fissures needed evaluation	Not complex, but the presence of nearby inactive faults and fissures needed evaluation
Topography	Relatively flat and above the flood plain	Relatively flat and above the flood plain	Relatively flat and above the floodplain
Transportation Access	Access via state highways including passage through towns	Access via state highways including passage through towns	Access via Interstate highway; no passage through any town.
Meteorology	In a zone of moderate storm intensity. Hurricane hazards. Rainfall is 25O per year	In a zone of moderate storm intensity. Hurricane hazards. Rainfall is 21O per year.	In a zone of low storm intensity. No hurricane hazards. Rainfall is 8O per year.
Population Density	0.68 percent per square mile	8.46 persons per square mile	0.60 persons per square mile
Upstream Drainage	Easily managed	Easily managed	Upstream diversion berms required
Surface Water Hydrology	Site is well above the floodplain on topographic high	Site is above floodplain	Site is above the floodplain