Five GNEP Public Involvement Meetings in New Mexico
Five public involvement meetings have been scheduled for two New Mexico
sites for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) proposal. The GNEP
is a recent Department of Energy (DOE) proposal to expand nuclear energy use
worldwide and manage the waste disposal. This proposal will resurrect
dangerous reprocessing and transmutation technologies that were abandoned
because of resulting environmental disasters and exorbitant costs. Under
this program, the U.S. would reprocess its own spent nuclear fuel, as well
as fuel from other countries.
DOE awarded siting grants to contract bidders at 11 sites around the
country. These grants will be used by the bidders to gather information
about the environmental impact if operations take place at their site. The
Eddy Lea Energy Alliance received almost $1.6 million for a proposed site
between Carlsbad and Hobbs. The Eddy Lea Energy Alliance is composed of
government entities within Eddy and Lea Counties in southeastern New Mexico.
Energy Solutions and Gandy-Marley, Inc. received over $1.1 million for
siting proposed GNEP facilities at the Triassic Park Hazardous Waste Site,
about 40 miles east of Roswell. The DOE grants include funding for public
involvement meetings.
The Eddy Lea Energy Alliance is hosting two meetings next week, one in
Lovington on Wednesday, March 21 at 6 pm at the Troy J. Harris City Center,
located at 201 South Main Street; and in Hobbs, on Thursday, March 22,
beginning at 6 pm at the Hobbs Special Event Center on the Lovington-Hobbs
Highway.
Energy Solutions and Gandy-Marley, Inc. are hosting three public involvement
meetings for the proposed GNEP operations at the Triassic Park Hazardous
Waste Site. At the meetings, four or five corporate spokespersons will
make presentations about GNEP and the Triassic Park site followed by a
question and answer session. A court reporter and Spanish translator will
be present at each meeting.
These meetings will be held in Lovington on Tuesday, March 27 from 6 pm to
9:30 pm at the Lovington Chamber of Commerce, 201 S. Main Street in Roswell
on Wednesday, March 28 and Thursday, March 29, both from 6 to 9:30 pm., at
the Roswell Civic and Convention Center, 912 North Main Street; and in
Albuquerque on Friday, March 30, from 6 to 9:30 p.m. at the Hilton Hotel,
located at 1901 University Blvd, Northeast.
The siting grants require the proposed sites to submit studies about their
suitability by May 1, 2007. However, DOE has required the public to submit
scoping comments by April 4. More than 30 community groups and national
organizations wrote to DOE Secretary Bodman requesting a 60-day extension of
time to submit scoping comments. Their request was based on the new
information that may be gained from the public involvement meetings and in
the siting reports due to DOE on May 1. They argued that under the current
schedule, the scoping comment period ends almost one month prior to the
bidders submitting their site studies to DOE. Don Hancock of Southwest
Research and Information Center, said "Denying the public to opportunity to
respond to the siting reports and to incorporate any new information into
public comments will unnecessarily restrict the thorough review that the law
requires."
For more information on the GNEP please visit www.citizen.org
The public involvement meetings discussed in this update are different than the recent public scoping meetings which DOE recently held in New Mexico and continues to hold across the country.
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