(The Center Square) – A plan to ship 2,000 gallons of radioactive waste from Washington state to Texas and Utah might result in it rolling through Spokane. If successful, Mayor Lisa Brown said millions could follow.
Brown sent a letter on Wednesday, voicing her opposition to Gov. Jay Inslee, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The plan follows a successful three-gallon test in 2017 that shipped the waste roughly 1,700 miles to Andrews, Texas.
The agencies want to expand that three-gallon load to 2,000 and have planned on doing so for years. According to a 2018 DOE Fact Sheet , the waste is heading to Texas “to achieve the best value for the taxpayer,” which was supposed to happen in 2019.
“I understand that, should the initial 2,000 gallons of waste successfully be solidified at facilities in Texas and Utah,” Brown wrote in the letter, “your proposed agreement includes plans for millions of gallons of hazardous liquid waste to be shipped by rail or truck in the future.”