Don't Waste South Carolina

Soon after, Envirocare, submitted a request to Utah regulators to double the size of their Clive, Utah site. Governor Huntsman of Utah said No to the expansion request. Utah Senate Bill 70, which was introduced in 2006, would have changed existing law to eliminate the need for gubernatorial approval in order for Envirocare's expansion requests to be granted. This bill failed too, the company, by now Energy Solutions tried again and succeeded in getting passed, Utah senate Bill 155, which is designed to remove

One of the more interesting pieces of ES inspired legislation was HB 410, introduced by Representative James Gowans, District 21 Utah, in January of 2007. H.B. 410 Commercial Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility - Repeal of Perpetual Care Requirements, speaks for itself. Here in SC, we should be well versed in what happens when a waste company, such as Laidlaw and Safety Kleen, are excused from their perpetual care funds. The company can declare bankruptcy and leave the taxpayers to clean up a huge toxic waste site, as they left us with the Pinewood dump in Sumter County.

ES's CEO, Steve Creamer has an interesting resume. He began his career with the State of Utah as an engineer with the Department of Environmental Quality. From 1976-1991, he was the President of Creamer and Noble Engineers, a consulting firm. Creamer & Noble officials were consulting engineers to the company that developed the experimental concrete overlay Utah used in 1989 to resurface a 4-mile stretch of Interstate 15. After the material started breaking into chunks, the federal Office of Inspector General and the Utah Attorney General's Office conducted a criminal investigation into the project, which cost taxpayers nearly $3 million. Creamer & Noble are also remembered for engineering the Quail Creek earthen dam near St. George, Utah, which burst on Jan. 1, 1989. No one was injured, but the disaster cost the state more than $11 million. From 1990-1997, Creamer was the CEO of East Carbon Development Co., (ECDC) a mammoth garbage landfill that imports waste by rail into Utah, 95% of which is from out of state. By December of 1995, Laidlaw acquired 80 percent of Creamer's East Carbon Development Company . In 1997, Mr. Creamer and Mr. Chip Everest bought JTM Industries (manages coal-combustion byproducts produced by electric utilities Fly-ash is the byproduct of coal-burning utilities and is used as an additive in concrete, soil and asphalt) from Laidlaw. Maybe it was during his years of doing business with Laidlaw, that Mr. Creamer heard just how easy it was or is for the waste industry to have their way with SC.

Energy Solutions was created when Steve Creamer along with a New York investment firm, saw the "nuclear renaissance" on the horizon. Creamer and the investors bought Envirocare on January 31, 2005. In February of 2006, Envirocare bought the US arm of a British Nuclear waste company, and Durateck, the owners of Chem/Nuke, who are the owners of the Barnwell radioactive waste landfill. Soon after, they changed their name to Energy Solutions.

Along with Barnwell, ES is planning to bid on the contract to operate the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS), located in Aiken SC. They've been recently granted close to 3 million tax dollars to study the possibility of reprocessing nuclear waste in either SC, New Mexico or Idaho. Since the opening date of a repository for all the spent nuclear fuel in this country is moving further and further into the future, the option of reprocess the nation's spent nuclear fuel is being actively pursued by our Federal Government. If SC rolls over for Energy Solutions on the Barnwell issue, the people of this state need to prepare themselves for the next big plan. South Carolina could very likely become a Yucca Mountain substitute if the US government awards ES a contract to start reprocessing nuclear fuel. Reprocessing is not the same as recycling. Recycling would not leave behind 36 million gallons of liquid radioactive, waste such as we have at SRS, all of it a reprocessing by-product. It is this waste that distinguishes SRS as the most radioactive site in the country.

Why has this company, Energy Solutions, which is barely one year old, moved into SC? They want to do to us what they can't get away with in their home state of Utah or any other state for that matter. My question is what kind of industry do we want in SC? The kind everyone else refuses? And who do we want running SC, some out of state waste company with their troop of lobbyists and Laidlaw-esque promises? I think the people of this state deserve better and I think our legislators are smart enough to give us better.

Leslie Minerd