County Mulling Action
On Pantex Water Issue

AMARILLO — Carson County is considering hiring a mediator to deal with a nuclear weapons facility in the Texas Panhandle.

Former County Judge Jeri Osborne told the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee at a hearing here Oct. 26 that the Carson County Commission is considering a professional mediator with regard to underground water pollution problems around the Pantex plant in the western portion of the county.

Representatives of STAND, Serious Texans Against Nuclear Dumping, testified concerning the pollution of an underground aquifer beneath the nation's top-secret plant. Pantex is the only facility in the nation that assembles and disassembles nuclear warheads. Small amounts of conventional and radioactive material have been found in an aquifer perched above the Ogallala Aquifer which stretches from near Midland north into Nebraska and the Dakotas.

While test drilling and remediation steps are being taken by the Texas Natural Resources and Conservation Commission and Pantex, farmers and ranchers neighboring the plant are becoming increasingly militant over what they say is a lack of accountability for the problem.

The committee was in Amarillo for a field hearing concerning the oil and gas industry, the state's groundwater, and storage and disposal options for low-level radioactive waste.