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require buffering where business district abuts residential district.
VOTING: Ayes - 5; Nays - 0.
PUBLIC HEARING: MOTION from Chairman Hedrick to rAurn to Public Hearing regarding the adver-
tised hearing on the proposed ordinance entitled "Iredell County Hazardous Waste and Low -Level
Radioactive Waste Management Ordinance."
VOTING: Ayes - 5; Nays - 0.
E D I T E D
Mr. Hedrick summarized the action the board has taken in reference to this proposed ordinance
to date. The board has heard citizens discuss hazardous waste and low-level radioactive waste in
two previous meetings and took action on October 21, 1986 to call for a public hearing to be held at
the November 4, 1986 meeting.
Mr. Hedrick then introduced Dr. Earl Mac Cormac, Science Advisor to Governor Martin and Execu-
tive Director of the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology.
DR. MAC CORMAC: The problems of low-level radioactive waste arise because we have a technologi-
cal society which produces very desirable products, such as medical products, such as electricity,
such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, all of which use radioactivity and have waste products that go with
them.
Let me also set at rest one thing: It's very difficult for anyone to understand the difference
in low-level radioactivity and high-level radioactivity. If you did not have radioactivity in your
environment as a by-product or as a co -product of sunlight, for example, cosmic rays, soil, water,
we could not live. An environment without it would not be possible for life. Everyone in this room
gets at least 100 to 200 milograms per year, and we don't have genetic affects and we don't die.
One of the basic questions, and there's a lot of arguments among scientists, is how much is too
much. We know at the other end with nuclear power fuel rods, they are highly radioactive and very
dangerous and have to buried for up to 40,000 years.
The debate comes in terms of long term effects of low-level radiation, what do we know about
it? We don't know a lot. We know that mankind has had a low-level radiation from all of his career
and has survived it. How much is too much? lie don't know. How many of you smoke? Does anybody
smoke here, or are we all reformed? If you smoke one pack of cigarettes a day for 365 days, I am
told by studies that you would have 8,000 milograms, which is a very high amount, 8 grams of
radioactivity from the tobacco, which passed through the food chain. It's a very high amount
relative to the 200 that you get. Etc., etc.
A lot of products that you have, especially granite (What are the walls made of?) are radioac-
tive. In fact the Governor of North Carolina, Jim Martin, sits in a granite walled building, the
Capitol, and probably receives relatively high doseages relative to something else.
Some of the things that are radioactive are very mildly radioactive, like the underwear, the
clothing of power plant workers. Some of them are more radioactive like some of the radio
-----------that are used in medicine. Some are even more, and those are some of the residues and
ion exchanges in the nuclear power process. They are classified as "A", "B", and "C."
The reason that we have the issue of a compact versus North Carolina going it alone is that a
U. S. Supreme Court Case in 1978 called City of Philadelphia versus New Jersey, was an argument
about the City of Philadelphia that was taking solid waste and putting it in a disposal site in New
Jersey. The New Jersey Health Authorities thought it wasn't being done right, so they objected to
it and stopped Philadelphia from doing it. Philadelphia sued New Jersey for that, the Health
Department of the State of New Jersey, and it went to the U. S. Supreme Court. The U. S. Supreme
Court held in favor of the City of Philadelphia and argued very strongly that a waste disposal site,
believe it or not, is a natural resource, and no state, under the commerce laws of the Constitution,
may prohibit other states from entry to that site.
We have the Attorney General's opinion that would apply to North Carolina on low-level radioac-
tive waste (There are three states that are trying to go it alone.) which suggests that if North
Carolina handles only its own waste, it would be liable to the waste of 50 other states. Hence
compacts were dreamed up by, I don't know if they were lawyers, Bill, or who they were, but somebody
in Washington, I think the National Governors Association staff dreamed up the idea of a compact.
A compact is a group of states who enacts identical legislation and then has that legislation
bound by Congress of the U. S., which indeed happened with the Southeast Compact Commission. That
is (not clear) to avoid the liability of a common clause of the Constitution and hence the eight
states will be able to prohibit waste from other states. As a new eight-month old official, when I
am faced with a choice of eight states versus the possibility of 50 states, then I would choose the
eight states over the liability of the 50.
The Sierra Club argues in a very nice paper that :here's a difference in a state that operates
regulation and a state that operates as a market for (not clear). There's another case Reeds vs.
State, which is a South Dakota Case, 1980, U. S. Supreme Court, in which South Dakota owned a cement
plant. It sold cement at lower prices to its citizens than it sold it to North Dakota and Iowa and ,
other states. The Supreme Court upheld their right to do that because, they said, the state was
operating in a market capacity. They are operating in market capacity and not in a regulatory