Environmental Law: Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material ('NORM') Administrative Law: Scope of Judicial Review Waste: Definition

摘要

Landowners (the Contestants) challenged the Mississippi State Oil & Gas Board's (the Board) amendment of Statewide Rule 68, which governs the disposal of naturally-occurring radioactive material (NORM) associated with the production of oil and gas. As originally enacted in 1994, Rule 68 authorized disposal of NORM by down-hole injection and by sending such wastes to a commercial disposal site that is permitted to accept such wastes. In 1999, the U.S. Oil and Gas Association (Association) petitioned the Oil and Gas Board for an amendment to Rule 68 to authorize an additional method of disposal—the landspreading of NORM (in landspreading, NORM is blended with sufficient soil to dilute radiation levels below "release criteria," and the blend is then spread over land).