Coal City Unit 1 School District to file complaint with assessor’s office regarding GE-Hitachi

The Coal City Unit 1 School District approved a measure Nov. 6 authorizing Whitt Law, its legal representation, to file an assessment complaint with the Grundy County Assessor’s Office regarding GE-Hitachi’s Morris operation.

GE-Hitachi’s equalized assessed value for its location southwest of Dresden Generation Station came out to more than $6 million, according to Superintendent Chris Spencer. This is the third straight year that the Coal City School District has challenged it, and Spencer said it’s been doubled after each challenge.

“Our experts say that it’s probably worth more like $219 million, and there is no facility like this in the country,” Sepncer said. “We’re the only ones that have this in their backyard. We’ve had spent nuclear fuel in our backyard since the 1970s and, again, no fuel has been coming or going since the late 1990s. It’s full, but it’s just sitting there.”

Spencer said the spent fuel was supposed to go to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but that project never came to fruition. The waste continues to sit in Coal City’s backyard.

Yucca Mountain is about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, and has a five-mile tunnel that was part of a project to store nuclear waste. However, that project met opposition and the state of Nevada’s official position is that the Yucca Mountain site is a bad place to house nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel.