Page:Alabama v. North Carolina, 560 U.S. (2010) slip opinion.pdf/42

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siting, building, and operating a facility] be borne by the waste generators” who use it); Brief for Plaintiffs in Sur­-reply to North Carolina’s Reply 1, n. 1 (noting that a dis­posal facility in South Carolina collected over $47 million in fees in 2008).

Of course, as the majority notes, South Carolina’s with­drawal from the Compact could have affected North Caro­lina’s ability to “recoup” its “construction costs.” Ante, at 18. But, as far as I am aware, North Carolina did not seriously seek to amend the Compact when South Caro­lina departed (even though the State had sought and obtained an amendment previously, see ante, at 20, n. 4; Brief for North Carolina in Reply to Exceptions By Plain­tiffs to Reports of the Special Master 27), nor has it argued to this Court that South Carolina’s departure voided its contractual obligations. Indeed, there is evidence in the record indicating that, even after South Carolina left the Compact, North Carolina continued to believe that the operation of a waste disposal facility presented a substan­tial financial opportunity. App. 255, 266 (Attachment to Letter from John H. MacMillan, Executive Director, North Carolina Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Authority, to Richard S. Hodes, M. D., Chairman, South­east Compact Commission (Dec. 13, 1996) (enclosing a business plan identifying $600 million in cost savings that could provide a “substantial return” on the “investment needed to put the North Carolina facility into operation”)).

I thus cannot conclude, as the majority does, that the Compact’s rotational design, as I understand it, is “fool­ish.” Ante, at 18. Rather, the Compact’s structure repre­sents what, in my view, was a understandable decision by the contracting States, all of whom needed a waste dis­posal facility, to bind themselves together so that each would take a turn “bear[ing] the cost of building” the necessary facility. Preliminary Report of Special Master 21 (citing Art. 4(K), 99 Stat. 1876–1877); see Brief for