March 2, 2006

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More Hot Waste in Tooele County?
Grassy Mountain: The landfill's East Coast owners will seek permission to handle radioactive material
By Judy Fahys
Salt Lake Tribune, UT
February 28, 2006

New radioactive waste disposal is planned for Tooele County.
   

Owners of the Clean Harbors Grassy Mountain landfill want to open up an unused part of their mile-square hazardous waste site for low-level radioactive waste, the same sort of material disposed of at the EnergySolutions site formerly known as Envirocare.
   

"We know this is going to be a multiyear process," said Phil Retallick, senior vice president of compliance and regulatory affairs for the Massachusetts-based company, Clean Harbors Environmental Services. "We're in the embryonic stages of the process."
   

Clean Harbors, the nation's largest hazardous waste company, operates the Aragonite incinerator about 60 miles west of Salt Lake City. The landfill, about 10 miles west of the incinerator, now takes PCBs and other industrial hazardous waste, primarily from the Western states.
   

The site already exceeds the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards for low-level radioactive waste, said Retallick. Decommissioned and relicensed reactors need disposal. Plus, the future looks promising for a revival of the nuclear industry, he added.
   

"As a result, we are very interested in being able to service that," he said.
   

Two other efforts to establish new radioactive facilities in Tooele County have failed in recent years.
   

In 1997, while owned by Laidlaw Environmental, the Grassy Mountain landfill made a similar move to expand into low-level radioactive waste. It received approval from the state Radiation Control Board for its siting plan, but the County Commission refused to OK the project. Its approval is required under state law.
   

A second proposal came from Envirocare's former president, Charles Judd, who proposed a landfill on acreage just north of Envirocare. Tooele County rejected the plan in 2004. Judd sold the land last year to Envirocare.
   

Envirocare last year requested and received the county's approval to expand onto that acreage. It also won approval by the state Radiation Control Board and was poised to be presented for final approval by the Legislature and the governor.
   

Now, prompted by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s announcement in November that he opposed the expansion, the entire process may be changed to limit the governor's authority over commercial licensing. Under SB70 by Sen. Howard Stephenson, D-Draper, the Legislature would be allowed to override a governor's veto on commercial waste sites.
   

Huntsman is expected to veto SB70 by the deadline today and lawmakers may take an override vote by the session's conclusion at midnight Wednesday.
   

Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, said low-level waste is handled safely in Utah, but she still supports the consensus approach required under current law.
   

"I want to keep the barriers high," she said. "If it's worthy, it will pass those barriers."
   

Retallick said Clean Harbors is aware of SB70 and the past, failed effort to expand the Grassy Mountain site to include low-level radioactive waste.
   

He noted, however, that the facility is already licensed for hazardous waste and that his company only wants to amend its license to allow new waste.
   

fahys@sltrib.com