This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Does unchecked growth at EnergySolutions present a problem?
Several people have begun asking that question. Among them: a former executive of the company's low-level radioactive and hazardous waste site in Tooele County who has called for a state advisory board to decide if regulators are ignoring the law by allowing the growth.
"There are rules in place for a purpose," said Charles Judd, the former president of Envirocare of Utah, which has changed its name to EnergySolutions.
EnergySolutions says Judd is wrong and that it already has announced its intention to stop his complaint from going forward.
Judd contends a paragraph in a 1992 state law makes it clear that lawmakers always intended to keep a check on the flow of waste to the site. The law says the governor and Legislature must sign off when a waste facility grows by more than 50 percent - in the volume of waste being handled in a year, in the amount of money sunk into new construction or in disposal capacity.
Basing his conclusions on publicly available documents, Judd says EnergySolutions has exceeded all those triggers at its mile-square disposal site, all with the blessing of regulators in the state Radiation Control Division. He has asked the Utah Radiation Control Board to determine if regulators have read the law right.
Judd contends the initial cost of the disposal site was $3.5 million and its approved capacity in 1990 was 3 million cubic yards. Improvements in 2005 and 2006 are estimated at about $60 million, according to EnergySolutions, and its reports to state regulators show nearly 6 million cubic yards have been disposed of at the site.
Two other people recently have raised similar questions about EnergySolutions' growth: Jason Groenewold, director of the Health Environment Alliance of Utah, and Pat Cone, a new radiation board member.
Echoing a question Cone had asked in last month's board meeting, Groenewold suggested EnergySolutions triggered the legislative and gubernatorial review because of its pending request to pile waste higher in its disposal cells, up to 75 feet instead of the 44 feet currently allowed.
Both got the same response: Radioactive waste handling activities are authorized within the facility's 1-square-mile boundary, said Dane Finerfrock, director of the Radiation Control Division.
The activist returned to Friday's board meeting to press for a formal review of the issue. But, because his questions overlap with Judd's, Groenewold was barred from raising the issue with board members.
In an interview, he said the plain language of the law is clear, that political leaders - not regulators - were to decide on significant growth in Utah's hazardous waste industry.
"The Legislature wisely decided that there should be limits on the amount of radioactive and toxic waste dumped in the state," Groenewold said.
"When EnergySolutions wants to stack waste sky high, our elected leaders should decide if that's in the best interests of the state."
Finerfrock already has answered the question. In response to Judd's initial query in February, the radiation control official cited an analysis by EnergySolutions' lawyer, James Holtkamp, who indicated that a state license applied to the entire facility.
"There are no restrictions as to the nature, sequence or timing of the development of [the licensed area], just that it be used for low-level radioactive waste disposal," Finerfrock wrote in his Feb. 27 response.
Now the matter heads for the advisory board, which toured the disposal site Thursday. Among the new facilities the panel examined were an administration building, rail spurs, a massive shredder, an electric substation to power the shredder and a station that will pick up two rail car containers at a time and dump their contents - part of roughly $60 million in improvements the company plans to complete by year's end.
Last year, Judd sold a 1-square-mile parcel just north of the disposal facility to EnergySolutions' new owners after Tooele County commissioners blocked his efforts to develop a competing radioactive waste facility on the land.
Groenewold's group, HEAL, has appealed Finerfrock and the radiation board's decision to grant EnergySolutions a license to expand the facility onto the land formerly owned by Judd. The Utah Court of Appeals has begun to review the case.
EnergySolutions went ahead and built some facilities on that expanded area. But it took care not to put any waste-handling facilities on the new acreage until the HEAL appeal is resolved.
Still, the waste company continues its robust growth, reporting nearly 5 million cubic feet of waste at the site in the first three months of 2006 and preparing for a shareholders vote next week at Duratek Inc. to allow EnergySolutions to add the Maryland nuclear services company to EnergySolutions' holdings.
In August, the board plans to hear arguments by EnergySolutions and state radiation regulators on why Judd's complaint should not be heard.
Two other people recently have raised similar questions about EnergySolutions' growth, Jason Groenewold, director of the Health Environment Alliance of Utah, and Pat Cone, a new radiation board member.
Echoing a question Cone had asked in last month's board meeting, Groenewold suggested EnergySolutions triggered the legislative and gubernatorial review because of its pending request to pile waste higher in its disposal cells up to 75 feet instead of the 44 feet currently allowed.
Both got the same response: Radioactive waste handling activities are authorized within the facility's 1-square-mile boundary, said Dane Finerfrock, director of the Radiation Control Division.
The activist returned to Friday's board meeting, to press for a formal review of the issue. But, because his questions overlap with Judd's, Groenewold was barred from raising the issue with board members.
In an interview, he said the plain language of the law is clear, that political leaders - not regulators - were to decide on significant growth in Utah's hazardous waste industry.
"The Legislature wisely decided that there should be limits on the amount of radioactive and toxic waste dumped in the state," Groenewold said.
"When EnergySolutions wants to stack waste sky high, our elected leaders should decide if that's in the best interests of the state."
State law requires a full-bore license approval process for waste sites like the EnergySolutions facility in Tooele County, including consent of the Legislature and governor, if a new application or amendment:
l ''would cost 50% or more of the cost of construction of the original radioactive waste facility,''
l ''or the modification would result in an increase in capacity . . . of a cumulative total of 50% of the total capacity . . . ''
Source: Utah Code 19-3-105