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A waste-industry executive said he's planning to sue the state over a new law that removed the authority of elected leaders over the EnergySolutions radioactive waste site in Tooele County.
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. let SB155 go into effect without his signature on Tuesday. The measure codifies the way regulators have dealt with the mile-square landfill since it began accepting low-level radioactive and hazardous waste 19 years ago.
But Charles Judd says the law is unconstitutional because it helps create and protect a monopoly at the expense of other companies in the same industry.
“It's obvious that this is an unfair piece of legislation,” said Judd, who served as president for the radioactive waste company for several years.
“The truth is, they broke the law, and now they want to change the law to benefit one company.”
EnergySolutions declined to comment on the impending lawsuit. So did Dianne Nielson, director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. “Until there's a suit, I cannot respond,” she said.
Nielson's agency has sided with EnergySolutions over the past year, while Judd and other critics challenged the state on its refusal to apply a certain provision of the law to the mile-square disposal site. The provision says if a waste facility wants to grow by 50 percent or more, it must get approval from local elected officials, the Legislature and the governor, as well as regulators.
The EnergySolutions site has received more than 80 license amendments that incrementally allowed it to take more types and larger volumes of waste, but it has never been required to get legislative and gubernatorial approval.
An expansion request now underway, which would allow the site to pile waste 83 feet high rather than the current 45-feet allowed, prompted comments from 666 people. But enactment of SB155 effectively invalidates the legal challenge many of them raised.