All three parties in a lawsuit challenging EnergySolutions' expansion - the company, state regulators and their frequent opponents, the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah - had something they could agree on after more than 19 months of quarreling: There is no longer any need to fight over an expanded boundary state regulators granted to the company in 2005 for its Tooele County landfill.

The Utah Supreme Court agreed and, Monday, canceled oral arguments in the case.

"I think everything changed for EnergySolutions when Governor Huntsman said that it was his policy not to allow any waste at the facility beyond the amounts already permitted, and that he was prepared to take steps to make that happen," said Utah Assistant Attorney General Laura Lockhart, who was to defend the boundary expansion proposal before the court this morning.

With waste literally backed up at the disposal site's gates, EnergySolutions began asking state regulators in 2005 to expand. One proposal would allow the low-level radioactive waste to grow outward, by doubling the amount of land inside the landfill's boundaries. The other allowed for expansion upward, with waste piles 83 feet tall rather than the 45 feet currently allowed.

The wrangling over the upward expansion ended March 15, when Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and the Salt Lake City-based company signed an agreement that capped waste at the site to levels currently permitted. As part of the deal, EnergySolutions scrapped its request to pile waste higher.

Implied plans for an outward expansion were at the heart of the Supreme Court hearing that was slated for arguments this morning. The company had sought and received approval in August 2005 to add 536 acres just north of its current mile-square site, just over an hour's drive west of Salt Lake City.

Although Huntsman said that fall he opposed it, the company hustled to the Legislature in hopes of getting general approval for the boundary expansion. At the same time, lawmakers were considering a bill that would have allowed the waste site to grow over the governor's objections.

If the bill had been enacted, EnergySolutions, called Envirocare of Utah at the time, would not have had to worry that Huntsman might nix the outward expansion after the company had spent millions of dollars on engineering. But Huntsman vetoed the bill.

Huntsman shocked many during the recently ended legislative session when he did not veto a similar bill, which made it clear local elected leaders, the Legislature and the governor do not have to sign off on future expansions at the existing site. But at the same time, the governor threatened to impose a cap on waste at EnergySolutions through the Northwest Compact, a regional waste oversight group.

With such a complicated history behind the boundary expansion, the events Monday seemed to happen at lightening speed.

In the morning, the nuclear waste company made a formal written request to the Utah Division of Radiation Control to withdraw its boundary expansion license. Hours later - when amendments like these usually take months, if not years - regulators slashed the boundary back to its old configuration.

Then, before lunch, the company urged the Supreme Court to consider dropping a lawsuit the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah had brought in February 2006 over the expanded boundary. Lawyers for the state Radiation Control office and lawyers for HEAL agreed.

Huntsman applauded EnergySolutions for upholding its end of the agreement.

"Their action [Monday] moved us closer to the endpoint where Utah no longer receives unwanted waste from outside the state," he said through a spokesman.

EnergySolutions declined repeated requests for comment and offered a written statement.

But its most telling comments came in court papers, where the company pointed to its March 15 agreement with Huntsman. HEAL's appeal is no longer needed in light of "its efforts to assure the governor and the public it had no current plans to expand beyond" the waste site's current footprint.

HEAL co-founder Jason Groenewold predicted the company will be back to request an expansion in the future.

"The company has taken its plans off the table for now," he said, "but their word is good only so long as Huntsman remains in the Governor's Mansion."

"EnergySolutions has seen the writing on the wall," said HEAL Director Vanessa Pierce, suggesting the company feared defeat at the Supreme Court.

"If they were confident in winning this case, they wouldn't have withdrawn. But rather than having to admit defeat, they opted to take the not-so-cheap but easy way out by relinquishing their expansion request at the last minute."

fahys@sltrib.com