Font ResizeRep. Jim Matheson is urging Gov. Gary Herbert to rebuff EnergySolutions' renewed offer to share profits with the cash-strapped state if it drops its legal fight to keep foreign radioactive waste out of Utah.
In a letter sent Friday to Herbert, Matheson denounced the Salt Lake City-based nuclear services company's proposal as "influence peddling."
The letter is a reaction to ongoing discussions among state officials over a proposed deal to give Utah as much as $3 billion over the next decade. EnergySolutions' offer surfaced during the legislative session last winter but was quickly rejected by then-Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
Last week, state Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse, said it would be wise to revisit the offer given the state's estimated $700 million budget shortfall.
But Matheson, a Democrat who has repeatedly fought against EnergySolutions' attempts to expand its disposal operations to include hotter waste or foreign waste, said the state should reject the deal out of hand.
"It's a horrible idea to consider opening up Utah to the entire world's radioactive garbage in exchange for a share of what the company says are the profits," Matheson said. "No other country on Earth takes another country's nuclear waste and I am determined that the U.S. won't be the exception."
In his letter to the new governor, who was sworn in Aug. 11, Matheson mentioned his joint efforts with Huntsman and he said: "Utahns
But Killpack said the state's legal fight to stop the 1,600 tons of reprocessed waste from Italy is flawed. If the state loses, the waste could go to EnergySolutions site anyway and the government would get nothing.
The company's executives have made it clear to Herbert that their profit-sharing offer still stands and they argue that the Clive, Utah, site has ample space for low-level radioactive waste generated in the United States and abroad.
The governor has said he will continue to fight the company's plan.
Spokeswoman Angie Welling said Friday that Herbert had not yet seen the letter from Matheson.
"What I can tell you is that Governor Herbert's position on this issue has not changed. He remains opposed to the importation of foreign, low-level nuclear waste to Utah and is committed to the appeal that is now pending before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals," she said.
In May, U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart ruled that the Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste, which has opposed the importation, has no authority over EnergySolutions' Tooele County site. The compact is appealing and Utah is a co-defendant. Several other compacts and states have filed briefs urging the appeals court to overturn Stewart's ruling.
Matheson said the legal fight is not the only avenue to block the waste.
Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., has introduced the RID Act, which would ban the importation of foreign waste. His bill has 79 co-sponsors including Matheson and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. Gordon is interested because EnergySolutions wants to import 20,000 tons of Italian waste, which would be reprocessed at a Tennessee plant before 1,600 tons of it are shipped to Utah for burial.
"Renewed talk of capitulating to one company's bottom line makes me more determined than ever to pass the RID Act and settle the issue once and for all," Matheson said.
Chaffetz also said he will try to get the bill before the House quickly to head off any settlement talks with state leaders.
Utah GOP Rep. Rob Bishop, a former EnergySolutions state lobbyist, said he is not working this issue or taking part in discussions, though he does not support federal legislation banning states from taking foreign waste.
Utah Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch have not weighed in on this issue. Bennett, a member of the Senate's energy committee and the ranking member of the Senate's energy appropriations subcommittee, has received more than $50,000 in donations from EnergySolutions for his 2010 re-election campaign.
EnergySolutions spokeswoman Jill Sigal said the company doesn't believe Congress should get involved in an issue that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can handle.
"There is no difference between internationally generated material and domestically generated material," Sigal said. "There is no health or safety issue and no capacity issue, therefore we do not believe that Congress needs to change the law."
