Salt Lake County can't stop it, but it can send a message it doesn't want it.

The County Council will consider a resolution today opposing the shipment of thousands of tons of depleted uranium into Utah and, specifically, through the state's most-populous county.

The resolution also calls for insisting that the financial burden for removing any waste already here -- if found unsafe under state or federal standards -- not fall on taxpayers.

The nonbinding measure comes as public sentiment simmers against the burial of radioactive waste in Tooele County. A recent Salt Lake Tribune poll found that 76 percent of Utah voters want to close the state's door to depleted-uranium shipments.

County Councilwoman Jani Iwamoto, a Democrat who once served on former Gov. Mike Leavitt's coalition to oppose the storage of high-level nuclear waste in Utah, shares that opposition. She says the county needs to take a stand.

"It really does matter to the county," Iwamoto said Monday. The depleted uranium "would be transported through the county and could affect the health and safety of residents. It is important that we represent that."

Last year, Iwamoto won the council's support for another waste-related resolution urging the federal government to block imports of radioactive waste from foreign countries into Utah.

Although today's resolution is toothless, Republican Councilman David Wilde plans to support it. He doesn't want Utah identified as a radioactive dump.

"We don't have the authority to stop it," Wilde said. "We just can say we don't like it."

County Mayor Peter Corroon is expected to sign the resolution jointly with the council. The Democrat has made his opposition to radioactive waste a campaign issue in his gubernatorial bid against Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican.

"Future generations," Corroon wrote in a letter to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, "should not be forced to accept the potentially harmful consequences of our lack of due diligence and research on this important issue."

Herbert wants due diligence as well, according to Amanda Smith, executive director of the Department of Environmental Quality.

Although a trainload of depleted uranium reached the state under his watch containing several thousand drums of low-level waste, Smith said the governor has so far managed to keep two more loads from arriving that would bring that total to more than 15,000 barrels.

"He took the strongest action he could take," Smith said.

The governor will take "every action possible," she said, to keep more depleted uranium from entering the state until regulators have determined whether the waste can be safely contained at the Tooele County storage site for an extended time. That review is expected to be completed in several weeks.

jstettler@sltrib.com