- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Othello, Act 3, Scene 3
No matter how much influence Envirocare might have thought it had bought, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. made it clear Thursday that, as long as he is governor, Utah won't be buying a radioactive pig in a bureaucratic poke.
Good on him.
In announcing that Envirocare won't get his essential permission to expand its nuclear waste storage facility near Tooele, Huntsman spoke of the damage that would be done to the state's image, even its sovereignty, if Utah developed a reputation as the nation's nuclear dumping ground.
True. But Huntsman undoubtedly was also moved by concern for his own good name, which was being increasingly threatened by the actions of people Huntsman does not control but who are linked to him professionally, politically and even by kinship.
First, Envirocare's critics complained that the presence of Huntsman brother-in-law Rick Durham among that company's owners constituted a conflict of interest. While the governor's office was still taking offense at that suggestion, we learned that Envirocare had hired the chairman of the Utah Republican Party, Joe Cannon, and two directors of Huntsman's political action committee, Max Farbman and Greg Hopkins, as lobbyists.
Supposedly, their lobbying was to be done at the federal level. But even if that were true, it still didn't pass the smell test.
Not only was Huntsman being double-dog-dared to deny a business with lucrative connections to some of his key political allies, the fact that Envirocare was so actively fishing for business with the feds only fed fears that doubling its land would mean a vast increase in the amount, and possibly the danger, of what it would store there.
Thursday, all of Envirocare's best-laid plans blew up in its face. Rather than waiting for the appeals process before the Utah Division of Radiation Control to run its course, or even for the next session of the Legislature, Huntsman said, "No, N-O," to Envirocare's expansion.
Those who seek to fill their purse by storing radioactive trash must take care what they do to a governor's good name.
