Former Rep. Aaron Tilton has been quietly pushing to build a nuclear power plant in Green River. The power generated by this nuclear plant would be sold to California. I strongly oppose building a nuclear power plant in Utah to generate power for other states.

This is nothing but a back door approach by California to send Utah their nuclear waste. Utahns have made it clear that we do not want other states' nuclear waste.

California's solution to the problem is to build their nuclear power plants in Utah. What a great idea. Not only do they not get stuck with the nuclear waste they generate, they do not have to pay the very large fees to ship their nuclear waste to Utah for storage, had Utah been willing to accept the waste. In addition to this, they do not have to use their own water shares.

This brings up another reason why this is bad for Utah and a great deal for California. Water in the West is a very valuable commodity and nuclear power uses a tremendous amount of water. Utah is the second driest state in the United States. Is this really the best use of our water?

The power generated by this nuclear power plant will be about twice as expensive as what we in Utah pay for power now. The power generated by this power plant will clearly not benefit Utah power users.

I do not know if EnergySolutions is involved in any way with this, but I do know that when I ran legislation the past two years to try to address this issue, EnergySolutions contacted me and said the company did not support my legislation. Neither did the House Rules Committee and House leaders, who buried my legislation in the Rules Committee so there would be no public debate on the issue.

Clearly Green River needs the jobs, but it would make much more sense to build a natural gas power plant in Green River. A natural gas power plant would create jobs sooner. Nuclear power has to go through a much longer approval process than natural gas. Natural gas generates cheaper power, which could actually benefit Utahns.

Natural gas power would not require the huge federal subsidies required to build a nuclear power plant, and it would create a market for a product we have an abundance of (natural gas) creating jobs in that industry as well.

If Utahns have changed their minds about storing other states' nuclear waste and are willing to let other states create their nuclear waste in Utah, we should also let EnergySolutions start taking other states' nuclear waste and tax it enough to fund public education.

We are running out of time for the Utah Legislature to act on this issue. It is time for the citizens of Utah to speak up and let their legislators know how they feel. Are we going to take other states' nuclear waste or not? I say not.

Rep. Jay Seegmiller is an outgoing Utah legislator representing House District 49.