A state advisory board Friday stopped just short of signing off on Envirocare of Utah's plans to double the size of its radioactive and hazardous waste facility.
The state Radiation Control Board took more than four hours to consider Envirocare's request to throw out an appeal of the expansion plan. The Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL) contends that state law requires a more in-depth review of the license change.
Members were poised to allow the expansion when they balked over confusion about the state's authority to regulate waste on the newly-added 536 acres.
The question came up because Envirocare insisted repeatedly that the board was only expanding the site's boundary, not its ability to take, bury or treat waste in the new area. Given that assertion, it appears Envirocare would be barred from handling waste inside the new boundary - even hauling it across the newly "licensed" land, as the company has always done - board members reasoned.
"That has the potential of being a regulatory quagmire," said Dianne Nielson, who serves on the board and is director of the Department of Environmental Quality.
The board appeared resolved to grant the boundary change once agency lawyers and technical staff clarify the issue. They set a Jan. 26 meeting to look at final wording.
The board's intentions are a blow to HEAL. Its appeal ends once the board votes uphold the change, and the environmental group says the board's action is likely to look like a stamp of approval for full use of the site, even though the new acreage just north of its existing Tooele County facility has not been analyzed for its suitability to hold waste.
Meanwhile, Envirocare's supporters in the state Legislature are poised to ask lawmakers and the governor to consider a resolution validating the expansion. Rep. Jim Gowans, D-Tooele, had prepared the resolution for approval by a legislative interim committee in October.
"It's sitting there," he said of the bill file Friday. "We'll decide later what to to do with it."
The pending license change would be Envirocare's 80th in its 18-year life, but the first deemed significant enough to require approval by the Legislature and the governor.
Envirocare was established in 1988 with the signature of a state regulator who was later sentenced to federal prison for his role in a corruption scandal with the company's former owner; Utah political leaders did not have a say in its creation.
They could not say, however, whether the legislature will ever have another opportunity to vote on the company's future.
HEAL's lawyers said there is enough confusion about what the license signifies that lawmakers and the governor might be misled into thinking the site already has been certified to withstand earthquakes, groundwater impacts and other engineering concerns.
fahys@sltrib.com
