Utah chambers join fight against Yucca

Friday, July 5, 2002 | 11:15 a.m.

Salt Lake City's chamber of commerce hopes a resolution unanimously approved by its influential board will convince Utah's two senators to vote against establishing a high-level nuclear waste dump in Nevada.

The 35-member board of governors directing the 100-year-old Salt Lake Chamber -- the largest business organization in Utah with more than 2,000 member firms -- approved a resolution opposing Yucca Mountain last week.

A committee of the St. George, Utah, Chamber of Commerce also wrote a letter in opposition to Yucca Mountain. St. George is about 110 miles northeast of Las Vegas on Interstate 15.

Joe Christopher, president of the St. George Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber's community action committee wrote a letter in opposition to the approval of nuclear waste storage and transportation to Yucca Mountain.

"Practically everything that would go there would have to come through St. George to get there, so we're concerned," said Christopher, general sales manager of Canyon Media Corp., which has three radio stations in St. George.

The Las Vegas Chamber went on record against Yucca Mountain last year and broke with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the issue.

The actions by the chambers of Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and St. George represent key organized business opposition to Yucca Mountain, which is expected to face a critical vote in the Senate this month.

Separately, the Salt Lake City Council approved a resolution Tuesday opposing the Nevada repository because much of the estimated 77,000 tons of waste would pass through the heart of Salt Lake City.

The resolutions were prompted by recent Nevada lobbying efforts against the proposed nuclear waste repository planned 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

In late May, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman went to Salt Lake City to generate support against the Yucca Mountain repository.

The seven-member Salt Lake City Council's resolution is being sent to President Bush and congressional representatives and governors of states in the West. The resolution says that "if the Yucca Mountain site is approved, 90 percent of all shipments of high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain would pass through the heart of the Salt Lake Valley by railroad and on interstate highways and more high-level nuclear waste would pass through Salt Lake City than any other city in the United States except Las Vegas."

The Salt Lake Chamber board said its position is in conflict with hundreds of other chambers of commerce that support Yucca Mountain, including the Davis, Heber Valley and Provo-Orem chambers in Utah.

The reason those chambers supported Yucca Mountain, said Kem Gardner, chairman of the Salt Lake Chamber board of governors, is that the votes were taken before information about the transportation of waste was widely disseminated and those organizations "fell in step with the position taken by the U.S. Chamber."

"They had a knee-jerk reaction, without thinking about it," said Gardner, president of The Boyer Co., a big Salt Lake City-based commercial real estate developer. "We spent all that money promoting the state of Utah during the Olympic Games, trying to sell tourism and the quality of life in the state. If you allow nuclear waste to be transported through the state, you undo a lot of the good we accomplished during the Olympics."

"I just don't like the perception that Utah and Nevada is the place to send your nuclear waste," Gardner said.

"They are correct in saying we have a major problem that has to be solved, but we feel we're correct in saying this is not the solution," Chamber spokesman Michael De Groote said. "We are not experts in nuclear disposal, but the position we're taking is that we are experts in what is good for Utah and this is not good for Utah and for the West."

The Salt Lake Chamber has opposed the transportation and storage of nuclear waste since 2000. The organization earlier opposed the temporary storage of high-level nuclear waste at Skull Valley about 70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City on the Goshute Indian Reservation. The tribe has an agreement with Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of nuclear plant operators from across the country, and has proposed a $125 million temporary facility to store 40,000 tons of waste on the reservation.

De Groote said the board took a similar, consistent approach to nuclear waste storage in its Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley stances, even though some Utah business people believe they should fight the Skull Valley proposal harder and force waste into Nevada instead.

Steve Erickson, director of the Citizens Education Project, a Utah environmental group, said the federal government "could just as easily screw Utah as they've screwed Nevada" on forcing nuclear waste to the state.

The Salt Lake City Council resolution also contemplates that because Yucca Mountain would not have the capacity to store all of the nation's nuclear waste, federal officials might look to sending excess waste to Skull Valley permanently.

Later this month, the Senate is expected to take up debate on Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of President Bush's order approving Yucca Mountain as the site for storing the waste. The House voted 306-117 to override the veto, but Nevada leaders think their best chance to stop the repository may be in the Senate.

Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett, both Republicans, have supported Bush and favored the Yucca Mountain repository as a solution to disposing of nuclear waste scattered across the country. Utah business people say the senators are reconsidering their positions, but neither Hatch nor Bennett have said publicly that they would vote against Yucca Mountain. Neither could be reached for comment.

"Those are the two we took this vote for," Gardner said. "We've notified them of our position and we would hope that they would listen to what the business community has to say. We have not heard whether they have changed their positions."

Erickson said he talked to Bennett in April and that while it is encouraged that the senator is becoming better informed about the proposal, that "time is running out."