GOP lawmakers were hustling Thursday after Gov. Mike Leavitt came to House and Senate Republican caucuses asking that the Skull Valley Road be placed back in a state road bill, allowing him to better fight efforts to turn the Goshute Indian Reservation into a nuclear waste repository.
Leavitt seeks legislative approval for action taken last year to give the state control of the road. With such control he could place heavy tolls on trucks bringing in high-level nuclear fuel rods, as proposed by a tentative Goshute agreement with nuclear waste producers.Monday, the House Transportation Committee took the Skull Valley proposal out, partly because members didn't like the way the Leavitt administration and the Utah Transportation Commission acted when they designated the road a state highway in December.
The commission gave only the mandatory 24-hour notice that the action was coming. Objections by the Tooele County Commission led to the road's removal from the current legislation, several House members said.
Tooele County Commission Chairman Teryl Hunsaker, who was furious when Leavitt first announced the state was appropriating the road, remains less than enamored with Leavitt and his explanations.
"We frankly don't care who owns the road," Hunsaker said Thursday. "The issue is whether the governor can just run around the counties of this state taking over roads and the like whenever he feels like it."
But Leavitt didn't apologize for his administration's quick actions last year. He only sought to explain them Thursday and kindly ask if a few legislators want to harm the state's efforts to stop Utah's western desert from becoming a radioactive dumping ground.
"Do we want high-level nuclear waste going down the Skull Valley Road?" Leavitt rhetorically asked the House GOP caucus. "I don't think so."
Leavitt and Sen. Craig Peterson, R-Orem, both said that a bill, drafted by executive and legislative attorneys and soon to be introduced by Peterson, will use "a variety of tools" to seriously hinder the Goshute Indian Tribe and a consortium of eight Midwestern and Eastern public nuclear power agencies from "temporarily" storing high-level nuclear waste on the Goshute reservation.
Peterson's bill will include language that would allow the state to place high tolls on the 24-mile road - perhaps high enough to sink the project.
Peterson added Thursday that the consortium, called Private Fuel Storage, is a limited liability company "with almost no assets . . . Who do we turn to" if there is a leak or other problem? asked Peterson.
Accordingly, Peterson said his bill will allow the state to require a bond to clean up any mess. But questions abounded: What could that mess be? How much could it cost?
"All that we do" must be defendable in court, said Leavitt. Added Peterson: "But we are going to throw up as many obstacles as we can."
"The Legislature must speak very concisely and clearly in saying: `This is dangerous material and we don't want it here,' " Leavitt said.
Referring to Monday's committee action, committee chairman Rep. Don Bush, R-Clearfield, said sometimes legislators act "without all the information." Read that to say that, in his opinion, they made a mistake.
The Transportation Committee, led by Rep. David Ure, R-Kamas, who has crossed Leavitt several times this session already, voted to remove the road's state designation on an 8-4 vote.
"I agree we don't want this stuff in our state," said Ure Thursday. "I just didn't like the process that was followed. I don't want the counties to be able to accuse the state of the same sort of thing that the state says happened with the Escalante national monument (in which the federal government arbitrarily imposed a decision on the state.")
Last Monday's actions by the House Transportation Committee muddied the message Leavitt wants sent to PFS and federal nuclear regulatory officials. And that will be corrected after the bill is reheard by the committee next week - "With probably a full (two-hour) public hearing," said House Majority Assistant Whip John Valentine, R-Provo.
The Skull Valley Road will quickly be placed back on the state road list and Peterson's bill will then allow tolls on the road.
Leavitt got his message across Thursday. "I move that this (House GOP caucus) fully support the governor in whatever he needs to do" on the road, said Rep. Gerry Adair, R-Roy. Without a dissenting vote, Leavitt got full support from his party's caucus.
Controlling the road "is not a silver bullet that will kill the PFS project," said Leavitt. Utah has limited authority to interfere with sovereign Indian lands and interstate commerce. "But we'll do what we can and (designating the Skull Valley Road a state road) is a critical part of our strategy," the governor said.
"Everything we plan to do in my bill has been done, in some form, in other cases in state law," said Peterson. The state may just do it a whole lot more in relation to the PFS project.
Saying Utah may not have a say in the storage and shipment of the high-level nuclear rods (beileved to pose a danger to human health for 10,000 years) outside of state boundaries, Leavitt added: "But we do have a say in how items are moved on our roads in this state. And we will have that say."