The biggest impediment to an energy boom in eastern Utah may be a lack of permits, not a lack of oil or gas, a Utah congressman told lawmakers Thursday.
Home to the second busiest Bureau of Land Management office in the country, the Uinta Basin is seeing a flurry of permit applications that cannot be managed by the existing office, Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, said during an appearance before the Utah Senate.
"We do not have adequate personnel," Mathseon said during a question-and-answer period following his formal speech. "They are trying to do the right thing, but they simply don't have the bodies . . . the bottleneck is in the permitting."
Energy development was just one of the topics Matheson touched on during his half-hour appearance before the Senate, which included almost 15 minutes of questions from senators. He also appeared before the House.
A focus of his speech was the collaborative efforts between state and federal officials that helped slow, and many hope has stopped, the efforts by Private Fuel Storage to store high-level nuclear waste on Goshute Indian land in the west desert. The creation of a wilderness area, which was signed into law earlier this month, was especially important.
About 100,000 acres of land will make up the Cedar Mountain Wilderness area, giving it protection from motorized vehicles, roads, mining and other intrusions. The land includes a portion of BLM that Private Fuel Storage wants to use as part of its railroad to the proposed nuclear-waste site. By including it in the wilderness area, it cuts off that transportation option.
"We fought and won a major battle over public safety," he said. "The message we sent was don't dump on us."
He also applauded the continued block of nuclear weapons testing in Nevada, which has been proposed by President George Bush.
"Utah paid dearly when we trusted the government when they told us we were safe" in the 1950s and 1960s, when testing was done in Nevada and resulted in Utahns contracting cancers, he said. "As a state with too many family and friends lost to press this fight on their own, we must prevail. We cannot go down that road again."Matheson said he is pushing for money to help pay for the widening of U.S. 6, one of the most dangerous roads in the state. "I look forward, someday, to driving to meet with folks in Price and Moab along a safer, four-lane highway," he said.
Other topics touched on by Matheson included benefits for active duty military, methamphetamine enforcement, and mine safety.
E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com