Toxic Utah: Paying the price

Still, the zone was big enough for two hazardous waste incinerators and an expanded hazardous waste landfill. The cornerstone of Tooele County's hazardous waste zone was Envirocare, a facility built by Khosrow Semnani, who purchased lands around the Vitro site to store low-level radioactive waste similar to the Vitro wastes. The site now accepts radioactive wastes, 600,000 tons in the last year alone, from Cold War cleanup sites around the nation.

Envirocare now contributes about $5 million annually to county coffers — mostly fees based on 5 percent of gross revenue — while the remaining hazardous waste facilities, now owned by Safety-Kleen, pay another $1 million. Combined, the revenue from waste companies is the backbone of the county budget.

Katie, bar the door

Tooele County's lusty embrace of the waste industry did not go unnoticed by state lawmakers, who became increasingly concerned in the late 1980s after one waste company after another targeted Utah. Several were already in operation when lawmakers in 1990 implemented their own conditions: Any future hazardous or radioactive waste dumps or incinerators would have to be approved by the Legislature and the governor after a detailed review by state environmental regulators.

No new hazardous or radioactive waste facilities have been licensed since then.

Environmentalists say all that was too little, too late.

State officials, led by Gov. Mike Leavitt, are frantically trying to block Goshute Indians in Tooele County from locating a high-level nuclear waste facility on tribal lands in Skull Valley not far from the existing hazardous and radioactive waste facilities. Tribal lands are exempt from state regulation, and federal regulators thus far seem inclined to grant a storage license to a consortium of nuclear power companies, called Private Fuel Storage (PFS).

There is growing pessimism among PFS opponents that the state will be successful in its opposition, barring presidential or congressional intervention.

"The state is paying the price now for decisions it made in the past," Ward said. "It is hypocritical of Leavitt to tell the Goshutes 'no' when the state has a long-standing policy of supporting (commercial waste disposal). The lesson of PFS is that it's hard to close the gates once they have been opened so wide."

Leavitt disagrees with that assessment, saying low-level radioactive and hazardous waste disposal have been properly managed over the past two decades with no threat to public safety. And it is grossly unfair to compare low-level and hazardous wastes with the potent concoction of high-level wastes that remains lethal for 10,000 years.