Davis County officials, meanwhile, have followed the notion that dioxin is less harmful than other, ever-present environmental hazards of disposing solid waste.

"Yeah, there's people in Layton with cancer," said Layton Mayor Jerry Stevenson, who also chairs Wasatch Energy's board. "Did the incinerator cause it? I don't think so."

Burning vs. burying

Burning trash has an upside. It reduces landfill waste, kills bacteria that might otherwise seep into groundwater and potentially reduces ozone-depleting gases emitted by decomposing trash.

And every year Utah must find someplace to stuff the 4 million tons of solid and hazardous waste — enough to fill the Delta Center 18 times — its residences and businesses generate. Most of that garbage is put in landfills, and about 4 percent is burned at the Layton incinerator. Landfill problems are obvious in Spanish Fork, where a master-planned residential community was built on a former dump. Residents living on the site now suffer headaches, nausea and hair loss, and the county health department has ordered all homes on the former landfill moved.

The physical symptoms in Spanish Fork are most often blamed on methane gas, which is constantly emitted from landfills. The ground above the old landfill has also tested positive for asbestos, which is linked to lung cancer.

"I don't dare take a drink of water or turn on the heater. I'm afraid our house is going to blow up," Spanish Fork resident Erin Dodge said last month. "We shouldn't have to live there."

To bury or not to bury. To burn or not to burn. Sentiment is varied on all sides of the garbage issue.

And many residents see Utah as the nation's favorite dumping ground. A new 2,400-acre landfill in east Carbon is touting successes. Buried there are dregs from New York Harbor, tons of contaminated soil from a northern California railyard, shredded car parts from General Motors plants.

"We're willing to take waste from anywhere," Kirk Treece, ECDC general manager, told lawmakers last fall during a tour of the site.

Within the garbage discussion, the Layton incinerator has been under nearly constant fire.