Envirocare of Utah is reaching out to Utahns with a 30-minute DVD to explain its business and answer questions raised by its opponents.

The Salt Lake-based business will run 30-minute infomercials on local television stations and cable networks and has been running radio infomercial for the past couple of months.

Envirocare has hired former sports broadcaster and Miss America Sharlene Wells Hawkes to narrate the video presentation, said Senior Vice President Tim Barney. "Before being interested, she did a lot of independent research on her own."

Envirocare has enough opposition in Utah and enough scared legislators that even though the Utah Department of Environmental Quality has given it permits to accept two additional classes of low-level radiological waste, the governor and the Legislature have not approved them.

"We're not happy with that, but we can live with it," Barney said. "Radiation is not well understood by the public. People are afraid of the unknown. One of the purposes of the DVD is to explain that radiation is everywhere and is not something we need to be afraid of. It's something we need to manage," Barney said.

"We have found over the years the single best thing we can do to educate the public about what we do is to give them site tours. Almost without exception, after a tour, we find their opinion changes. If they were favorable before the tour, they become more favorable. If they were negative, after the tour, their opinion changes to positive or at least neutral," Barney said.

The question the company struggled with was how best to offer the most people in Utah a site tour, he said. "We thought we needed to take the tour to the people so we developed the half-hour DVD. The virtual tour of the site 80 miles west of Salt Lake City addresses the arguments our opponents have used."

Chief among topics on the DVD are safety and safe storage of radioactive materials; what is radiation; transportation safety; impact on the local economy; why the western desert is the best place to store such materials; and regulations governing the site.

DVDs can be requested by calling Envirocare, 801-532-1330, or by going to the company's Web site, www.envirocareutah.com.

The infomercial campaign will run for at least three weeks, possibly four, and then it will be evaluated for effectiveness, Barney said.

---

E-mail: lweist@desnews.com