TOOELE — Envirocare of Utah on Monday cleared its first hurdle in its efforts to expand its operation on land it owns in Tooele County, but the company still must wait for the OK from the Legislature and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

The County Commission, in a special meeting held Monday, unanimously approved an amendment to Envirocare's conditional-use permit, expanding the company's permission to use land it already owns.

Some activists have vocally opposed the expansion, saying expansion of the facility is an environmental and safety hazard. And Cedar Mountain Environmental, a rival company owned by former Envirocare president Charles Judd, claims the county has favored Envirocare while denying similar requests from competitors like Cedar Mountain.

But Envirocare's Tooele County community relations manager Joyce Hagan said the permit amendment is meant only to allow the company's new owners to add improvements to the property, not to expand its radioactive waste disposal operations at the site.

"This is about doing business," she said. "This is about being able to do capital improvements and being able to do it legally."

Hagan said the company has plans to build a new administrative building on the land covered by the expanded permit. It also wants to upgrade its rail lines to a loop to make transportation on the site more efficient, and to add a metal and concrete crusher and a "rollover," a device that lifts and tips rail cars, making it possible to unload them quickly.

The permit amendment would allow Envirocare to use the expanded site for waste disposal at some point in the future if the company ever wanted to, county planner Nicole Cline said — but only from the waste stream already coming into the site. In other words, if Envirocare spreads out its disposal facilities on its site, the expansion would only be in land use, not in the amount of waste being disposed.

Commissioner Matt Lawrence said Envirocare has been required to pay the state through the bonding process for the land, although it has not been able to use it.

But Judd challenged Monday's vote, saying Cedar Mountain used to own the land involved in the permit amendment. He said before selling the land, Cedar Mountain tried to obtain a conditional-use permit allowing it to use that land for waste disposal. After about 16 months of jumping through hoops, Judd said, Cedar Mountain was denied a permit.

Judd said the county reasoned that there was no need for expansion of the waste-disposal industry in Tooele County. Now, he said, the county seems to be contradicting itself by allowing Envirocare to expand on that same land. He said Cedar Mountain only sold its land because its request for a permit had been denied and it began to see the land as useless.