WASHINGTON — Just in case anyone on Capitol Hill forgot, Utah's House members sent out a reminder that it strongly opposes Private Fuel Storage's idea to store nuclear waste in Utah.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, hand-delivered a letter to Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, on Tuesday stating that while the country needs to do something about nuclear waste, PFS's project is not the answer. Bishop, Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, all signed the letter.

Hobson is head of the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, which writes the House's version of the energy spending bill each year. Copies also went to the subcommittee's top Democrat Pete Visclosky of Indiana and the House Energy and Commerce Committee leadership.

Hobson is a strong supporter of the government's plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but also wants waste to move off commercial sites as soon as possible, possibly to an interim storage site on federal property.

In the letter, Bishop, Matheson and Cannon reminded Hobson that on May 24, 2005, he said on the House floor: "I do not see any reason for the secretary to consider making a private site or a site on tribal land, into a DOE site for interim storage. My intent is for the secretary to evaluate storage options at existing DOE sites."

Bishop said the letter was to reinforce that statement "in case anyone wants to change it around this year." A similar statement was made on the floor in the Senate at the time, he said.

Bishop said that Hobson said no state would be forced to take government-owned waste to a private site against its will. He said this still allows PFS to "head hunt" for other companies that would want to move waste, but Hobson said government-owned waste would not be involved.

Private Fuel Storage Chairman John Parkyn sent a letter to Congress asking to allow the Energy Department to become a client for its planned nuclear waste storage facility in Tooele County. The department could take title to the waste and move it to Utah until Yucca would be finished or at least reimburse companies that want to move their waste to PFS.

"PFS is not a company with discernible assets other than a regulated license," the Utah House members wrote. "Mr. Parkyn, having lost over half of his original investors, seems anxious and desperate to find new victims for his venture in Utah."

They also pointed to the new wilderness area approved by Congress last year to protect the Utah Test and Training Range, which also blocks the area where PFS wanted to build a rail line.

"PFS could not have chosen a worse location, as it is directly underneath the well-established flight-path for all types of military aircraft utilizing the range, including F-16s and F-22s." they wrote. "One would have to be incredibly stupid to knowingly build an above-ground, high-level nuclear waste storage facility underneath the airspace corridor of a heavily used military training range which supports 2,000 sorties per year involving live munitions."