N-waste opponents storm Bishop's town meeting

Anti-nuclear waste activists turned out in force Thursday night, interrupting and shouting down Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, during a tense town meeting at the Salt Lake County Government Center.

Shouted one woman, who did not give her name, "We want you to resign. You do not represent your constituents. This is anti-business, anti-family and anti-life."

Those comments, and many others like it, were directed at the first-term congressman and his support for an amendment to an energy bill that would allow commercial waste companies like Envirocare of Utah to take uranium mill tailings now stored at the Energy Department's former Fernald plant in Ohio.

Even as the nuclear waste wars heated up, Envirocare stepped up its own public relations efforts to win support for taking "hotter" low-level radioactive waste.

At a meeting with the Deseret Morning News editorial board Thursday afternoon, company officials said the recent controversy over a potential bid to take the Ohio waste was orchestrated by national anti-nuclear environmental groups opposed to President Bush's energy plan.

"There is a national agenda behind this," said Tim Barney, senior vice president of Envirocare. They worked with local detractors, he added, and "that's why, in our opinion, this became such an issue."

Utah environmentalist disagreed.

"This is about protecting Utahns," said Jason Groenewold of Families Against Incinerator Risk and Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL Utah). "This is very significant waste that they are trying to bring here. And people have been concerned about the reclassification of radioactive waste and about Utah being the dumping ground before the energy bill. So they're just paranoid."

Groenewold and other nuclear waste activists stormed Bishop's town meeting to voice strong opposition against Bishop's request to reclassify the hotter waste as "commercial" waste and thus allow Envirocare and other private companies to take the waste.

Bishop defended his actions, saying the Energy Department is proposing it because it would be cheaper and safer for a commercial company to take it. The change is needed because the uranium mill tailings that originated from Belgian, Congo, Africa were generated prior to 1978 and therefore not regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and classified as "commercial."

Without the reclassification, the only option officials at Fernald would have is to transport the waste by truck, about 3,800 shipments worth that are now contained in silos, to the Nevada Test Site.