Bennett gets senators to kill N-waste wording

WASHINGTON — At the insistence of Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, a Senate appropriations committee has stripped language from a House bill that would have directed government attorneys to fight Utah's attempt to keep high-level nuclear waste out of the state.

"The federal government should not be in the business of mounting legal challenges for a privately owned company," Bennett said. "The language passed by the House specifying shipments of nuclear waste to Skull Valley is in direct conflict with administration policy and something I was happy to eliminate from the Senate bill."

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Transportation — of which Bennett is a member — removed authorization language specifying that the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was authorized to hire two attorneys "to support the legal challenges regarding shipments of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to Skull Valley, Utah."

Utah's two senators and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. interpreted the language to mean the government was charting a course of supporting Private Fuel Storage, the private consortium of nuclear power utilities that wants to store up to 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on Goshute tribal lands southwest of Salt Lake City.

Last week, Huntsman issued a terse statement saying he was shocked and dismayed by a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to allocate federal funding to address anticipated "legal challenges" that might be brought by the State of Utah.

"The federal government should not be funding the litigation expenses of a privately owned, for-profit enterprise in its efforts to force spent nuclear fuel on a state that doesn't want it," Huntsman said. "This is public policy at its worst and represents a dramatic departure from previous statements made by congressional leaders."

On Tuesday, members of Utah's congressional delegation said they were still trying to determine who in the House requested the language, which slipped through unnoticed by Utah's three representatives.

Fingers were pointing at the Bush administration and the Office of Management and Budget. But both Bennett and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Tuesday they had received separate assurances from White House officials that the language is a mistake and should not be taken as White House support of PFS.