By JUDY FAHYS

The Salt Lake Tribune

August 18, 2010 10:41AM

Federal regulators may well have the authority after all to decide how a Utah magnesium plant manages its hazardous waste, under a Denver appeals court’s ruling released Tuesday.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out an Oct. 17, 2007, decision by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson that US Magnesium in Tooele County is exempted from the nation’s cradle-to-grave hazardous waste law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

In short, the appeals court said the Environmental Protection Agency can update its “tentative” interpretation of a regulation into a final one without additional public input. It ordered Benson to reconsider the case.

Is it any wonder we are in an environmental quagmire. Action began on this issue in 2001. The  case was eventually decided by Judge Benson in 2007. Three years later the Appeals Court overturns the decision and orders Benson to reconsider the case, thus it is still unresolved. This is a near total failure of the court system. All this delay has been worth millions to Mag Corp and to New York businessman Ira Rennert, and the public be damned.The corporate polluters are benefited by the slow moving court system and the earth and its inhabitants suffer irreparable damage.

The delay in this decision is far more devastating than the long and tedious process of the death penalty. This needs fixed, and who will fix it? Nobody. This is a horrible condemnation of our justice system.

“Even under the case law US Magnesium asks us to follow, the agency is at liberty to adopt without notice and comment a reasonable interpretation of that ambiguous regulation,” said the opinion written by Judge Neil M. Gorsuch and joined by the two other judges on the appeals panel.

Although neither side has said what it will do next, it is possible the ruling will finally settle the two-decade-old (more…)

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Miami Herald

August 6, 2010 12:01AM

“Today, I quit being a Christian.”

With those words last week on Facebook, Anne Rice delivered a wake-up call for organized religion. The question is whether it will be recognized as such.

“I remain committed to Christ as always,” she wrote, “but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

You will recall that the author, famed for her vampire novels, made a much publicized return to the Catholicism of her youth after years of calling herself an atheist. Now, years later, she says she hasn’t lost her faith, but she’s had it up to here with organized religion.

“In the name of Christ,” she wrote, “I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.”

If that was not nearly enough for atheist observers, one of whom berated her online for refusing to completely give up her “superstitious delusions,” it was surely plenty for people of faith. But Rice is hardly the only one who feels as she does.

According to a 2008 study by Trinity College, religiosity is trending down sharply in this country. The American Religious Identification Survey, which polled over 54,000 American adults, found that the percentage who call themselves Christian has fallen by (more…)

by Justin Pritchard

Associated Press

Los Angeles » The federal agency responsible for ensuring that the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In fact, the agency’s inspection frequency on the Deepwater Horizon fell dramatically over the past five years, according to federal Minerals Management Service records. The rig blew up April 20, killing 11 people before sinking and triggering a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since January 2005, inspectors issued just one minor infraction for the rig. That strong track record led the agency last year to herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.

The inspection gaps are the latest in a series of questions raised about the agency’s oversight of the oil drilling industry. Members of Congress and President Barack Obama have criticized what they call the cozy relationship between regulators and oil companies and vowed to reform MMS, which both regulates the industry and collects billions in royalties from it.

We arrive once again at the core of most of our current problems—the federal government has failed to do its job of regulating the various industries that must be closely supervised for the benefit of all Americans.

The Bush Administration and the anti-government Republican Party are responsible for most of this failure of regulation. They simply don’t believe (more…)

Published on Wednesday, May 5, 2010 by The Progressive

Time to Prosecute Corporate Criminals at Massey, BP

by Ruth Conniff

Nothing prevents the government from criminally prosecuting corporate CEOs who willfully ignore health and safety standards, killing workers, as in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, and causing environmental catastrophe, as in BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

And why not include Goldman Sachs?

For years, we haven’t seen many corporate criminals prosecuted in the United States, thanks to the power of corporate lobbyists and the reluctance of government officials to take on business interests.

A PBS Frontline show “A Dangerous Business“-notes that, in the 32 years since OSHA was created, there have been over 200,000 workplace deaths. But OSHA has referred only 151 of these cases to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Of these, only eight have resulted in prison sentences for company officials.

There is a lot of political pressure not to seek prison terms for CEOs of unscrupulous companies, and little public sentiment pushing the government and prosecutors to get tough on corporate criminals.

But that may be changing.

Corporations have provided a hiding place for the wealthy. It’s time that wall of protection comes down. No more slap on the hands with fines. It’s time for prison for corporate crimes. Corporate executives responsible for selling colored water as orange juice should be in jail. Corporate crimes far exceed blue collar crimes in total dollars. Wall Street, including bankers, and all other types of money changers, have stolen more money than bank robbers, and they go scot free.

Why? Because the corporate executives are calling the shots on everything in America. We can’t get health care passed because of corporate objections. We can’t get financial reform because of corporate objections. We can’t get fair elections because of corporate influence. We can’t elect an honest legislator because corporations by them or beat them.

The immigration problem is caused by corporations hiring illegals to enhance their bottom line. Throw the corporate executives that hire illegals in jail and suddenly the problem will be solved.

Corporations should not be immune from vigorous prosecution. By law they are not immune, but by practice it happens too rarely.

The explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana that killed eleven people and led to an oil spill that will soon surpass Exxon Valdez in its (more…)

Federal regulators clamped strong new controls Wednesday on the pesticide believed to have caused the deaths of 4-year-old Rebecca Toone and her 15-month-old sister Rachel the week after an exterminator fumigated rodent holes outside of their Layton home.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said aluminum and magnesium phosphide fumigants can no longer be used near homes. The agency also expanded the buffer zones required when using it outdoors and imposed a new requirement for posted warnings when the pesticide has been applied.

Great article by Judy Fahys. Excellent reporting on the background of the regulation process. Please read the story to the end.

A side note— the deaths of two Latino girls in the Logan Canal disaster didn’t result in any significant increase in regulatory protections. What will it take to get proper regulation of our canal systems?

“Phosphine fumigants are poisons and must be kept away from where our children live,” said Steve Owens, assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. “These new safeguards prohibit the use of these toxic pesticides near homes and impose restrictions to protect our families from exposure to them.”

Agency spokesman Dale Kemery said the Layton sisters’ deaths had “focused EPA to get these tighter restrictions as quickly as possible. Today’s action demonstrates that concern.”

State and local authorities continue to investigate the pesticide’s role in the girls’ deaths and will discuss possible criminal charges next week.

Phosphide pesticides create deadly phosphine gas, which has been used for decades to kill insects and burrowing rodents. Federal law limits the fumigant to use by trained (more…)

(Opinion piece by Rep. Kay McIff in Salt Lake Tribune, April 10, 2010)

Advocates for forcing public access to streams, against the will of landowners, have advanced a raft of theories all designed to circumvent or trump the Utah Constitution’s prohibition against “taking or damaging private property for public use without just compensation.”

They have harkened back to the Magna Carta, the laws of England, Spain, the Roman Empire, Greece, the laws of the early American colonies and, most recently, Brigham Young. The exercise may be interesting and educational, but in the end the controlling document remains the Utah Constitution. It cannot be made subservient to other laws at other times and places.

If the effort to bypass the Utah Constitution were successful, what would be put in its place to protect private property rights listed by the framers as “inalienable” and second only to the rights of life and liberty? There is little comfort in the court-created easement in the Utah Supreme Court’s 2008 Conatser v. Johnson decision because it lacks constitutional side-boards and could be expanded by judicial or legislative fiat deemed necessary to make effective the public’s enjoyment of the easement.

Rep. McIff, Governor Herbert, and others, are taking considerable heat for this ill advised taking of public property and giving it to the adjacent land owners. The idea that the public doesn’t own the rivers and streams and reasonable access to them just doesn’t fly. Those who bought property alongside our rivers, streams, and lakes are just like those who bought property adjacent to our roads and sidewalks.

The Conatser decision necessarily relied upon a statute. The delegates to the Utah Constitutional Convention in 1895 had declined to declare public ownership of water, even though our neighboring states had done so. The reason may be found in the fact that Utah had been settled for almost 50 years and most of the water had already been appropriated. Delegates were uneasy about declaring public ownership, fearing it would compromise private vested rights. Hence, Article XVII, Section 1 of the Utah Constitution looked only through the rear-view mirror and protected only “existing rights.” It provided no guidance for the future.

Eight years later, the 1903 state Legislature adopted an extensive water code declaring public ownership of water, appointing a state engineer, fixing the procedure for acquiring the unappropriated water and authorizing the use of eminent domain to acquire rights of way for the beneficial use of water. All rights of way, even for the most basic uses of water, required payment of just compensation.

Beneficial uses identified in the debates and statutes related to irrigation, industrial, mining, milling, manufacturing, livestock watering, domestic and culinary. While the statutory scheme has been tweaked from time to time over the years, it remains largely intact. Noticeably absent for most of our (more…)

Lately, I’ve been struggling to stay positive about the climate. It’s not easy. The 190 nations at the November summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on greenhouse gases, and Congress seems determined to avoid the issue. Worst of all, polls show cooling anxiety about climate change among Americans; these days, we are too consumed by economic woes.

And so, I’ve decided to create my own “bucket list” for Alaska and the West. A bucket list usually tallies what a person would like to experience before kicking the bucket, as made famous in the eponymous 2007 movie. I can’t put it off much longer: With climate change rapidly degrading our landscape, I’m afraid time is running out for some of my favorite natural wonders.

Things are a changin’ and fast. Now is the time to see the wonders of the world that are vanishing from existence right before our eyes. The climate skeptics are almost all anti-government, anti-regulation, anti-science, and free enterprise ideologues and religious zealots, i.e. fringe Republicans who are rapidly bullying and silencing the more mainstream, more thoughtful Republicans into extinction.

I’ll start in northern Alaska, home to the polar bear. Ursus maritimus tops my list even though the U.S. Geological Survey says it might not become extinct in Alaska for a few more decades. But U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service research reveals that disappearing sea ice is already causing nutritional stress, decreased weight and lower reproduction. In other words, the bears are getting smaller and fewer. The longer I wait, the less likely I am to see a big, healthy bear.

Alaska’s walruses are also on my list. For ages, these giant marine (more…)

The Utah Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Conatser v. Johnson that fishermen have an easement to walk up and down privately owned streambeds, so long as it is reasonable under the circumstances. The Utah House recently passed HB 141, which would overturn the 2008 court decision if the Senate also passes it.

The Supreme Court got it right. The rivers and streams are public property and the public should have reasonable access to them. Private property rights must allow for reasonable access and egress for proper public uses of the rivers and streams.

The main argument in the House for passing HB141 was that allowing a fishermen’s easement on private property violates the Utah Constitution by taking property rights without compensation. This argument appears valid on the surface, but it falsely characterizes the Conatser decision (more…)

From the webpage, UnknownNews.org. Democracy depends on an informed public discourse, and it’s imperiled when lies and misinformation are multiplied by mass media, or by bloggers or panicked emailers. Please — our nation and our world face very serious, very real problems, and you can help, by being a little skeptical about all the phony, non-existent problems that are only distractions. —H&HH

This seemingly unending list of lies vomited up by pathological liars is so long you won’t have the patience to read it all. Sadly, this is what the Republican Party has come to. A ridiculousness that should result in an almost complete abandonment by anyone with a brain. Oh, the awful embarrassment of being associated with this stuff.

Latest update: Feb. 14, 2010

No, it’s not true that global warming stopped in 1998 and the world has been cooling ever since. This video does a good job tracking down the single wingnut who made that bogus claim, which has been repeated ceaselessly by climate change deniers ever since.  #

No, Republicans are just lying when they claim that prosecuting terrorists in ordinary American courtrooms is something unusual or dangerous. There’s nothing outrageous or even out of the ordinry about how the Obama administration is prosecuting the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  #

No, contrary to conservatives’ claims, big snowstorms don’t disprove global climate change. A snowstorm doesn’t mean science is a fraud. As explained briefly, we’re going to see more snow, not less, because more precipitation — including heavy snowstorms — is a sign of global warming, as atmospheric moisture levels have increased with warmer temperatures, meaning more storms with heavy snow or rain.  #

No, it’s not true that Sen Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) has proposed legislation the would establish universal voter registration, including votes for ex-felons and welfare recipients and oh my!
It sounds like a great idea to me. I believe people should be encouraged to vote and voting should be as easy as is practically possible — but for their own reasons, other people like to have a few hurdles in the way so that only people who bother to jump those hurdles get to vote. You could make reasonable arguments for the latter notion, and maybe that’s a conversation we should have.
But instead of making those reasonable arguments, right-wingers like John Fund, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are simply lying, because Senator Frank has made no such proposal. There’s no universal voter registration legislation to oppose. When you hear or read about this proposal from Senator Frank, you’re hearing or reading a lie.  #

No, the widespread right-wing meme that the underwear bomber quit talking as soon as he was read his Miranda rights is bull.  #

No, it’s not true, despite columnist George Will’s claim, that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would “abolish workers’ rights to secret ballots”. It’s a right-wing talking point, but it’s no more true today than the last time it was debunked on this page. It’s untrue every time you hear it, which sure is often.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama used a teleprompter to address a class of sixth-graders at an elementary school in Falls Church, Virginia.  #

No, despite Investor’s Business Daily’s hokum, the Community Reinvestment Act didn’t cause (more…)

by Judy Fahys

Salt Lake Tribune

Rep. Mike Noel, the Legislature’s chief climate-change skeptic, declared Thursday that global warming is a conspiracy to control world population.

The House Natural Resources Committee then approved a resolution that expresses the Utah Legislature’s belief that “climate alarmists’ carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for the current downturn in global temperatures.”

The resolution, sent to the House on a 10-1 vote, would urge the Environmental Protection Agency to drop plans to regulate the pollution blamed for climate change “until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.”

“We’re at the breaking point,” said Rep. Kerry Gibson, the resolution’s sponsor, who warned that the supply of safe and affordable food is already threatened by over-regulation.

Eleven Brigham Young University scientists defended climate science in a point-by-point rebuttal to parts of the resolution and urged the panel in an e-mail to reject the measure.

“Even if all the political solutions proposed so far are flawed,” they said, “this does not justify politicians attacking the science that indicates there is almost certainly a serious problem.”

The Utah Farm Bureau, a strong backer of the (more…)

Tribune Editorial

Updated: 01/29/2010 06:16:45 PM MST

At 4,703 words, Utah House Bill 60 sets a record. Never have so many words accomplished so little when a situation demands so much.

In the wake of a canal collapse that killed a Logan woman and her two children last summer, and another that destroyed dozens of homes in Riverdale a decade ago, the Water Conveyance Facilities Safety Act is weak medicine for Utah’s aging canal systems. Nearly 1,200 irrigation companies operate a combined 6,600 miles of unregulated canals in the state, including some more than a century old.

The situation screams for stringent safety standards, a strong regulatory framework and periodic safety inspections. Liability insurance mandates and emergency response plans and operator certification programs are also needed. Simply put, strict government oversight is needed to protect the public from dangerous canals.

Instead, HB 60, sponsored by state Rep. Fred Hunsaker, R-Logan, and endorsed by the state’s Executive Water Task Force, offers what amounts to a suggestion, a strictly volunteer program to identify and remediate hazardous canals.

Irrigation companies, if they want, can draft canal management plans for potentially hazardous canal segments. And, to shield the companies that choose to comply from public scrutiny, the law would make the management plans exempt from the state’s Government Records Access and Management Act, and thus hidden from public view. In other words, persons who are put at risk by hazardous canals will, unconscionably, never learn of the danger.

This is simply not adequate protection for the public. There is a huge regulatory gap regarding canals that must be filled. Who is in charge? No one. No government agency has stepped forward to accept responsibility for canal regulation and oversight. It can’t be left in the hands of the canal owners. The free enterprise system only works with strict government regulations to protect the public.

The most odious part of the bill is (more…)

Two stories appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday, February 4th, one indicating that Senator Hatch took a $25,000 campaign contribution from parties interested in seeing that the Comcast-NBC merger is approved, and a $10,000 contribution to Gov. Herbert to grease the skids for a strip-mining permit.

The stories are printed below.

It makes one wonder if their pockets are a bottomless pit, or if they have limits, and makes one wonder if the general public can get together and pool our resources and negotiate an exclusive deal with them. Senator Hatch and Governor Herbert, how much would it take for the public to pay you for an agreement that you wouldn’t take any campaign donations from any special interest group except us?

Article on donations to Gov. Herbert

by Paul Foy

Associated Press, published in Salt Lake Tribune

On the same day Gov. Gary Herbert sat down with a coal company that complained regulators were taking too long to issue a strip-mining permit, his campaign aides were cashing a $10,000 check from the company.

The pleas from Alton Coal Development LLC. did not go unanswered. According to a memo obtained by The Associated Press, state regulators at the meeting agreed to fast-track a decision approving the mine near Panguitch, despite opposition from residents.

Herbert’s office said Wednesday he never ordered regulators to give their approval and didn’t know about the company’s donation.

The decision has some residents of the small tourist town about 200 miles south of Salt Lake City concerned, with one business owner characterizing the payment as a blatant effort by the coal developer to influence the Herbert administration.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out,” said Bobbi Bryant, owner of the gift and coffee shop Bronco Bobbi’s, who is opposed to the strip mine because the operation would send coal trucks as often as 300 times a day through Panguitch, which is near Bryce Canyon National Park.

“There’s a lot more people down here against it than officials want you to know,” she said.

The three-page memo from the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining said the result of the coal company’s September meeting with the Republican governor was to fast-track a decision (more…)

Lt. Governor Bell; President Waddoups; Speaker Clark; Members of the Utah Legislature and of my Cabinet; Utah’s Supreme Court justices; the State’s First Lady, my wife Jeanette; my children, my mother and my fellow Utahns; I am humbled and honored to stand before you tonight as Utah’s 17th Governor to offer this annual report to our great State.

Tonight, I first pay tribute to the many Utahns who have answered the nation’s call to serve. Whether it’s as a soldier in Afghanistan, a Utah National Guardsman in Iraq, a humanitarian volunteer in Haiti or Ambassador Jon and Mary Kaye Huntsman in the People’s Republic of China, we give them all our heartfelt thanks.

I also recognize those who put their lives on the line every day to protect ours. We suffered a great loss when Millard County Sheriff’s Deputy Josie Greathouse Fox of Delta lost her life in the line of duty. Her family is here with us tonight. Please join with me as we remember a life of service and pay tribute to our entire law enforcement community, whose sacrifice helps to keep us free and to keep us safe. In my inaugural address, I spoke about the importance of, and the need for, unprecedented partnerships. This will be a continuing theme for my administration. Our success will be measured by the way we unite stakeholders from across the state, and from across the aisle. We must join together to combat the challenges we face and to seize the opportunities ahead.

Over the past four months, we have formed several such partnerships. Let me highlight two of them.

First, we created the Advisory (more…)

Tribune Editorial

Updated: 01/06/2010 06:06:49 PM MST

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has promised to bring a “balanced approach” to permitting more drilling for oil and natural gas in America’s Western states. That will be a welcome change, and not only for people concerned about protecting fragile arid lands, wildlife, water and air quality, but for energy development companies.

Under former President George W. Bush’s “drill at all costs” policy, lands near national parks and in wilderness-quality areas that never should have been leased to development companies appeared on the auction block. Environmental groups and others rightly went to court to prevent drilling on those parcels. Oil and gas developers had to wait months or years to learn the outcome, and the uncertainty was not good for business.

Salazar said that about 40 percent of oil and gas leases on public lands were protested in 2008, a huge increase from the 1 percent targeted in 1998. He correctly blamed the increase on the Bush administration’s policies that allowed leases “in places where they should not have been or without enough agency scrutiny or public participation.”

But under policy changes Salazar announced Wednesday, federal agencies will take a closer look at all possible uses of public lands and listen to the public’s environmental concerns long before deciding to sell leases on any parcels. That’s how the system should work, but did not under President Bush.

Salazar justly criticized the Bush administration for its “headlong rush” to lease Western lands “anywhere and everywhere.” He was particularly critical of the lease sale of lands near Utah’s (more…)

by Kirsten Stewart

The Salt Lake Tribune

Jizelle Jurquina won’t tell you she’s gifted. She’s too modest for that.

But she’s the type of student who does six math equations for every three required. The kid who is easily bored in class. The one who makes teachers swoon and, more often, sweat. She’s a natural candidate for the Open High School of Utah, an online public charter school, say its administrators.

Congratulations to the Salt Lake Tribune for seeing the importance of this story and placing it on its front page January 2, 2010.  Its front page placement was appropriate, but more appropriately it should have received a full page banner. It may be the solution to the headline that was just above it—Family Slayings Climb in 2009.

Online education is becoming a cultural phenomenon. It is changing the world. It will permeate every aspect of our lives and change our views on everything. This is revolutionary. Television, computers, the internet were monumental changes in the last half century, but this new method of education that will reach multitudes and allow them to proceed at lightning pace will bring even greater achievements in the next half century, and this open and nearly free education for all will become the greatest product of the internet.

Congratulations to the pioneers, David Wiley, DeLaina Tonks, Sarah Weston, and other shakers and movers. The conductor on this train is yelling, “All Aboard!”

Jizelle belongs to the growing ranks of K-12 students engaged in distance learning. About 3,000 students in Utah chose the digital route over traditional brick and mortar schools last year, up 30 percent from the previous year.

But the Open High School, now in its inaugural year, is no ordinary virtual school.

Whether she knows it or not, Jizelle and her peers are on the leading edge of yet another educational trend: the open educational resources movement.

The Open High School of Utah is believed to be the first secondary school in the nation (perhaps (more…)

Posted Dec 31st 2009 9:01PM by TMZ Staff

Football legend Merlin Olsen is suing NBC Studios, NBC Universal, 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, Sherwin Williams, Lennox Industries and other companies, claiming he developed a rare form of cancer as a result of being negligently exposed to asbestos.

Olsen — who gained fame as a member of the Los Angeles Rams and went on to be a sportscaster, actor and spokesperson for FTD Florists — was diagnosed with the rare asbestos cancer mesothelioma a few months ago.

According to the lawsuit, filed today in L.A. County Superior Court, Olsen worked after school doing manual labor when he was 10 or 11 and was exposed to asbestos.

Olsen claims he was exposed to asbestos later in life when he was doing drywall. Olsen also worked at NBC and 20th Century FOX and is alleging those companies negligently exposed him to asbestos.

Olsen, who is undergoing chemotherapy, claims in the suit that all of the defendants, “were engaged in the business of manufacturing, fabricating, designing, assembling, distributing, leasing, buying, selling, inspecting, servicing, installing, repairing, marketing, warranting and advertising a certain substance the generic name of which is asbestos.”

Olsen says in the lawsuit that mesothelioma “is a vicious, painful, and invariably fatal malignancy” and there is no known cure.

Olsen and his wife Susan are suing for unspecified damages.

by Judy Fayhs

Salt Lake Tribune

EnergySolutions Inc. opened its gates Sunday night to the latest shipment of depleted uranium from the Savannah River cleanup site in South Carolina.

But the waste won’t be buried just yet, under an agreement between Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and the U.S. Energy Department. Instead, the 5,408 drums of low-level radioactive waste will be unloaded tomorrow and placed in a specialized landfill cell for storage until Utah regulators have an opportunity to wrap up a proposed license change and a proposed regulation change.

Dane Finerfrock, director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control, said his staff was on hand Monday to review the shipping papers for the waste and check the paperwork against the content of a sampling of drums. They will also be on hand to watch the drums be placed into the landfill cell, probably on Tuesday.

EnergySolutions, which operates the landfill about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City, had little to say about the controversial shipment.

“Pursuant to the agreement between the governor and the Department of Energy,” said company president Val Christensen, ” the shipment of depleted uranium arrived at the Clive [Tooele County] facility at about 9 p.m.”

Two more shipments, bringing the total to 15,400 barrels, will come to Utah in and when a site performance assessment shows that more depleted uranium can be contained in the Tooele County site for an extended period of time. That review is expected to take months.

The EnergySolutions site already contains an estimated 49,000 tons of depleted uranium, a by-product of nuclear fuel enrichment and bomb-making that has the unusual quality of becoming more hazardous over time. EnergySolutions has said it will take at least 35,000 years for the depleted uranium at its site to exceed the radiological hazard limit set in state law

Copenhagen » After two weeks of delays, theatrics and frantic deal-making, the U.N. climate-change talks concluded here early Saturday morning with a grudging agreement by the participants to “take note” of a pact shaped by five major nations.

The final accord, a 12-paragraph document, was a statement of intention, not a binding pledge to begin taking action on global warming — a compromise seen to represent a flawed but essential step forward.

But many delegates of the 193 countries that had gathered here left Copenhagen in a sour mood, disappointed that the pact lacked so many elements they considered crucial, including firm targets for mid- or long-term reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and a deadline for concluding a binding treaty next year.

Even President Barack Obama, a principal force behind the final deal, said the accord would take only a modest step toward healing the Earth’s fragile atmosphere.

Participants from a variety of countries also said the chaos and contentiousness of the talks could signal the end of what, for almost two decades, had been viewed as the best approach to tackling the threat of a (more…)

By Charles J. Hanley

The Associated Press

Updated: 12/14/2009 06:10:02 PM MST

Copenhagen » New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014, Al Gore said Monday at the U.N. climate conference.

One U.S. government scientist Monday questioned the new prediction as too severe, but other researchers previously have projected a quicker end than 2030 to the Arctic summer ice cap.

It’s really astonishing to watch before your very eyes the alarming disappearance of glaciers and ice in the Arctic Ocean and at the same time hear the cacophony chorus from the right urging us, “don’t believe your eyes.”

It doesn’t take a scientist to watch what is happening and recognize that the Arctic ice is disappearing. These very vocal right wing doubters would have you believe that Al Gore is performing a some sort of magical sleight of hand and that while we are watching the Arctic ice melt he is stealing our wallet.

The naysayers are mostly faith based people who think that God is in control and there is nothing to worry about, and that we shouldn’t be messing with the hand of God, and that liberals are cookin’ the books for their own political agenda.

The Bible taught that the sun revolves around the earth, and now the true-believers are convinced that there is no global warming, but if it is happening it isn’t caused by mere men, and we don’t need to do anything because ‘God is still in charge.’

Why don’t religious people believe that “The Glory of God Is Intelligence!?”

“It is hard to capture the astonishment that the experts in the science of ice felt when they saw this,” said former U.S. Vice President Gore, who joined Scandinavian officials and scientists to brief journalists and delegates. It was Gore’s first appearance at the two-week conference.

The group presented two new reports updating fast-moving developments in Antarctica, the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, and the rest of the Arctic.

“The time for collective and immediate (more…)

by Rosemary Winters

Salt Lake Tribune

Weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Crystal Young-Otterstrom thinks about whether she and her husband need a second, larger car.

But the Salt Lake City resident hates the idea of paying for one. So she is going to share a Ford Escape Hybrid — and 27 other cars — with 480 drivers in the Salt Lake Valley.

This is a great idea and could grow rapidly. Way to go SLC!! It is ideal for major metropolitan areas where parking is a problem. This concept could evolve into a situation where one person could pick up a car at one part of town and park it at another part of town and the car becomes available to another person to go yet another direction.

U Car Share on Wednesday finished rolling out Utah’s first car-sharing program. Members now can choose from 28 cars — most are in Salt Lake City but there are two in Ogden and a few dot the TRAX line between Salt Lake City and Sandy — and rent them for hourly rates. They reserve a car online, go to the chosen site and swipe an electronic card to get inside, where the keys are waiting.

“It’s definitely exciting to have this other option,” Young-Otterstrom says.

The 29-year-old lives and works downtown. Most of the time, one car is enough. But sometimes she and her husband both need it, or they need more cargo space than offered by their tiny Honda Fit.

“We actually just had this problem last week when we got an armoire in Sugar House,” says Young-Otterstrom, development manager for Utah Symphony and Utah Opera. “It would not fit in the Honda Fit.”

She borrowed a friend’s truck but next time (more…)