More PFS News – Utah strikes back

Today’s news includes a piece regarding yesterday’s post about the PFS Chair’s comments on the nuclear waste site storage facility, where the Utah Governor’s legal staff and the Utah Congressional Delegation blast those comments.

Referring to PFS Chair John Parkyn’s comments that no one could block the project (as he held up a copy of the license in front of an audience in Maryland),
“I really am at a loss to figure out what it is Mr. (John) Parkyn is arguing” if he “suggests he can somehow build this rail spur through the wilderness area, what his legal theory would be,” attorney Mike Lee said.
“The basis for any such theory completely escapes me,” Lee said, and all other lawyers he knows who are familiar with wilderness law.

Parkyn thinks that the designated Cedar Mountain Wilderness area is not “real” and
he thinks wilderness character does not extend throughout the official wilderness area.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t put a railroad there, whether Sen. (Orrin) Hatch understands that or not.”

According to the federal Wilderness Act, except for administering the area and for such purposes as emergency rescue, “there shall be no commercial enterprise and no permanent road within any wilderness area . . . no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure or installation within any such area.”
Hatch, R-Utah, disagreed with Parkyn’s statement that the project is going ahead. “Their read on this certainly doesn’t square with ours,” he said. “I don’t see how PFS will find a way to do this, with no railroad, new wilderness, and no new partners. What company in its right mind would see this as a sound business opportunity to partner with PFS?”

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who introduced the bill creating the wilderness area, said the act would “block the northern rail spur that PFS would need to the waste” and that this represents a major setback to the project.
“I’m glad we’ve been able to put up some serious roadblocks to this ill-advised proposal,” he said. “And we will continue the fight.

Utah has filed a second appeal to the appeals court regarding the PFS licensing decision. It could take up to a year for a ruling to be made on the appeal.