A polygamist judge, who is being sought for removal from the bench by the Judicial Conduct Commission, says it is his constitutional right to practice consensual bigamy.
The Judge, Walter Steed, has three wives and 32 children.
The Commission’s reason for seeking removal of the Judge is that he is violating the state’s bigamy laws.
Not only is Steed breaking the law, he is taxing our planet’s resources by increasing the population in such volume. That is totally irresponsible.
Foreign Nuclear Waste Arrives in Utah….er, uh, I mean radioactive “ore”.
I reported in early October on the announcement that
Utah will be receiving 500 tons of toxins from Japan
It’s happening. Truckloads of radioactive ore from Japan began arriving this week at International Uranium Corp.’s mill in San Juan County, reports the
Salt Lake Tribune.
The state of Utah has no ban on radioactive material from foreign sources. It also does not have an oversight on the import of such material.
Semantics sometimes means the difference between what is and what isn’t permitted.
Meanwhile, in other “waste” news, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is expected to to determine whether Envirocare is allowed to continue disposing of depleted uranium waste — or even dig up the depleted uranium already there, reports the Deseret News. Envirocare has accepted DU previously and it could become the burial site for many thousands of tons of the material to be generated by a uranium enrichment facility that Louisiana Energy Services is proposing to build in New Mexico.
The NRC will have to determine whether or not the waste is classified as “A” or “C” waste. “A” is more dangerous than “C”.
Of course the NRC claims that whatever decision it makes will be “prudent” and “safe”.
The oxymoron is that no “waste” or the transportation of such is “safe”.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged envirocare, nuclear regulatory commission, radioactive waste, Utah
The weather was perfect and the scenery, as usual breathtaking. Our backpacking trip to southern Utah this past weekend was astounding. We backpacked in to Upper Calf Creek Falls in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. To get there you have to hike down about a mile of slick rock. Once to the bottom, the trail becomes the stream and you feel like you are in paradise.
I have lived in Utah for about 8 years now and I am still taken aback by the state’s natural wonders, even to places I have been before.
I have posted photos at Tom and Dee’s Excellent Adventures
My first backpacking trip occured when I was 43. That was three years ago. That year I took two more backpacking trips and have been backpacking to various spots ever since.
I’m hooked.
I have a 4 day hiatus from teaching as part of the Utah Education Association’s state conference for teachers. I’m going backpacking.
Today Tom and I are leaving for a 4 day backpacking trip to the beautiful Upper Calf Creek Falls in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Wilderness of Southern Utah. The area where we will backpack to is just below about a mile of slickrock into a paradise of all sorts of wonderful plant and animal life. The trail is the stream where fish skirt around your ankles as you hike through the beauty of the canyon.
This experience will be my “education” for the next four days as I remind myself of the beautiful surroundings in which I am fortunate enough to live. So I won’t be blogging or reading (or hopefully even thingking) about polls on Bush or drilling for oil in Utah’s beautiful public lands.
I’ll be sure to post photos upon my return.
Here are two photos from our trip there a few years ago:
Jason Groenwald sent an email describing today’s Envirocare Hearing on expanding Envirocare’s waste acceptance amounts. The legislature did table the expansion resolution.
Jason reports that “Governor Huntsman’s top executive at the Department of Environmental Quality, Dianne Nielson, voted to deny HEAL Utah standing in our legal appeal of the Envirocare expansion because she said doubling nuclear waste disposal capacity in Utah is not an issue of significant public importance. For anyone who wondered what kind of influence the Governor’s brother-in-law would have as one of the new financial investors in Envirocare, you now have the answer.”
The fight continues. To get involved, go to HEAL Utah
Even as Provo High School’s Gay-straight club meets for the first time, there is already talk of it being short-lived because of some impending obstacles and resistance.
Provo is the city at the hear of the nation’s reddest county in the U.S. – Utah County. The same county in which every attempt was made by conservatives to keep Michael Moore from giving a talk last year at Utah Valley State College (including threats to withdraw funding from donors to the college).
The principal of Provo High School would not permit a Deseret News reporter to attend the meeting and turned away that reporter when they showed up to cover the meeting of the club.
The students had told the Deseret Morning News it could attend the first meeting; however, when a reporter arrived, the principal demanded she leave or he would have office staff escort her out. He cited a new district policy relating to the media and students.
Although the club has the right to exist, there is talk of the Provo school board voting in November to ban all clubs just so this one cannot exist. There is also talk that this move is being influenced by politically active conservative groups.
This will be interesting to follow. Salt Lake County High Schools faced the same issue when the first gay-straight alliance club was formed at East High School in Salt Lake City. If memory serves me correctly, the ACLU became involved and the outcome was that this club had every right to exist as other clubs. High schools around that county now have gay-straight alliance clubs.
Shamelessly stolen from Ken Sain’s newswire link to the BladeWire.
Provo is the home of the Brigham Young University and is much more conservative than Salt Lake, more typically like the rest of the state.
Yet, a Gay-Straight Alliance Club was Approved At Provo High.
In today’s Deseret News there is an article on the club meeting today (Wednesday).
There is also an article on local gay rights activist Kay Kendell and her take on today’s gay youth.
In an article entitled, ‘Smells like money’ – Canada’s oil tar sands industry booming, Utah’s U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch is quoted as saying, “If they can do it, we in Utah can do it. Unconventional fuels like tar sands and oil shale are the real thing.”
This article reports on the benefits, from the producers view, of this industry.
I found a September 2005 article called Shell Oil Shale Extraction Technology Economically Viable? by a group called Future Pundit. The article begins with
The development of an economically viable way to extract oil from oil shale would put a ceiling on oil prices and would extend the oil era by decades. It would also increase the odds of significant global warming. Well, in light of all that a variety of media outlets are reporting that Shell Oil thinks it can produce oil from oil shale at $30 per barrel using an in situ process where the shale is cooked without first mining it onto the surface.
They don’t need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it’s a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.
And we’ve hardly gotten to the really ingenious part yet. While the rock is cooking, at about 650 or 750 degrees Fahrenheit, how do you keep the hydrocarbons from contaminating ground water? Why, you build an ice wall around the whole thing. As O’Connor said, it’s counterintuitive.
This letter was received from the Shundahai Network, an organization dedicated to breaking the nuclear chain through its work with and in support of indingenous people.
Dear Friends,
We are all in critical times.
We recently received bad news on a high-level nuclear waste dump that has been resisted for eight years in Indian country. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission finally approved it on Friday September 9th, 2005.
On a 4-1 vote, the NRC approved a license to site an unprecedented high-level nuclear waste dump on the small Goshute Indian reservation in Utah. This is a fight that we have been involved in for eight years now, and there are still avenues available to stop this project from moving any further.
There is still a lot that can be done to stop this project. All the latest news is attached at the end of this email.
Shundahai Network needs your help. We are still having hard times. Though we also continue to work hard to maintain our critical efforts to oppose nuclear projects and to support Indigenous environmental justice struggles in the Great Basin, times are hard for everyone.
We have been able to keep basic bills paid for the past two months due to two very generous donations from Tribal and allied sources and several smaller, though also very generous and well-appreciated, donations from friends who have responded to our email appeals.
However, there is still much support needed to get things back to full capacity, and to move with strength into a future that we all know needs to happen, though is not getting any easier for any of us.
Currently we are focusing our efforts on this rapidly-escalating struggle to stop the nuclear dump in Skull Valley. The attached links will bring you up-to-date on this issue.
Even despite our current funding shortfall, Shundahai Network is in a position to serve a very critical function in the fight that remains. Everyone knows we will not give up- even when times get hard. It simply cannot happen. And ultimately, we always need your help to do this.
We do apologize for the slight delay in getting all this info out, but with our funding crunch we have had some related technical problems, including problems maintaining our website and getting the news out quickly- but here is the latest.
Please read the following news articles and review our website. We are in a crazy time, but together we can stop this from moving forward.
Please feel free to contact our office, using the contact information listed at the bottom of this email, and know that you are always in our thoughts and prayers.
In peace, love and solidarity,
Pete Litster
Director
Shundahai Network
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Alert!! September 9th 2005- Nuclear Dump Approved!
After an eight-year fight, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the license for an unprecedented high-level nuclear dump On The Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation in Utah. Please help oppose this project!
Latest News: From http://www.shundahai.org
9-17-05 New York Times Offends Utah on Nuke Waste- Deseret News http://www.shundahai.org/091705_DesNews_NYTimes_Offends_Utah.htm
9-16-06 Goshute Nuclear Fight Similar to Navajos’- Deseret News http://www.shundahai.org/091605DesNews_Navajo_fight_Like_Goshute.htm
9-16-05 Homeland Security Investigates Skull Valley Nuke Dump- Salt Lake Tribune http://www.shundahai.org/091605_US_HomelandSec_Checks_PFS.htm
9-15-05 UT Governor Will “Stand on Tracks” To Stop Nuke Dump- Ogden Standard Examiner http://www.shundahai.org/091505_OgdenSE_Huntsman_NVDA_vs_PFS.htm
9-13-05 Editorial: On a dangerous path- Skull Valley and Yucca Mountain nuke dumps both wrong- Las Vegas Sun http://www.shundahai.org/091305LasVegasSun_PFS_Yucca_bad.htm
9-12-05 Heavy Hitter: Mormon Church Comes Out Against Skull Valley Nuke Dump- Deseret News (UT) http://www.shundahai.org/091205DesNews_LDS_Church_Opposes_PFS.htm
9-11-05 Nuclear Waste Storage Plan Approved for Utah Indian Reservation Washington Post http://www.shundahai.org/091105WashPost_PFS_approved.htm
9-10-05 Feds say ‘yes’ to waste storage Salt Lake Tribune http://www.shundahai.org/091005SLTrib_NRC_Approves_PFS_Dump.htm
9-10-05 UTAH RESERVATION TO GET NUKE WASTE Pittsburg Post-Gazette http://www.shundahai.org/091005PittsburgPostGazette_on_PFS.htm
9-9-05 Approval of Private Fuel Storage Means Dangerous and Unnecessary Storage of Highly Radioactive Waste in Utah Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Director, Public Citizen s Energy Program http://www.shundahai.org/090905PubCitizen_NO_PFS.htm
For eight years activists, citizens, and political officials have been attempting to keep Private Fuel Storage (PFS) from obtaining a license to transport to (mostly from the eastern U.S.) and store spent fuel rods to the Goshute Reservation in the West Desert of Utah.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Friday granted the license to PFS. The Governer has publicly stated that he will stand in front of the trains if he has to.
And now, a voice not heard in this struggle before, the Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS), has published an official position on the matter.
It’s kind of interesting – folks from all pursuasions and political ideals are coming together on this issue. Here are some other recent articles:
Utah to file appeal of nuclear repository ruling
Demand for facility unclear
Opposition to N-waste appears greatest in SLC
Utah loses key battle over N-waste
NRC is unlikely to back Utah on N-waste protest
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 