Salt Lake City Vote Drive gaining support, though foes also getting signatures

AP 11may02

SALT LAKE CITY - Supporters of a petition drive to raise taxes on radioactive waste think they're close to having 76,000 signatures needed to put the initiative on the November ballot.

They expect to have close to 100,000 signatures by the June 3 deadline.

"The signature-gathering is going faster than we anticipated," said Mickey Gallivan, who is heading the $1 million petition drive to impose high taxes on radioactive-waste giant Envirocare of Utah.

State law requires 76,180 signatures of registered voters to put a referendum on the ballot. Many signatures usually are thrown out, so petitioners try to have plenty of reserves.

Another group, Utahns Against Unfair Taxes, is gathering its own signatures for an initiative intended to prevent the tax from becoming law.

"We've only been in the field since last week but my sense is that it is going well," said Hugh Matheson, who is leading the opposition.

Proponents hope to bar higher-level radioactive waste, like medical waste, from entering Utah, and it would hike the tax on the low-level radioactive waste from 10 cents per cubic foot to as much as $150 per cubic foot.

Matheson's group is encouraging voters to prevent any initiative from becoming law that would assess a tax against an individual person, entity or industry.

The initiatives have nothing to do with the high-level +nuclear+ waste - spent fuel rods - proposed for storage at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County.

Voters are becoming confused, Gallivan said.

"What gets lost is that Utah has accepted more than 14 million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste. Right now, we have a tax structure that encourages mass dumping of waste here from all over the country," he said.

Envirocare, which operates the only low-level radioactive waste dump in Utah, thinks the tax unfairly targets the Tooele County company. Officials also say it would put them out of business.

"We're not targeting any company," Gallivan said. "We're targeting radioactive waste."