Attorney for DEQ Awarded 2006 Lawyer of the Year

Chancellor has led the fight against nuclear waste

 

State Environmental Attorney Denise Chancellor’s dogged determination to keep nuclear waste out of Utah has led her peers of the Utah State Bar to honor her with the distinguished Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Law (ENREL) Lawyer of the Year award for 2006.

For nearly 10 years, Chancellor, Assistant Attorney with the Office of the Utah Attorney General representing the state of Utah, has fought the battle to keep Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of nuclear utilities, from temporarily storing 40,000 tons of spent fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The latest “fatal blow,” as Chancellor puts it, came on Sept. 7, 2006 with two distinct rulings by the U.S. Department of the Interior that rejected the PFS lease and the use of public lands to build a rail line or an intermodal hub that PFS had hoped to use to transport the spent fuel onto the reservation.

“It was a big administrative win brought about by her efforts over the last 10 years,” said Richard Rathbun, chairman of the Utah State Bar’s Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Law Section. “It is not an exaggeration to say that she has been working private practice hours, nights and weekends, on a state salary for years. The people in the state of Utah are lucky to have her.”

The award to Chancellor was unanimous, Rathbun said. “We polled the 200 lawyers in our section for suggestions. It wasn’t even a vote. It was a unanimous acclamation.”

Chancellor said she couldn’t be more proud. “It was quite an honor to be recognized by the ENREL Section of the Bar because many of its members are long-time practitioners of environmental law,” she said.

Chancellor’s insight into PFS

“December 26, 1996 is the date when Utah received the first inkling that it may become the dumping ground for spent nuclear fuel,” Chancellor wrote in an article for the Attorney General’s newsletter. “On that date, (PFS) signed a lease for 820 acres of land on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation. It was not until March 1997, however, that Utah fully understood the breadth of the PFS proposal.”

It was then that Chancellor devoted her time exclusively to challenging the license application before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC). Prior to that time, she worked representing the various divisions of the Department of Environmental Quality. Chancellor joined the AG’s Office in 1989.

During the years of PFS litigation, the state’s core legal team consisted of Chancellor, Special Assistant Attorney General Connie Nakahara, and paralegal Jean Braxton.

In contrast, PFS hired an army of high-profile Washington, D.C. attorneys.

Chancellor, however, said Nakahara’s skills were invaluable. Nakahara, who has a degree in civil engineering worked many years in the Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste before obtaining a law degree. “She combined her legal and engineering skills in the technically charged PFS proceedings before the NRC,” Chancellor said.

The state also sought the assistance of Assistant Attorney General Laura Lockhart, with her expertise in administrative law. Environmental Division Chief Fred Nelson, working with the Division of Water Quality, was able to persuade PFS to commit to install a water pollution control system. Assistant Attorney General Jim Soper took charge in challenging the safety of the facility given the proximity to Hill Air Force Base’s Test and Training Range. Successful arguments persuaded the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to initially rule that the proposed PFS facility was unsafe because of the uncertainty of a fighter jet crashing into it. In a later ruling, a split 2-1 decision, sided in PFS’s favor.

“One of the most significant events in Utah’s opposition to the PFS project was the passage of the wilderness legislation,” Chancellor noted. “Now that part of PFS’s proposed rail route would be located in a wilderness area, PFS was forced to turn to its other alternative: intermodal transfer of nuclear fuel casks from rail cars to oversized heavy haul trucks. Then, shortly after passage of the wilderness legislation, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) called for public comments on whether PFS’s use of public lands for its intermodal operations near I-80 and Skull Valley Road was in the public interest.”

Despite the uncertainty of transportation to the PFS site, the NRC on Feb. 21, 2006 issued PFS a license to store 4,000 casks of spent nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation.

Even so, support for the PFS project was diminishing, Chancellor noted. PFS members were bailing out, having built their own on-site storage facilities near their reactor sites. The major setback came on Sept. 7 when the Department of the Interior rejected the lease agreement and the intermodal operation.

Still, Chancellor is cautious and not about to declare victory.

“Nevertheless, as PFS still has a license from the NRC, it is important that the State be diligent in pursuing its federal appeal of the NRC licensing decision and in monitoring activities relating to the PFS project and the transportation of spent nuclear fuel,” Chancellor said.