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Utah House backs resolution urging EPA to consider removal and reprocessing options for Sharon Steel tailings
Summary
The House adopted HCR 9 after a committee-of-the-whole hearing in which city and state health officials described about 13.5 million tons of hazardous tailings at the Midvale Sharon Steel site and urged the EPA to evaluate alternatives to capping, including removal and on-site reprocessing.
The Utah House on Jan. 26 adopted a concurrent resolution asking federal regulators to consider all viable remediation options for the Sharon Steel tailings near Midvale, after a committee-of-the-whole hearing that featured testimony from local elected officials and state health staff.
Representative Melvin R. Brown introduced HCR 9 and moved that the House resolve itself into the committee of the whole so members could hear from Mayor Everett Dahl and Ken Alkimer, director of the Division of Environmental Health. Everett Dahl told members the EPA has completed initial work and “we have about 13 and a half million ton of hazardous waste in the Sharon Steel tailings,” and said the material constitutes “a health hazard to people working and living in the area.”
Ken Alkimer, the health official called to testify, outlined the state’s priorities: that any remedy be permanent, protective of public health, and protective of groundwater. Alkimer said recent testing focused on soil, groundwater and human-health risks and that further evaluations are underway. He and other witnesses emphasized the potential risk to the Salt Lake Valley aquifer and the need for a remedial approach that avoids long-term restrictions on land use.
On the House floor, sponsors and members described alternatives the EPA is reviewing beyond the agency’s earlier proposal to cap the tailings in place. Representative Brown and others listed options including physical removal, slurry removal, on-site reprocessing to recover remaining metals while remediating contamination, and capping as a last-resort option that would render roughly 265 acres unusable. Representative Brown said the legislature previously appropriated $500,000 in a special session to help the Department of Environmental Health participate in litigation and technical review related to the site.
Opponents and cautious members raised fiscal and logistical questions, including who would ultimately pay remediation costs under Superfund allocation and whether moving the material might transfer contamination risks to another location. Representative Demetriek noted that some jurisdictions had volunteered land for relocation; other members warned the scale of some options could require many truckloads over years.
The resolution was passed on the floor and referred to the Senate. The House recorded a 63–7 vote in favor of the substitute HCR 9. The resolution asks that the EPA consider all viable alternatives and that state and local officials remain full participants in evaluating proposed remedies. The EPA’s timeline for a final remedy was described during testimony as expected in early August (per witnesses’ statements).
