Utah Nuclear Waste Company Increases Contributions to Lawmakers
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SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah disposal company seeking federal permission to import more than 20,000 tons of nuclear waste from Italy has raised its campaign contributions to lawmakers by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions Inc. is aggressively donating to members of key energy committees in Congress as it increasingly seeks lucrative federal contracts and legislation beneficial to the nuclear power industry.
Since 2005, the company’s political action committee, executives and investors have poured nearly $400,000 into congressional campaigns through January, up from about $40,000 in the four previous years, Federal Election Commission reports show.
The company’s growing influence in Washington will be tested this year as it tries to kill a bill that would ban the importation of low-level radioactive foreign waste, which would be disposed at its dump in western Utah’s desert.
“I’m sure this means many millions of dollars to them, so I’m sure they’re going to be working hard to stop it,” said the bill’s cosponsor, Rep. Bart Gordon, a Democrat of Tennessee.
EnergySolutions increased lobbyist spending to more than $1 million last year from $680,000 in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group.
