Nearly completed agreement would also enable uranium mill
By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

In a development that could provide locations for a new uranium mill and Utah's first nuclear power plant, Emery County and the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration are close to inking a deal for an industrial park west of Green River.
SITLA's lawyers sent the final lease to Emery County this week, said John Andrews, the school trust's legal counsel and associate director.
"We do have a lot of other leads on our industrial park," added Mike McCandless, economic director for the county.
The lease would allow Emery County to be a kind of property manager for 2,547 acres of SITLA land north of the junction of Interstate 70 and Route 6. With an additional 8,000 acres of private land, the county hopes to bring more jobs and economic activity to the area.
The county would look for suitable businesses for the park and arrange to sell the parcels at prices SITLA says are better than their current assessed value. The county also could tap into federal economic assistance grants that are not available to the trust-lands agency, which is required to maximize benefits of its holdings for beneficiaries.
McCandless said there are about a dozen businesses that have inquired about sites at the park. And, while he declined to name them, he said most are large manufacturers or provide support services in the oil and gas industry.
Emery County signed a tentative agreement last spring with Mancos Resources Inc. for the first parcel in the new park. The new, $100 million uranium mill would process about 1,200 tons of ore each day and about 2.4 tons of yellowcake a year.
Another prospective tenant is a nuclear power plant that is being proposed by Transition Power. Like Mancos, Transition has been taking steps to secure rights to water needed to operate the plant.
But, unlike Mancos, Transition has not signed any agreement with the county.
"We are not the only site they are considering," said McCandless, though a Transition official called the Green River industrial park the "preferred location" for its reactor last summer.
Both the mill and the reactor have numerous regulatory steps to go through before either could become a reality. It's unlikely that either would be in operation before 2011.
But proponents of the mill and the reactor have described the signed lease as a key step in moving forward with their projects in Green River.

Industrial park plans

* What happened? Utah's School Trust Lands Agency sent the final lease for 2,547 acres of land to Emery County for its signature.
* What's planned? Emery County hopes to establish an industrial park at the location, just off Interstate-70, to bring jobs and economic activity to the area. About a dozen businesses, including a uranium mill and a nuclear power plant, have inquired about setting up shop at the park.