After months of delay, the Utah state Senate is set to vote today on the confirmation of the two final members of the Radiation Control Board. Gov. Gary Herbert (R) has nominated Matt William Rydalch, a quality control engineer at the Ogden Western Zirconium plant, and Lindsey Christensen Nesbitt, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah, to complete the nine-member board that was reconstituted in May as part of a sweeping rewrite of the state’s environmental boards.
Utah bill SB 21, signed into law March 19, reshaped every environmental board in the state’s Department of Environmental Quality, beginning with the Radiation Control Board. The bill shrunk Radiation Control Board membership from 13 to nine, and required representatives of certain areas be appointed, including industry. In early August, Herbert submitted a list of appointees to the Utah State Senate including EnergySolutions’ Dan Shrum and Sarah Fields with Uranium Watch. Activist environmental group HEAL Utah submitted more than 1,600 signatures protesting Shrum’s appointment, state Sen. Gene Davis (D) called for the nominations of both Shrum and Fields, and on Sept. 13 Shrum officially withdrew his name. Fields’ nomination is set to expire due to state Senate inaction for more than 90 days.
Potential industry representative to be considered today, Rydalch, is a quality control engineer at the Ogden Western Zirconium plant, where nuclear-reactor parts are made. Nesbitt teaches classes on global change in the biology department of the University of Utah, where her courses include sections on energy and pollution. She is a member of the Nature Conservancy and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.