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374 facts · 512 sources · updated 2026-09-30

Fact mine-013

newrecordconfirmed Carbon commissioners signed a June 29 support letter; no Carbon County agenda from May to mid-Sept shows it or the site
2026-06-29 · mine-013 · Carbon County Commission, Larry Jensen, Tony Martines, Jared Haddock, Valar Atomics

The Trust Lands packets include a letter on Carbon County Board of Commissioners letterhead dated 29 June 2026, addressed to the 'SITLA Board of Trustees' and signed by Commissioners Tony Martines, Jared Haddock and Larry Jensen, supporting Valar's desire to locate 'north of Wellington on SITLA lands' and saying the county had worked with Valar for over a year; it does not mention nuclear power or a reactor. The commission's agendas and minutes posted on the Utah Public Notice Website for its meetings of 6 May through 16 September 2026 (read by OCR; most are scanned images; the 5 August meeting was cancelled; 16 September minutes not yet posted) contain no item approving that letter and no item on the Wellington site. Valar appears in commissioners' remarks on 1 July 2026 (celebrating the Emery reactor and a data-center partnership), in a 19 August 2026 'Valor Atomics presentation' about the Orangeville operation and planned public events (the minutes add that commissioners highlighted the tax benefits 'the plant will bring', without saying where), and in a 2 September 2026 announcement of an Orangeville open house and a planned Carbon County town hall. By contrast, Emery County put its support letter for Valar on a public agenda (17 February 2026, orig-046).

In plain termsThe county's support for the Carbon site was put in writing and sent to the state, but we found no public county meeting where it was discussed or voted on before it was sent. Meetings before May 2026 were not checked. Whether a vote was needed is a legal question for the county; the county clerk's records would show how the letter was approved.
verified 2026-09-29: Re-checked 2026-09-29: letter read from the Sept packet image (p. 28); all 17 stored Carbon agendas/minutes re-OCR'd (tesseract) and searched for Valar/Valor/atomic/nuclear/Wellington/SITLA/trust/letter; only the items described appear. Stored Aug 19 minutes identical to the live file. carbon.utah.gov blocks automated readers, so the county's own site was not read.

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