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The Wellington notice ran in ETV July 15-29 and named no use; of three other Trust Lands notices read from that paper, two named a use and one gave only a lease number

recordconfirmed
2026-07-15 · loc-032 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, ETV News, Valar Atomics · earnest money required of any competing bidder: $50,000

The newspaper notice the Trust Lands memo mentions without naming the paper (csite-005, mine-012) matches ETV News's 'TRUST LANDS OPPORTUNITY', published 15, 22 and 29 July 2026: Trust Lands 'has received an application on the following property near Wellington' (T14S R11E, Section 16, about 640 acres) and will take bids to lease, buy or exchange it by 5 p.m. on 7 August 2026; a bidder must submit a bid, a development plan and an application with $50,000 earnest money and $1,100 in fees; details by phone or at the Monticello office. It names no applicant, no use and no lease number (the lease was already numbered SULA 2095 and mapped by 9 April, mine-048). The first printing gave 23 days to prepare a competing bid and development plan; the web notice had gone up on 8 July (csite-005). The same agency's notices in the same paper do sometimes state the use: a 19 August 2026 notice for 319.55 acres of Carbon County trust land says the application is 'for a commercial photovoltaic solar power generation project', and a 24 June 2026 notice describes an application to remove sand and gravel; a December 2025 Emery notice gives no use but cites its lease number (SULA 2087). Those three notices ran under the heading 'PUBLIC NOTICE' and directed applications to the agency's Salt Lake City office; the Wellington notice ran under the heading 'TRUST LANDS OPPORTUNITY', directed bids to its Southeastern Area Office in Monticello, and was the only one of the four to ask for a development plan and earnest money. The one that gave no use, SULA 2087, is, like the Wellington lease (SULA 2095), a special use lease. Trust Lands' rule requires a notice to include other information that may create interest, so long as it does not breach the confidentiality of the application (csite-005); the record does not say whether the use was treated as confidential, or why the Wellington notice omitted it.

In plain termsThe state did advertise the Wellington land in the local paper, three times in July 2026. But the ad said only that someone had applied for the square mile and that others could bid, with no word of who, or that the plan was a nuclear campus. A month later the same agency, in the same paper, told readers another application was for a solar farm; that notice came from a different Trust Lands office, and a December 2025 notice for an Emery lease gave no use either. Trust Lands' rule let the Wellington ad leave out who and what (csite-005), but a reader could not have known from it what was coming.
verified 2026-10-02: Re-read all four legal notices: holds (fees $700+$250+$150; 23 days to the 7 Aug deadline). Plain field no longer asserts the notice 'met the rules' as our finding; it cites the rule record.

In tabs: Carbon & Emery, Public Process, Carbon County Site, Timeline