URI Kingsville Dome uranium mine
Are we digging a new toxic legacy before the last one’s filled in?
by Greg Harman
SAN ANTONIO CURRENT 9/16/2009News
A string of lakes across Karnes County sparkle as blue as any found in the resort towns of Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Each is graced with the gentle slope of a nearby hill, where wildlife forages on its way to and from the waterline.
These former mine sites were blasted open during the uranium boom that swept South Texas in the 1950s and '60s, when the U.S. military was racing to keep pace with the growing Soviet atomic-bomb program and the newborn Atomic Energy Commission was struggling to develop beneficial uses for the monstrously destructive power we had tapped.
Today, 17 of Texas' earliest open-pit mines remain abandoned on private property. Land owners like to fish these man-made water features. More than a few have learned to water-ski here, despite the fact that the Texas Railroad Commission has found the sites to be emitting abnormally high levels of cancer-causing radiation.
In a recent letter to one area landowner, an official of the Railroad Commission’s Surface Mining & Reclamation Division wrote that uranium mill tailings at the edge of his lake emit “up to” 850 micro-Rem of radioactivity per hour.
In the time it takes you to thread a worm on a hook and reel in a catch, your body would receive dozens of times the natural level of background radiation.* Like other abandoned mines nearby, this site on the western edge of Karnes County also contains elevated levels of arsenic, selenium, and molybdenum, according to the commission’s letter.
The lakes are only the most glaring reminder of South Texas’ uranium-mining history. Dozens of more modern, underground “in-situ” mining sites are scattered from Karnes County all the way to Laredo, along with uranium mills and processing plants, where mined uranium is treated with acid to leach out a refined “yellow cake.”
Karnes County is also home to a string of disposal pits outside Panna Maria and Hobson used by the energy companies that mined South Texas through the 1980s. Today, these pits are filled with more than 20-million tons of radioactive tailings and processing wastes that will remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. They have leaked into area groundwater, and one spoiled aquifer in western Karnes has been tagged by the U.S. Department of Energy with an estimated cleanup cost of $350 million.
The Texas Mining & Reclamation Association estimates more than 76- million pounds of uranium have been produced in Texas, but there’s plenty more where that came from. Should the so-called nuclear rennaissance pan out and new reactors be built, a demand for fuel will certainly follow.
“Assuming nuclear energy is the energy of the future, we’re going to have to have a feedstock to provide it with,” says Art Dohman, president of the Goliad County Groundwater District.
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San Antonio’s utility has been pushing hard for an expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear complex, 200 miles to the southeast at Bay City. A partner with NRG Energy at the existing reactors, CPS Energy wants to maintain a controlling interest in the proposed two new reactors at 40- percent ownership.
Public hearings have become a form of popular entertainment, as the merits and demerits of nuclear power are picked apart and challenged by an array of local leaders — with a few notable exceptions: The environmental and public-health costs associated with nuclear power have largely been brushed aside with an optimistic nod to the future.
In a meeting with members of the political-accountability group COPS-Metro Alliance on Sunday, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro repeated that he was “comfortable” with the environmental impact of nuclear power.
While critics evaluate uranium mining and radioactive waste disposal in “moral terms — leaving something to future generations we really don’t have a handle on,” Castro said, “I believe in the decades to come there will be a safe way to deal with that waste.” Like the nonexistent dumps that proponents hope will one day safely store our nuclear waste for what amounts to eternity, the risks involved in uranium mining and processing should be a starting point for any debate about the promise and peril of nuclear power, yet it has received scant attention in San Antonio’s decision whether or not to partner in the expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear complex.
The plants, the dumps, the mines — perhaps they’re simply too far from San Antonio to register. But the aftermath of our last uranium boom still echoes loudly in South Texas.
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Florence Bodine is waiting for a call back from the Railroad Commission about the water-filled pit on her western Karnes County property. First contacted by the agency in 1998, Bodine signed the paperwork granting the state permission to clean up the site — even with the disclaimer that the work “cannot be warranted … and may not achieve the intended result.” She’s already waved off one offer to purchase water from the lake for irrigation (“I said no, I didn’t want to be liable for that.”).
Ramona Nye, spokesperson for the Texas Railroad Commission, insists that since these defunct mines were dug prior to the creation of federal laws governing them, it is not the state’s responsibility to repair the damage. As federal money trickles in — siphoned from the coal companies’ profits via a mine-reclamation tax — the Railroad Commission pumps the water from another abandoned pit, pushes the tailings back into the hole, and covers it over with a few inches of uncontaminated soil. To date, cleanup per site has run between $224,000 and $2 million.
A.C. McAda, city attorney for Falls City and Kenedy, grew up observing the impact mining had on area livestock. Back when uranium trucks on the road meant thriving downtowns and auto dealerships, his father, a local veterinarian, was documenting marked declines in local livestock reproduction. His father also recorded a rare type of heavy-metal poisoning that robbed black Angus cattle of their pigment, turning them white.
“They never really found a way to get that reversed,” McAda said.
But agricultural anomalies were soon dwarfed by public-health fears. Father Frank Kurzaj was the priest of the small Polish community of Panna Maria in the 1980s when the fight over waste disposal at an unlined pit a few miles west of town exploded. He counseled parishioners stricken with cancer and couples unable to conceive, labored over the faith-challenging questions that can follow birth defects, and worked with two families living near the dump whose children were born as hermaphrodites. He helped organize the Panna Maria Concerned Citizens to give the community standing at the public hearings held about the toxic hill, which was owned by energy giant Chevron and later sold to Rio Grande Resources.
“The dumping was done over there and people were not aware of the consequences of being in this area. They were lied to, simply by telling them everything is under control,” Kurzaj said.
It wasn’t under control. Mines, trucks, and processing mills all spread contamination, exposing residents. Lawsuits followed, as did confidential settlements that keep firsthand tales out of the headlines.
While Kurzaj doesn’t object to uranium mining or nuclear power on principle, he says the toxic nature of uranium combined with the destabilizing power of greed should motivate communities to fight for the strongest possible oversight. “Money’s important, we need money to live,” Kurzaj said. “But there are some more important things than money. If we have plenty of money but we don’t have health, why do you need the money? You cannot use it.”
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When it comes to open-pit carnage, some of the worst damage has been done to indigenous lands, like the Navajo territory in New Mexico, where workers dug uranium ore in underground mines without the benefit of safety equipment. As in Karnes, the land around Church Rock, New Mexico, outside Gallup, is marked by abandoned mines and milling sites, but this area has the unwelcome distinction of also being the site of the second-largest non-weapons-related radiological release in history, the largest being the Chernobyl meltdown of 1986. It happened just a few months after the Three Mile Island accident of 1979. An estimated 90-million gallons of liquid radioactive waste burst through a dam wall at a uranium-processing mill owned by United Nuclear Corps, flooding farmland, arroyos, and fields, and permanently contaminating the Rio Puerco River.
Despite adamant resistance from the Navajo and other nearby tribes, a subsidiary of one prominent Texas mining outfit, Uranium Resources, Inc., is petitioning the state of New Mexico to gain access to Church Rock for another go. Recently, tensions between the Navajo’s objection to mining and those anxious for jobs in the area spilled over in an attack on five Navajo men in Grants, New Mexico.
“Just because they’re Navajo, these men got beat up, very severely. One man had to have his eye put back in,” said Anna Rondon, who since 1987 has served as a volunteer organizer for the Southwest Indigenous Uranium Forum, a series of gathering intended to shed light on the environmental and health impacts of uranium mining.
Native American communities throughout the Southwest have experienced high levels of kidney diseases and cancer thought to be related to uranium mining. While cancer was once something of an anomaly among the Navajo, after 30 years of heavy mining activity, cancer rates in Navajo Country began to shoot upward, doubling by the late ’90s, according to Indian Health Service data. Still, no study of the residents around Church Rock has ever been performed, according to Linda Gunter from the non-profit organization Beyond Nuclear.
By contrast, at least two studies have been performed in Karnes County. The Texas Department of Health carried out a single population-based study of cancer occurrences in Karnes County and reported no statistical abnormalities. That was followed by another study by researchers from the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Maryland, who reached a similar conclusion in 2002. Both of these studies were well reported in the media.
However, research conducted through the early 1990s by a team from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston took a different approach and found cause for concern. Instead of simply relying on the number of cancer cases reported, the group took physical samples from residents living within 1.5 miles of uranium-waste pits in Karnes County and looked for cellular damage. In 1995, the team reported in the highly regarded journal Environmental Health Perspectives that the DNA of the Karnes County residents had more “chromosome aberrations” than a similar number of people who did not reside near toxic-waste sites. The UTMB team then exposed the cell samples to a dose of radiation and observed that the cells had an “abnormal DNA repair response.”
With the benefit of improved evaluation methods, one of the UTMB study’s chief researchers, Dr. William Au, returned to the Karnes County issue in a report published this year in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health. This time, he showed that residents near those waste sites “could have been exposed to a level of radiation that is similar to those for nuclear workers [and] … have increased risk for cancer over the non-exposed residents.” The National Council on Radiation Protection estimates that the average American is exposed to about 300 micro-Rem of radioactivity each year, mainly from radon gas in the air. But, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows workers within the nuclear industry to receive as much as 5,000 micro-Rem a year. The National Academy of Science maintains that no level of radiation exposure can be considered safe.
Au, a 20-year veteran of UTMB who is moving to China to take over an environmental-health program at a medical school there, is critical of the state’s statistical approach.
“They were forced to do a study,” he said, “but the population is too small to do that kind of study … The result was predictable to be negative because [the population] is too small to do anything meaningful.”
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Of course, when mining returns to Karnes and any number of former uranium-mining sites in South Texas, it won’t be done in open pits under a cloud of yellow dust. During the past 20 years, South Texas has served as a staging ground for the development of a new mining technology that leaves the Earth’s surface relatively unmarred. Ore trapped in underground aquifers can be “mined” through a complex system of injection and extraction wells. In the uranium-bearing water sands of South Texas, virtually all of the uranium particles are anchored in underground rock and sand formations, not floating freely in the water. By pumping heavily oxygenated solution through an ore deposit these particles can be released in a chemical exchange not unlike salt dissolving in water. With the uranium broken out into the water column, it can be pumped to the surface and stripped out at a processing plant.
In-situ is not as effective as strip mining. It tends to leave more uranium behind. It also releases more radon gas into the air and other radioactive elements into the water, including thorium, radium, and radon. Exposure to these radioactive elements is dangerous on two levels: As a heavy metal, uranium in drinking water can damage liver and kidney function; exposure to the radiation via the mineral dust or radon gas it produces is known to cause cancer and birth defects, as well as damage human DNA. This DNA damage can be passed along genetically, increasing the susceptibility of future generations to certain diseases.
Largely developed in Texas, in-situ uranium mining has been exported and used at a variety of sites around the world with varying degrees of success. In Eastern Europe, the use of harsh solvents to strip out the uranium deposits coupled with weak environmental oversight led to the contamination of drinking-water supplies in communities in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. When in-situ mining proposals reached Australia a decade ago, the Australian Conservation Foundation hired Gavin Mudd of the Victoria University of Technology to conduct an environmental assessment.
“The environmental impacts are generally underground and therefore, on the surface, it would appear that such negative impacts are minimal. However, the quality of groundwater and the mined aquifer are permanently altered as a result of ISL mining,” Mudd wrote in 1998. “The industry will continue to claim that the ISL technique is ‘environmentally benign,’ but the reality of the depressed world uranium supply simply dictates that future uranium production will come from ISL merely due to its lower overall production costs.”
If the in-situ method represents an improvement over the old dig-and-dump uranium mines, it’s worth noting that Texas regulators didn’t get any such upgrade. Take, for instance, this May 24, 1999, communication from the Texas Department of Health’s Incident Investigations Program in the Bureau of Radiation Control concerning a spill of 2,000 gallons of uranium-polluted water by Cogema Mining at a site outside Bruni, Texas — considered by some the birthplace of industrial in-situ mining:
“This is in reference to your facsimile (FAX) to the Agency dated May 11, 1998, concerning the spill of U3O6 at the West Cole Wellfield III by well 627. I am sorry to be responding after nearly a year but the facsimile was evidently lost in the paper shuffle for over a year. After review of your report, I have a couple of questions concerning the spill that should be clarified for future reference … ”
Such spills are not unheard of in the in-situ mining world. In fact, the same company had already reported three other spills that same year: 2,500 gallons in February 1998, 20,000 gallons in May 1998, and 8,000 gallons in July 1998.
Three years earlier, Manuel Longoria sued Uranium Resources, Inc. at another Bruni site for dumping “massive amounts of wastewater” into a spring-fed pool known as Arroyos de los Angeles and fouling his groundwater, according to a lawsuit filed in district court in Duval County.
Like the Australian researcher, public-health advocates aren’t as concerned about the visible spills topside as they are about what may be happening beneath the surface. So far, only a handful of the mine operators have managed to return the groundwater to the same quality it was before mining got underway, a survey of state data shows. The amount of water consumed by in-situ mining should also set off alarms in drought-prone, water-poor South Texas, says Mark Walsh, who has dogged the URI Kingsville mine for years as a member of South Texas Opposes Pollution.
“All of the billions of gallons of water used to mine this, and then we end up destroying the aquifer in so many places,” Walsh said. “We’re in the biggest drought since the 1950s. Whatever we have in the aquifer we have to protect, but we want to protect the uranium companies.”
According to data from the South Texas Water Authority, last summer URI was using about a million gallons per month mining at Ricardo, Texas. About one-fourth of that water was ultimately shot down deep disposal wells as waste. URI officials say that while mining stopped in June due to the collapse of uranium prices, a skeleton staff continues running roughly 20-million gallons per month minimum through reverse-osmosis units in an attempt to clean up contamination at its three Kingsville mine fields.
The company also hasn’t ruled out applying for an amendment to its permit that would increase the amount of contaminants they would be able to legally leave behind, according to URI Executive Vice President Rick Van Horn.
“That’s certainly something we can look at doing if we feel we’ve done everything that we can as far as cleaning the groundwater up, but that’s something that is going to be the subject — if we do that — will be the subject of public hearings and the state would have to sign off on that,” Van Horn said. “It’s not just something we could do unilaterally.”
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URI has also started funding promising research at Texas A&M Kingsville into the ability of hydrogen to remove heavy-metal pollution from water. So far, injecting and circulating hydrogen at the Kingsville Dome site has succeeded in reducing uranium contamination in the groundwater from around 5,000 parts per billion to 70 ppb, according to lead researcher Lee Clapp, associate professor of environmental engineering. The EPA’s threshold for uranium in drinking water is 30 ppb.
But Clapp and his team have had trouble circulating the hydrogen widely enough through the well field to reach all of the existing contamination. And no one knows how long the treatment will successfully keep the uranium out of the water column. After a period of time, the leftover uranium could start to migrate again.
“Those are absolutely critical research questions we’re looking into,” Clapp said. So far, he adds, “I think the results are pretty encouraging.”
Clapp is in communication with researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey who are keen to apply the research at contaminated federal waste sites, but Kleberg County officials are interested as well. In recent years, heavy groundwater pumping by the city has reversed the flow of subsurface water so that it no longer flows toward the Gulf of Mexico south of Kingsville but instead flows back toward the city. Since URI’s mine is located several miles south of the city, some observers are concerned that the contamination could migrate upstream to city wells. Even if URI abandoned their operations and shut down all of their pumps, the Texas Water Board estimates it would take more than 1,000 years for the contamination to reach Kingsville. But slow-moving water is still poisoned water.
“The fact of the matter is, they have these applications, they say they’re going to return the water to such-and-such a level when they know they can’t, and the state knows they can’t,” says Ann Ewing, of South Texas Opposes Pollution. “So why do they even put that in there?”
It’s doubly instructive to consider that when Kleberg County tried to stop the expansion of mining operations by URI until the existing contamination was cleaned up, they gained the support of an administrative law judge with the State Office of Administrative Hearings, who ruled the expansion request should be approved “contingent upon URI’s restoriation of [Production Area] 1 and substational progress toward the completion of PA 2.” Turned out the company had bigger friends, and backed by three members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality it moved forward anyway.
Up the road in Goliad County, Uranium Energy Corp is working hard to open an in-situ operation. The groundwater district and the county government charge that the company has already fouled the local aquifer by punching nearly 100 exploratory holes in the subsurface water sands. Instead of closing these holes within 48 hours as state law demands, many of them were left open to the elements for several weeks. With air and rainwater shooting down the shafts, Groundwater District president Dohman says the uranium reacted to the oxygen and began to dissolve out of the water sands, polluting the Evangeline Aquifer.
The fight over uranium mining in Goliad is significant, because it may represent the first time a South Texas community has been organized enough to take a thorough assessment of its water quality before uranium-exploration drilling got underway. State law requires companies to sample the water to establish its quality prior to mining, but this is often done after exploration drilling takes place, a process that inevitably stirs up some contaminants in the water and skews subsequent baseline samples. A contested case hearing over the UEC permit applications will be held before the State Office of Administrative Hearings early next year.
Recently, a former Kingsville Dome employee surfaced in nearby Yorktown to help fight off UEC’s advance. Roland Burrows worked as a well-field operator for URI for five months in 1996, and says he witnessed the company routinely flushing the well field with far more water than allowed by the terms of its permit. He claims to have witnessed the falsification of monitoring-well data by company employees, which must be submitted regularly to TCEQ to show that contaminated water is contained at the mine site.
After more than one confrontation with his supervisors over these alleged practices, Burrows says he was out shutting down some of the offending injection wells about 45 minutes before sunrise on July 27, 1996, when a crop duster spraying an adjacent field crossed over the mine and dropped a load of malathion on him. He quickly showered, changed his clothes, and returned to work, where he promptly passed out. Within a week, doctors at South Texas Cost Containment cleared him to return to work despite a diagnosis of exposure to pesticide spray.
Harry Anthony, the URI engineering manager at the time, who is now an employee of UEC, did not return repeated phone calls from the Current, but Van Horn provided a document that showed an investigation by the TNRCC (now the TCEQ) was carried out the following year that cleared the company of any wrongdoing associated with Burrows’s charges.
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From the vantage point of a refurbished uranium mill in Karnes County, Greg Kroll feeds mesquite wood into a small cooker. His company, South Texas Mining Venture, is watching uranium values, and a number of potential future mining sites.
Well over 6 feet tall and broad-chested, Kroll laughs off suggestions that elevated uranium levels at abandoned mining sites in the area could be hazardous to human health. “Look what it did to me! It probably stunted my growth!” he says goodnaturedly.
City Attorney McAda understands the pull uranium mining can have in a community of limited means. “It’s an interesting dynamic,” he says “You probably know there’s something wrong there, you just don’t want to know about it. You don’t want to ask. You don’t want to know too much.
“When I grew up in Kenedy and Karnes City, they were thriving little towns. We still had stores downtown, car dealerships. They were really going. They were driven by uranium mining and oil and gas services.” After he returned from college and law school eight years later, everything had changed. “Those towns had just died. The mines had shut down … When it shut down, it killed those towns.”
Like URI, Mining Ventures is waiting for the economy to recover, and for uranium prices, at $45 dollars a pound today, down from a high of nearly $140 a pound in 2007, to rebound. With the early signs of a uranium-mining revival now apparent, a counterbalancing vigilance is also on the rise.
Donald Dugosh lives across the street from Rio Grande Resource’s unlined dump at Panna Maria. Though the waste from the pit has already leaked into the underground aquifer, Rio Grande Resources wants to reopen its uranium mill to process the ore from the new generation of in-situ sites. If a permit pending with the state is approved, operators would be allowed to shoot the resulting toxic mill waste down deep injection wells nearby. The draft permit allows for 131 million gallons of radioactice and toxic waste to be shot down the holes each year, to a depth of 6,000 feet — just over a thousand feet beneath the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, considered the deepest underground source of drinking water in the area.
“They’re supposed to take the waste back and re-inject it back into the formation,” Dugosh says. “But these folks here want to be cheap and just deep inject it here.”
And therein lies the crux of the dilemma: How much will Texans be willing to risk for another injection of mining income. With much of the nuclear debate in San Antonio focused on the water needs of the two proposed new reactors, what are we to do with the wasted waters already bequeathed to us from decades of uranium mining, processing, and dumping? Are we ready for another round?
In white shirt and clerical collar, Father Kurzaj still serves as a reminder of the impacted families and fouled aquifers of Karnes County. He speaks in hope that past actions won’t be repeated, that the hunger of distant power plants and the pursuit of profit won’t poison the waters again. After all, Kurzaj asks: “If the water is contaminated and the cattle and people cannot drink it, what is this land for? For nothing.”
http://www.sacurrent.com/news/story.asp?id=70530
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Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Uranium gouging in Goliad
UEC: Don't mess with a Duderstadt. Just, don't.Comment: review the video at this site, click the lick below, it is about Texas water problems after core samples for uranium mining!
Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com
What can we say but sorry? We haven’t been back to this Texana-licious little burgh since the early days of their battle against the forces of reviving ‘death ore’ mining.
Despite our 33-percent newsroom enhancement (when you line up our news staff, you have to pull the trigger thrice), we’ve been loaded down with Alamocentric procedural gore and glories.
It seems like forever ago that the Goliad Greyhound was motoring up to Austin in pursuit of justice.
Sierra Clubbers wrote us then:
Over 50 local officials and citizens from Goliad County traveled via bus and trucks today to Austin and were pleased when the three Commissioners of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality allowed a contested case hearing concerning an application by Uranium Energy Corporation to mine uranium in the aquifer just north of the historic mission town of Goliad.
No uranium mining has occurred before in the agricultural garden spot.
“I am so happy. I just thank god for this decision. Thank god for all the people in Goliad County. This has been such a long, long haul and it’s not over yet,” said local landowner Lu Ann Duderstadt who lives near the area targeted for uranium mining.
Craig and LuAnn Duderstadt, were considered by the TCEQ to be affected parties along with several individuals, Goliad County, the Goliad County Groundwater Conservation District, a Lutheran church and a volunteer fire department. The Duderstadts who raise and sell feed hay were forced to purchase water for domestic use in their home after UEC exploration activities allegedly fouled the aquifer near their ranch.
[Yup. That's Lu Ann Duderstadt up above, way back in 2007.]
While the well-intentioned scribe has apparently gotten out of the habit of capitalizing the name of Our Lord (as folks in the rest of Texas are wont to do — double Ahem, amen), they got that “garden spot” reference dead on the Jackson.
Though it has been flanked by numerous uranium mining activities going back to the Atom Bomb days and is squawking distance from a massive federal waste pit known to have fouled the waters outside Panna Maria to the tune of $350 million dollars (Feds don’t see no cause to clean it up, it’s so rural … and so rurally potentially expensive!), Goliad County is stinkin’ gorgeous. And damn tranquil.
Well, count uranium mining up among the things that get folks' blood moving about in these parts. Right up there with beef prices and downstream water rights.
On Thursday,TCEQ will hold a preliminary contested case hearing on the matter.
Check out some of our past ramblings on the topic for some background, then turn your eye to the TCEQ’s notice, included below.
AMENDED NOTICE OF HEARING
(To change hearing date and location.)
URANIUM ENERGY CORP
SOAH Docket No. 582-09-3064
TCEQ Docket No. 2008-1888-UIC
Proposed Permit No. UR03075
APPLICATION. Uranium Energy Corp (UEC), 100 East Kleberg, Suite 310, Kingsville, Texas, In Situ Uranium Mining, has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for a permit to authorize an in situ uranium mining operation. The facility is located approximately 13 miles north of the city of Goliad, about 0.9 miles east of the intersection of State Highway 183 and Farm-to-Market Road 1961 in Goliad County Texas.
UEC has also submitted a request to the TCEQ to designate an exempted aquifer. An aquifer or portion of an aquifer may be designated as an exempted aquifer if it does not currently serve as a source of drinking water for human consumption and it will not in the future serve as a source of drinking water for human consumption because it is mineral, hydrocarbon or geothermal energy bearing with production capability. The aquifer exemption is required before UEC can operate the proposed injection wells. UEC requested that a portion of the Goliad Formation be designated as an exempt aquifer. The requested exemption would apply from a depth of 45 to 404 feet and would extend over the approximately 423.8 acre area covered in Goliad County under the proposed injection well area permit.
The TCEQ executive director has prepared a draft permit which, if approved, would establish the conditions under which the facility must operate. The Executive Director has made a preliminary decision that this permit, if issued, meets all statutory and regulatory requirements and that the application for aquifer exemption meets all regulatory requirements. If the aquifer exemption is approved by the TCEQ, the Executive Director will prepare an application to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to revise the state's Underground Injection Control program to reflect the exemption of the relevant portion of the aquifer, which will be in effect until the exemption status is removed. No designation of an exempted aquifer shall be final until approved by the EPA. The application, Executive Director's preliminary decision, and draft permit are available for viewing and copying at County Courthouse, 701 E. End Street, Goliad, Texas 77963.
CONTESTED CASE HEARING. The State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) will conduct a formal contested case hearing at:
10:00 a.m. - May 14, 2009
Goliad Auditorium
925 South U.S. 183
Goliad, Texas 77963
The contested case hearing will be a legal proceeding similar to a civil trial in state district court. The hearing will address the disputed issues of fact identified in the TCEQ order concerning this application issued on March 3, 2009. In addition to these issues, the judge may consider additional issues if certain factors are met.
The hearing will be conducted in accordance with Chapter 2001, Texas Government Code; Chapter 27, Texas Water Code; TCEQ rules, including 30 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) Chapter 331 and the procedural rules of the TCEQ and SOAH, including 30 TAC Chapter 80 and 1 TAC Chapter 155. The hearing will be held unless all timely hearing requests have been withdrawn or denied.
To request to be a party, you must attend the hearing and show you would be adversely affected by the application in a way not common to members of the general public. Any person may attend the hearing and request to be a party. Only persons named as parties may participate at the hearing.
INFORMATION. If you need more information about the hearing process for this application, please call the Office of Public Assistance, Toll Free, at 1-800-687-4040. General information about the TCEQ can be found at our web site at www.tceq.state.tx.us.
Further information may also be obtained from Uranium Energy Corp at the address stated above or by calling Mr. Josh Leftwich at (361) 592-5400.
Persons with disabilities who need special accommodations at the hearing should call the SOAH Docketing Department at 512-475-3445, at least one week prior to the hearing.
Issued: April 7, 2009
LaDonna Castañuela, Chief Clerk
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
The citizens’ group Uranium Information at Goliad advises interested parties:
If you have been named as an affected person, to be sure you maintain your standing and it is strongly recommended you attend this preliminary hearing. If you are unable to attend, you should make arrangements for someone to represent you.
If you believe you are an affected person and have not asked for a hearing, you may do so at this preliminary hearing. To request to be a party, you must attend the hearing and show you would be adversely affected by the application in a way not common to members of the general public.
Any person may attend this hearing and request to be a party. Everyone is welcome to attend to audience the hearing.
Your attendance at this preliminary hearing may have an impact on whether the contested case hearing will be held in Goliad or Austin.
Please plan to attend – your support is appreciated.
You may also want to check out ALTURA’S site and brave the pianos of the following video to see a Goliad water expert and mining critic handle some befouled water-well filters.
Posted by gharman on 5/12/2009 3:28:05 PM
http://www.sacurrent.com/blog/queblog.asp?perm=69723
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Explanation of Open Pit Uranium Mining
(The following was submitted by an SCC affiliate. It is copied from www.nunnglow.com )
Open Pit Mining
Regardless of what they call it:
---Open Pit
---Conventional Mining
---Surface Mining
It all means the same thing: A Deep Hole in the Ground.
Open pit mining is planned for the south area of the Centennial Project, the area closest to Fort Collins, Greeley, and Wellington. Powertech estimates the Centennial Project holds 9.7 million lbs of uranium. Over half the uranium, 5.9 million lbs, lies in shallow deposits within the southern area of the Centennial Project, the conventional (open-pit) mining area (see page 32 of http://www.powertechuranium.com/i/pdf/Centennial43-101.pdf).
Open pit mining is used when deposits of uranium are considered close to the surface. Uranium deposits in the Centennial Project's south area are at a depth of 80 to 120 feet with an average thickness of 9 feet. Mining to that depth would create a 129 foot hole in the ground, equivalent to a 12-story building. The average grade of the uranium in Centennial Project's south area is only 0.1 %. This means 2.9 million tons of rock must be mined to remove the uranium.
The predicatable result is something like the Big Eagle Pits near Jeffrey City, Wyoming where uranium mining left a ghost town and three super fund sites.
The intense mining required to move and process 2.9 million tons rock and ore to bring this low grade uranium to market comes with a significant carbon footprint. In her book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, Dr. Helen Caldicott writes:
"The largest unavoidable energy cost associated with nuclear power relates to the processes of mining and milling uranium fuel. Variable grades of uranium ore exist at different mines around the world. A greater amount of energy is required to extract uranium from a mine containing a low-grade uranium concentration of 0.1% than from another mine containing a uranium concentration of 10%-ten times more. . .The energy used to mine the uranium is fossil fuel . . ."
The Sierra Club concurs with Dr. Caldicott and writes "Uranium mining is among the most carbon-dioxide-intensive operations in the world" (SierraClub.org).
Since uranium was first located within the Centennial Project in 1980, the primary focus has been to surface mine the south area. Rocky Mountain Energy Company (RME), a subsidiary of Union Pacific Railroad and the original owner of the Centennial Project, not only planned to surface mine the south area, a plan still outlined in Powertech's Centennial's Projects Technical Report (43-101), RME also investigated vat leaching to extract uranium from surfaced mined ore as well as building an on-site uranium processing mill. RME dropped its plans for the Centennial project when market prices for uranium fell in 1982.
At that time, it was also determined a gravel quarry would be an additional economic resource for moving the 7.9 million cubic yards of gravel that overlay the shallow uranium deposit. Powertech has already marked out their gravel pit in this same south area. There is no U.S. regulatory agency that watches over gravel pit mining.
Open pit mining produces huge piles of waste rock. Waste rock from uranium mines will typically contain concentrations of radioisotopes (radioactive isotopes) higher than the undisturbed surface. Uranium left geologically isolated from our environment by layers of earth and rock is not harmful. In an undisturbed uranium deposit the activity of all decay remains unchanged for hundreds of millions years. This changes when the uranium deposit is mined and the unstoppable and deadly series of radioactive decay begins. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years before it finally reaches a stable form of lead.
"Uranium mill tailings are the residual waste from the process of uranium extraction from the uranium ore. Since only uranium is extracted, all other members of the uranium decay chains remain in the tailings at their original activities. In addition, small residual amounts of uranium are left in the tailings, depending on the efficiency of the extraction process used." (From WISE Uranium Project: Uranium Radiation Properties.)
The most serious health hazard associated with uranium mining is lung cancer due to inhaling uranium decay products. Uranium mill tailings contain radioactive materials, notably radium-226, and heavy metals (e.g., manganese and molybdenum) which can leach into groundwater. Near tailings piles, water samples have shown levels of some contaminants at hundreds of times the government's acceptable level for drinking water. (From Uranium: Its Uses and Hazards.)
Radioactive tailings from uranium mines are exposed to wind and rain where they are spread miles outside the mining operation. Scientist Dr. Gordon Edwards writes in a December 2007 article "When radon gas is released from a uranium mine, it deposits solid radioactive fallout - including polonium-210 - on the ground for hundreds of miles downwind of the mine site." Those radioactive particles may travel even further from the Centennial site since Colorado has a ranking of 11th for best place in the nation to generate energy from the wind and Weld County ranks first in the United States for having the most tornados (www.coopext.colostate.edu). Colorado's most populated areas of the state lie downwind from the proposed Centennial uranium mining project.
Peter Diehl writes in Uranium Mining and Milling Wastes: An Introduction: "All these piles threaten people and the environment after shut down of the mine due to their release of radon gas and seepage water containing radioactive and toxic materials."
Mounds of mine tailings left from uranium's last boom which ended in the 1980s continues to plague the United States. Because mining companies pulled out without sufficient cleanup and restoration, billions of dollars of taxpayers money has been spent in an attempt to do the impossible: return uranium mills and mining sites to a somewhat environmentally healthy state. An infamous example is Moab Utah's Atlas uranium mill.
The cleanup of the 9.5-million-ton Atlas Corp. uranium mill tailings site at Moab (Utah, US) has continued to be discussed controversially. The pile is located immediately on the bank of the Colorado River, a drinking water resource for millions of Americans. The NRC approved the in-place reclamation of the tailings pile in spite of concerns raised for the water quality of the Colorado River. However, the funds available from Atlas are not even sufficient for the in-place reclamation. In addition, bankrupt Atlas Corp. now is to be released from the liability for the tailings cleanup: the NRC has selected a trustee, to whom the license will be transferred. (Uranium mining in 1999: Hard times continuing)
Downstream from most of America's uranium mines and mills sits Lake Mead, a huge reservoir that supplies drinking and irrigation water for southern California, Las Vegas, and parts of Arizona. The 40-year-old Atlas mill tailings pile at Moab, Utah, located 750 feet from the Colorado River, covers 130 acres and leaks on average 57,000 gallons per day of contaminated fluids into the river. The radioactive isotopes that are released in the mining and milling process have very long half-lives and are slowly making their way downriver into the sediments and water of the lake. The implications of a contaminated western water system are catastrophic.
Surface water is not the only threatened resource. Seepage from tailings ponds and "direct injection" of wastes into the subsurface contribute to ground water contamination. Wells that tap into these aquifers provide much of the drinking and irrigation water for the arid Colorado Plateau. Both people and livestock are affected by drinking this water and eating plants that are irrigated with it. ("Leetso," the Yellow Monster: Uranium Mining on the Colorado Plateau)
Polonium-210 is left over from uranium mines and found in tailings piles in concentrations where its radioactivity equals the uranium. Polonium-210 is a billion times more toxic than cyanide (http://pacificfreepress.com).
Concentrated levels of selenium, vanadium, radium, molybdenum, nickel, cadmium and arsenic are also found in the tailings. While trace amounts of these heavy metals are not harmful, accumulation over time can cause serious illness in humans and animals. Plants that grow on uranium tailings show a high uranium uptake and have been determined to be a significant factor in the spread of radioactive material from these sites. Radium whose link to head and bone cancers and leukemia earned it the label of Superb Carcinogen from the British Columbia Medical Association, can leak from uranium tailings into the food chain and ground water for thousands of years (http://pacificfreepress.com).
Selenium is an element commonly found in northern Colorado, often occurring in association with uranium. In areas were selenium is found in the surface soils, plants and grasses can become toxic to livestock due to the plants uptake of selenium. Selenium accumulator plants such as loco weed will move in and thrive in these soils and are know for acute poisioning and death to livestock (See Selenium Contamination). Uranium mining will concentrate selenium on the soils surface, either in open pit or in-sit leaching, making hot spots of selenium enriched plants, which can often be seen as greener than natural surroundings.
The western United States has mountains of toxic uranium tailings exposed and unprotected from the environment. While restoration is a contracted requirement made before mining operations begin, there simply is no way to return a uranium-mining site to pre-mining conditions. It has become the norm for uranium mining companies to ask their required standards of reclamation be amended and lowered before they complete site restoration.
Sites where these issues have occurred includes, but is not limited to: Bear Creek (Wyoming); Boots/Brown, (Texas); Bruni (Texas); Burns/Moser (Texas); Cañon City uranium mill (Colorado); Christensen Ranch (Wyoming); Clay West (Texas); Cotter (Colorado); Crow Butte (Nebraska); Highland (Wyoming); Irigaray (Wyoming); Hobson (Texas); Holiday - El Mesquite, Duval County (Texas); Kingsville Dome (Texas); Mt. Lucas (Texas); O'Hern (Texas); Palangana (Texas); Rosita (Texas); Smith Ranch (Wyoming); Tex-1 (Texas); West Cole (Texas); Western Nuclear Split Rock uranium mill site (Wyoming); Zamzow (Texas).
Open Pit Mining
Regardless of what they call it:
---Open Pit
---Conventional Mining
---Surface Mining
It all means the same thing: A Deep Hole in the Ground.
Open pit mining is planned for the south area of the Centennial Project, the area closest to Fort Collins, Greeley, and Wellington. Powertech estimates the Centennial Project holds 9.7 million lbs of uranium. Over half the uranium, 5.9 million lbs, lies in shallow deposits within the southern area of the Centennial Project, the conventional (open-pit) mining area (see page 32 of http://www.powertechuranium.com/i/pdf/Centennial43-101.pdf).
Open pit mining is used when deposits of uranium are considered close to the surface. Uranium deposits in the Centennial Project's south area are at a depth of 80 to 120 feet with an average thickness of 9 feet. Mining to that depth would create a 129 foot hole in the ground, equivalent to a 12-story building. The average grade of the uranium in Centennial Project's south area is only 0.1 %. This means 2.9 million tons of rock must be mined to remove the uranium.
The predicatable result is something like the Big Eagle Pits near Jeffrey City, Wyoming where uranium mining left a ghost town and three super fund sites.
The intense mining required to move and process 2.9 million tons rock and ore to bring this low grade uranium to market comes with a significant carbon footprint. In her book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, Dr. Helen Caldicott writes:
"The largest unavoidable energy cost associated with nuclear power relates to the processes of mining and milling uranium fuel. Variable grades of uranium ore exist at different mines around the world. A greater amount of energy is required to extract uranium from a mine containing a low-grade uranium concentration of 0.1% than from another mine containing a uranium concentration of 10%-ten times more. . .The energy used to mine the uranium is fossil fuel . . ."
The Sierra Club concurs with Dr. Caldicott and writes "Uranium mining is among the most carbon-dioxide-intensive operations in the world" (SierraClub.org).
Since uranium was first located within the Centennial Project in 1980, the primary focus has been to surface mine the south area. Rocky Mountain Energy Company (RME), a subsidiary of Union Pacific Railroad and the original owner of the Centennial Project, not only planned to surface mine the south area, a plan still outlined in Powertech's Centennial's Projects Technical Report (43-101), RME also investigated vat leaching to extract uranium from surfaced mined ore as well as building an on-site uranium processing mill. RME dropped its plans for the Centennial project when market prices for uranium fell in 1982.
At that time, it was also determined a gravel quarry would be an additional economic resource for moving the 7.9 million cubic yards of gravel that overlay the shallow uranium deposit. Powertech has already marked out their gravel pit in this same south area. There is no U.S. regulatory agency that watches over gravel pit mining.
Open pit mining produces huge piles of waste rock. Waste rock from uranium mines will typically contain concentrations of radioisotopes (radioactive isotopes) higher than the undisturbed surface. Uranium left geologically isolated from our environment by layers of earth and rock is not harmful. In an undisturbed uranium deposit the activity of all decay remains unchanged for hundreds of millions years. This changes when the uranium deposit is mined and the unstoppable and deadly series of radioactive decay begins. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years before it finally reaches a stable form of lead.
"Uranium mill tailings are the residual waste from the process of uranium extraction from the uranium ore. Since only uranium is extracted, all other members of the uranium decay chains remain in the tailings at their original activities. In addition, small residual amounts of uranium are left in the tailings, depending on the efficiency of the extraction process used." (From WISE Uranium Project: Uranium Radiation Properties.)
The most serious health hazard associated with uranium mining is lung cancer due to inhaling uranium decay products. Uranium mill tailings contain radioactive materials, notably radium-226, and heavy metals (e.g., manganese and molybdenum) which can leach into groundwater. Near tailings piles, water samples have shown levels of some contaminants at hundreds of times the government's acceptable level for drinking water. (From Uranium: Its Uses and Hazards.)
Radioactive tailings from uranium mines are exposed to wind and rain where they are spread miles outside the mining operation. Scientist Dr. Gordon Edwards writes in a December 2007 article "When radon gas is released from a uranium mine, it deposits solid radioactive fallout - including polonium-210 - on the ground for hundreds of miles downwind of the mine site." Those radioactive particles may travel even further from the Centennial site since Colorado has a ranking of 11th for best place in the nation to generate energy from the wind and Weld County ranks first in the United States for having the most tornados (www.coopext.colostate.edu). Colorado's most populated areas of the state lie downwind from the proposed Centennial uranium mining project.
Peter Diehl writes in Uranium Mining and Milling Wastes: An Introduction: "All these piles threaten people and the environment after shut down of the mine due to their release of radon gas and seepage water containing radioactive and toxic materials."
Mounds of mine tailings left from uranium's last boom which ended in the 1980s continues to plague the United States. Because mining companies pulled out without sufficient cleanup and restoration, billions of dollars of taxpayers money has been spent in an attempt to do the impossible: return uranium mills and mining sites to a somewhat environmentally healthy state. An infamous example is Moab Utah's Atlas uranium mill.
The cleanup of the 9.5-million-ton Atlas Corp. uranium mill tailings site at Moab (Utah, US) has continued to be discussed controversially. The pile is located immediately on the bank of the Colorado River, a drinking water resource for millions of Americans. The NRC approved the in-place reclamation of the tailings pile in spite of concerns raised for the water quality of the Colorado River. However, the funds available from Atlas are not even sufficient for the in-place reclamation. In addition, bankrupt Atlas Corp. now is to be released from the liability for the tailings cleanup: the NRC has selected a trustee, to whom the license will be transferred. (Uranium mining in 1999: Hard times continuing)
Downstream from most of America's uranium mines and mills sits Lake Mead, a huge reservoir that supplies drinking and irrigation water for southern California, Las Vegas, and parts of Arizona. The 40-year-old Atlas mill tailings pile at Moab, Utah, located 750 feet from the Colorado River, covers 130 acres and leaks on average 57,000 gallons per day of contaminated fluids into the river. The radioactive isotopes that are released in the mining and milling process have very long half-lives and are slowly making their way downriver into the sediments and water of the lake. The implications of a contaminated western water system are catastrophic.
Surface water is not the only threatened resource. Seepage from tailings ponds and "direct injection" of wastes into the subsurface contribute to ground water contamination. Wells that tap into these aquifers provide much of the drinking and irrigation water for the arid Colorado Plateau. Both people and livestock are affected by drinking this water and eating plants that are irrigated with it. ("Leetso," the Yellow Monster: Uranium Mining on the Colorado Plateau)
Polonium-210 is left over from uranium mines and found in tailings piles in concentrations where its radioactivity equals the uranium. Polonium-210 is a billion times more toxic than cyanide (http://pacificfreepress.com).
Concentrated levels of selenium, vanadium, radium, molybdenum, nickel, cadmium and arsenic are also found in the tailings. While trace amounts of these heavy metals are not harmful, accumulation over time can cause serious illness in humans and animals. Plants that grow on uranium tailings show a high uranium uptake and have been determined to be a significant factor in the spread of radioactive material from these sites. Radium whose link to head and bone cancers and leukemia earned it the label of Superb Carcinogen from the British Columbia Medical Association, can leak from uranium tailings into the food chain and ground water for thousands of years (http://pacificfreepress.com).
Selenium is an element commonly found in northern Colorado, often occurring in association with uranium. In areas were selenium is found in the surface soils, plants and grasses can become toxic to livestock due to the plants uptake of selenium. Selenium accumulator plants such as loco weed will move in and thrive in these soils and are know for acute poisioning and death to livestock (See Selenium Contamination). Uranium mining will concentrate selenium on the soils surface, either in open pit or in-sit leaching, making hot spots of selenium enriched plants, which can often be seen as greener than natural surroundings.
The western United States has mountains of toxic uranium tailings exposed and unprotected from the environment. While restoration is a contracted requirement made before mining operations begin, there simply is no way to return a uranium-mining site to pre-mining conditions. It has become the norm for uranium mining companies to ask their required standards of reclamation be amended and lowered before they complete site restoration.
Sites where these issues have occurred includes, but is not limited to: Bear Creek (Wyoming); Boots/Brown, (Texas); Bruni (Texas); Burns/Moser (Texas); Cañon City uranium mill (Colorado); Christensen Ranch (Wyoming); Clay West (Texas); Cotter (Colorado); Crow Butte (Nebraska); Highland (Wyoming); Irigaray (Wyoming); Hobson (Texas); Holiday - El Mesquite, Duval County (Texas); Kingsville Dome (Texas); Mt. Lucas (Texas); O'Hern (Texas); Palangana (Texas); Rosita (Texas); Smith Ranch (Wyoming); Tex-1 (Texas); West Cole (Texas); Western Nuclear Split Rock uranium mill site (Wyoming); Zamzow (Texas).
Monday, October 5, 2009
Toxins tied to fish kill may have hitchhiked
Investigators weigh whether mining equipment is culprit
Sunday, October 04, 2009
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette
Dead fish rot on a rock where the water of Dunkard Creek left them near the village of Brave in Greene County.An invasive toxic algae, blamed for contributing to the massive Dunkard Creek fish kill along the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border, may have hitchhiked to the region aboard equipment used in Marcellus shale drilling.
That kind of transregional travel could put fish and aquatic life in the states' other creeks and watersheds at risk in coming years as thousands of new wells are drilled into the thick and gaseous layer of shale that lies a mile deep under much of Pennsylvania and the northern Appalachians.
It has been more than a month since fish started going belly-up on Dunkard Creek, and officials with federal and state environmental and fisheries agencies have yet to identify what killed the fish or assign blame.
The only official explanation has come from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, which last week blamed alien golden algae for wiping out thousands of fish, mussels and other aquatic life in 35 miles of what had been one of the most biologically diverse creeks in either state.
But the West Virginia agency doesn't know how the algae got into the creek.
"We might never know how it got there," said spokewoman Kathy Cosco. "We are trying to determine if it's present already in other water bodies or has spread."
Investigators also are looking at the possibility that someone illegally dumped drilling wastewater into the creek.
The algae-as-hitchhiker theory is one being considered by federal investigators. It's part of the big puzzle federal and state agencies are trying to solve as they attempt to identify what many investigators say are "complex and multiple" causes for the ecological destruction.
The investigation continues to focus on extremely high levels of dissolved solids and chloride found in discharges from two Consol Energy mine-water treatment facilities on the creek, and low flow conditions -- possibly acerbated by tanker trucks that local residents have said they often saw withdrawing water from the creek. That combination created an aquatic environment conducive to growth of the algae.
"We do believe there is golden algae in the creek, but for it to thrive there must be a lot of stuff in the creek that shouldn't be there," said David Sternberg, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spokesman. "There are other contributing factors."
Golden algae is one of a group of algae known as chrysophytes that are usually found in hotter, sometimes coastal, environments of the Southwest and South. It is the only chrysophyte algae that produces toxins lethal to fish, mussels, salamanders and other aquatic life.
"Our biggest concern is how the conditions were created in Dunkard Creek that allowed that algae to thrive," Mr. Sternberg said. "If we see a saltwater algae in a freshwater creek, we know there must be something very wrong."
The EPA also is "very concerned" that golden algae could spread throughout the northern Appalachian region where it might devastate other fisheries, Mr. Sternberg said.
Dr. John Rodgers, a professor at Clemson University who has researched invasive freshwater algae, made the initial identification of the algae in Dunkard Creek for Consol. He said its spores could be transported by animals, in boats, on people's shoes, in blown dust or in industrial equipment.
"[Drilling equipment] is certainly something you will want to look at. This is not an organism you want to trifle with," he said, adding that it has been blamed for wiping out bass populations in Texas.
"Certainly you want to think through the pathways it took to that stream and start working on it as fast as you can."
Last week, a long-awaited 18-month state environmental review of Marcellus shale drilling issues in New York said that floating and submerged aquatic plants could be transported by a variety of equipment used in the deep shale drilling and hydraulic fracturing processes to crack the shale layer and release the gas it contains.
"Invasive species may potentially be transferred to a new area or watershed if unused water containing such species is later discharged at another location," the report said. "Other potential mechanisms for the possible transfer of invasive aquatic species may include trucks, hoses, pipelines and other equipment used for water withdrawal and transport."
Texas origins?
The algae, prymnesium parvum, has been known to kill fish in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico since it first showed up in 1985 in the Pecos River in Texas. It also has been found in the Brazos River in Texas where gas well drilling companies are advised not to draw from the river during the algae's winter blooming season.
But the algae had not been found around the Mason-Dixon Line before. It is not known if Texas drilling equipment was moved to Pennsylvania; no states track the movement of drill rigs and tanker trucks.
Leroy Young, fisheries bureau director for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, declined to provide details about the commission's ongoing criminal investigation of the Dunkard Creek fish kill. But he said the golden algae is a concern.
"... Any kind of invasive is a concern," Mr. Young said. "This is a new thing and we'll be looking hard at it."
Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Texas-based Range Resources, one of the biggest drilling companies operating in the Marcellus shale, said Range hasn't moved any drilling rigs from Texas to Pennsylvania. Its water-transport equipment is based in Pennsylvania, and it has no wells in Greene County or West Virginia.
"Almost all of our water-storage units are leased or rented from local companies and the water trucks are all local subcontractors," he said.
The company, which has drilled 150 wells into the Marcellus shale, 45 of them horizontal wells, has been recycling all drill water for more than a year, Mr. Pitzarella added. Some smaller drilling companies among more than two dozen gas producers operating in the state may be using equipment brought here from Texas, he said.
Pennsylvania may have as much as 363 trillion cubic feet of natural gas worth as much as $1 trillion deep underground in the Marcellus shale formations. Gas wells to tap those deposits are drilled 5,000 to 8,000 feet deep; each uses up to 4 million gallons of pressurized, chemically treated water to crack, or "frac," the shale and release trapped natural gas. Leftover wastewater contains high levels of chlorides, dissolved solids and fracing chemicals.
The use of fracing fluids and the drawing and disposal of well drilling wastewater have become environmental concerns. High levels of total dissolved solids in the Monongahela River last winter and this fall, which damaged equipment for some industrial water users and caused bad-tasting and -smelling water for residential water customers, was caused in part by discharges of drilling wastewater.
Last month, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., another Texas-based company with a long history in Pennsylvania, was ordered by the Pennsylvania DEP to temporarily stop its well fracing operations in Dimock, Susquehanna County, until the state can review three frac fluid spills. The company blamed faulty hose and equipment, and fully cleaned up all of the spills.
Declining quality
Although Dunkard Creek was a popular and productive warm-water fishery with good populations of bass, catfish and muskie until the beginning of September, its water quality has been in decline since at least 2002. Discharges high in dissolved solids and chlorides have poured into the creek from mine-water treatment facilities at Consol Energy's Blacksville No. 2 deep mine and its Loveridge Mine in West Virginia.
The West Virginia DEP granted orders in 2004, 2007 and 2008 allowing the company's treatment facilities to discharge unlimited amounts of chloride into the creek until 2013. Mr. Sternberg said the EPA only recently found out about those three administrative orders and is reviewing them.
"The Clean Water Act allows for compliance schedules negotiated by states," he said, "but by law water-quality standards and permit-effluent limits cannot be changed by an enforcement order."
The inability to pin down the fish kill's cause, and begin to address the problem has frustrated environmental, sportsmen's and watershed organizations.
"The players coming to drill here are new to Pennsylvania and may be bringing problems we could not foresee," said Jan Jarrett, president and chief executive officer of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, an environmental group that has campaigned for a state severance tax on gas well drilling.
"If that's the case, we need some protocols to make sure we don't have hitchhiker invasives. Right now the regulatory system is not nimble enough to address this."
Betty Wiley, president of the Dunkard Creek Watershed Association, said she lacks confidence in the environmental agencies of both states. Last week, a coalition of West Virginia and Pennsylvania watershed groups called on the EPA to take the lead role in the investigation of the fish kill and restoration of the watershed.
"The states haven't told us anything and this is a big problem," Ms. Wiley said, adding that she believes the West Virginia DEP traditionally has been lenient with coal companies. "I feel they are not capable of dealing with this thing in any way. We need the big guys to take charge"
The EPA said it won't do that. But last week it did order Consol to stop pumping wastewater from coal bed methane drilling operations into the Morris Run Borehole, which is attached to its inactive Blacksville No. 1 mine. Stopping that will help determine what impact that operation may have had on elevated discharges from Consol's Blacksville No. 2 treatment facility.
The EPA also proposed new limits on amounts of pollutants that can be discharged into West Virginia's Dunkard Creek watershed.
Consol spokesman Joe Cerenzia said the company had stopped pumping into the Morris Run borehole as directed and last week stopped discharging water from both of its mine-water treatment facilities. He said the company has several Marcellus shale wells in Greene County but none take water from the creek or discharge water into it or the Blacksville No. 1 mine.
Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09277/1003007-113.stm#ixzz0T7TsUpK3
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09277/1003007-113.stm
Sunday, October 04, 2009
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette
Dead fish rot on a rock where the water of Dunkard Creek left them near the village of Brave in Greene County.An invasive toxic algae, blamed for contributing to the massive Dunkard Creek fish kill along the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border, may have hitchhiked to the region aboard equipment used in Marcellus shale drilling.
That kind of transregional travel could put fish and aquatic life in the states' other creeks and watersheds at risk in coming years as thousands of new wells are drilled into the thick and gaseous layer of shale that lies a mile deep under much of Pennsylvania and the northern Appalachians.
It has been more than a month since fish started going belly-up on Dunkard Creek, and officials with federal and state environmental and fisheries agencies have yet to identify what killed the fish or assign blame.
The only official explanation has come from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, which last week blamed alien golden algae for wiping out thousands of fish, mussels and other aquatic life in 35 miles of what had been one of the most biologically diverse creeks in either state.
But the West Virginia agency doesn't know how the algae got into the creek.
"We might never know how it got there," said spokewoman Kathy Cosco. "We are trying to determine if it's present already in other water bodies or has spread."
Investigators also are looking at the possibility that someone illegally dumped drilling wastewater into the creek.
The algae-as-hitchhiker theory is one being considered by federal investigators. It's part of the big puzzle federal and state agencies are trying to solve as they attempt to identify what many investigators say are "complex and multiple" causes for the ecological destruction.
The investigation continues to focus on extremely high levels of dissolved solids and chloride found in discharges from two Consol Energy mine-water treatment facilities on the creek, and low flow conditions -- possibly acerbated by tanker trucks that local residents have said they often saw withdrawing water from the creek. That combination created an aquatic environment conducive to growth of the algae.
"We do believe there is golden algae in the creek, but for it to thrive there must be a lot of stuff in the creek that shouldn't be there," said David Sternberg, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spokesman. "There are other contributing factors."
Golden algae is one of a group of algae known as chrysophytes that are usually found in hotter, sometimes coastal, environments of the Southwest and South. It is the only chrysophyte algae that produces toxins lethal to fish, mussels, salamanders and other aquatic life.
"Our biggest concern is how the conditions were created in Dunkard Creek that allowed that algae to thrive," Mr. Sternberg said. "If we see a saltwater algae in a freshwater creek, we know there must be something very wrong."
The EPA also is "very concerned" that golden algae could spread throughout the northern Appalachian region where it might devastate other fisheries, Mr. Sternberg said.
Dr. John Rodgers, a professor at Clemson University who has researched invasive freshwater algae, made the initial identification of the algae in Dunkard Creek for Consol. He said its spores could be transported by animals, in boats, on people's shoes, in blown dust or in industrial equipment.
"[Drilling equipment] is certainly something you will want to look at. This is not an organism you want to trifle with," he said, adding that it has been blamed for wiping out bass populations in Texas.
"Certainly you want to think through the pathways it took to that stream and start working on it as fast as you can."
Last week, a long-awaited 18-month state environmental review of Marcellus shale drilling issues in New York said that floating and submerged aquatic plants could be transported by a variety of equipment used in the deep shale drilling and hydraulic fracturing processes to crack the shale layer and release the gas it contains.
"Invasive species may potentially be transferred to a new area or watershed if unused water containing such species is later discharged at another location," the report said. "Other potential mechanisms for the possible transfer of invasive aquatic species may include trucks, hoses, pipelines and other equipment used for water withdrawal and transport."
Texas origins?
The algae, prymnesium parvum, has been known to kill fish in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico since it first showed up in 1985 in the Pecos River in Texas. It also has been found in the Brazos River in Texas where gas well drilling companies are advised not to draw from the river during the algae's winter blooming season.
But the algae had not been found around the Mason-Dixon Line before. It is not known if Texas drilling equipment was moved to Pennsylvania; no states track the movement of drill rigs and tanker trucks.
Leroy Young, fisheries bureau director for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, declined to provide details about the commission's ongoing criminal investigation of the Dunkard Creek fish kill. But he said the golden algae is a concern.
"... Any kind of invasive is a concern," Mr. Young said. "This is a new thing and we'll be looking hard at it."
Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Texas-based Range Resources, one of the biggest drilling companies operating in the Marcellus shale, said Range hasn't moved any drilling rigs from Texas to Pennsylvania. Its water-transport equipment is based in Pennsylvania, and it has no wells in Greene County or West Virginia.
"Almost all of our water-storage units are leased or rented from local companies and the water trucks are all local subcontractors," he said.
The company, which has drilled 150 wells into the Marcellus shale, 45 of them horizontal wells, has been recycling all drill water for more than a year, Mr. Pitzarella added. Some smaller drilling companies among more than two dozen gas producers operating in the state may be using equipment brought here from Texas, he said.
Pennsylvania may have as much as 363 trillion cubic feet of natural gas worth as much as $1 trillion deep underground in the Marcellus shale formations. Gas wells to tap those deposits are drilled 5,000 to 8,000 feet deep; each uses up to 4 million gallons of pressurized, chemically treated water to crack, or "frac," the shale and release trapped natural gas. Leftover wastewater contains high levels of chlorides, dissolved solids and fracing chemicals.
The use of fracing fluids and the drawing and disposal of well drilling wastewater have become environmental concerns. High levels of total dissolved solids in the Monongahela River last winter and this fall, which damaged equipment for some industrial water users and caused bad-tasting and -smelling water for residential water customers, was caused in part by discharges of drilling wastewater.
Last month, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., another Texas-based company with a long history in Pennsylvania, was ordered by the Pennsylvania DEP to temporarily stop its well fracing operations in Dimock, Susquehanna County, until the state can review three frac fluid spills. The company blamed faulty hose and equipment, and fully cleaned up all of the spills.
Declining quality
Although Dunkard Creek was a popular and productive warm-water fishery with good populations of bass, catfish and muskie until the beginning of September, its water quality has been in decline since at least 2002. Discharges high in dissolved solids and chlorides have poured into the creek from mine-water treatment facilities at Consol Energy's Blacksville No. 2 deep mine and its Loveridge Mine in West Virginia.
The West Virginia DEP granted orders in 2004, 2007 and 2008 allowing the company's treatment facilities to discharge unlimited amounts of chloride into the creek until 2013. Mr. Sternberg said the EPA only recently found out about those three administrative orders and is reviewing them.
"The Clean Water Act allows for compliance schedules negotiated by states," he said, "but by law water-quality standards and permit-effluent limits cannot be changed by an enforcement order."
The inability to pin down the fish kill's cause, and begin to address the problem has frustrated environmental, sportsmen's and watershed organizations.
"The players coming to drill here are new to Pennsylvania and may be bringing problems we could not foresee," said Jan Jarrett, president and chief executive officer of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, an environmental group that has campaigned for a state severance tax on gas well drilling.
"If that's the case, we need some protocols to make sure we don't have hitchhiker invasives. Right now the regulatory system is not nimble enough to address this."
Betty Wiley, president of the Dunkard Creek Watershed Association, said she lacks confidence in the environmental agencies of both states. Last week, a coalition of West Virginia and Pennsylvania watershed groups called on the EPA to take the lead role in the investigation of the fish kill and restoration of the watershed.
"The states haven't told us anything and this is a big problem," Ms. Wiley said, adding that she believes the West Virginia DEP traditionally has been lenient with coal companies. "I feel they are not capable of dealing with this thing in any way. We need the big guys to take charge"
The EPA said it won't do that. But last week it did order Consol to stop pumping wastewater from coal bed methane drilling operations into the Morris Run Borehole, which is attached to its inactive Blacksville No. 1 mine. Stopping that will help determine what impact that operation may have had on elevated discharges from Consol's Blacksville No. 2 treatment facility.
The EPA also proposed new limits on amounts of pollutants that can be discharged into West Virginia's Dunkard Creek watershed.
Consol spokesman Joe Cerenzia said the company had stopped pumping into the Morris Run borehole as directed and last week stopped discharging water from both of its mine-water treatment facilities. He said the company has several Marcellus shale wells in Greene County but none take water from the creek or discharge water into it or the Blacksville No. 1 mine.
Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09277/1003007-113.stm#ixzz0T7TsUpK3
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09277/1003007-113.stm
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Texas Group Fights In-situ Uranium Mining
(From http://www.goliadproject.com/ )
“In Situ” mining is the new wave. This is the new era of mining in which all these toxic and radioactive elements are turned to liquid underground and hidden from view, down in the aquifer that we drink from. The problem is that all these liquified toxic and radioactive elements could escape the mine site and migrate to water wells.
My family and I live less than five miles from a proposed uranium mining site, and we live downstream from it right on top of the Evangeline Aquifer in Victoria County.
We're told that liquid radioactive toxins cannot travel underground from the mine to our home. Look at the creek next to it. This aquifer slopes DOWN toward our well. If liquid radioactive pollution can find a channel (an underground creek), it will travel. What about the people who live less than 1/4 mile away? How long will it take for oxidized radioactive heavy metals to enter their drinking water if it escapes the mining site?
The aquifer that we drink from is called the Evangeline Aquifer and it drops toward the coastline. Gravity is pulling this water toward the ocean. Our well is in the "third sand" at 185 feet deep. The uranium is between 100 and 400 feet deep, so the probability that the mining will occur in our particular aquifer zone is very high. If liquid radioactive toxins find a channel and escape the mining zone, how will they stop it? They cannot stop it! If an excursion escapes the mining process, it's only a matter of time...how much time, nobody knows!
Also, self-filed reports by uranium mining companies reveal extreme spills on top of the ground as well. If a check valve fails or a joint cracks or if a meter breaks ...here it comes right down Coleto Creek! Hundreds if not thousands of spills are recorded at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
These are examples of actual spills in Kleberg County, Texas:
URI reports to TNRCC and TDH reveal :
1. a 2/23/99 spill caused by a faulty check valve on well 5704B. Approximately 2,000 gallons of extraction water with a concentration of 9 PPM uranium spilled on the ground,
2. an 11/2/99 spill caused by a cracked joint in a line from the RIX in Production Area. Approximately 1,000 gallons of bleed water with a concentration of 1.5 PPM uranium spilled onto the ground, and
3. a 1/25/99 spill caused by a broken meter for well 6168A. Approximately 12,000 gallons of extraction water with a concentration of 1.5 PPM uranium spilled onto the ground.
A few of us had our water tested specifically for Uranium and Radium 226. Water samples were taken from nineteen wells in our neighborhood on October 2, 2007 and delivered to the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin for testing. Our water appears to be safe according to EPA Drinking Water Standards. If an excursion from the mining area escapes and migrates to our wells, then at least we have an established baseline to compare to.
In situ mining is great in theory but it's not perfected. When the injection fluid called "lixiviant" is pumped into the ground, the uranium, radium and many other toxic and radioactive isotopes are oxidized and turned to liquid. The "pregnant lixiviant" is then pumped to the surface and processed. In the process, the uranium is extracted and the remaining isotope-bearing fluid is circulated underground again and again, until it's finally disposed of either by deep-well injection (back into the ground) or in an evaporation pond where radon gas is emitted into the air. During the process, some of the lixiviant escapes into the underground water supply. Even the mining folks will admit this but they say it won't substantially migrate.
Scheme of normal ISL operation
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality..."Protecting Texas by Reducing and Preventing Pollution". If TCEQ allows in situ uranium mining in an aquifer that supplies drinking water to people and livestock, how can this motto ring true?
"Two criteria must be met before an aquifer exemption is granted: The aquifer does not currently serve as a source of drinking water for human consumption, and until the exempt status is removed, the aquifer will not in the future serve as a source of drinking water for human consumption." -Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
This aquifer does currently serve as a source of drinking water for human consumption! Thousands of people and livestock drink from it, so what's to consider? We can live without uranium but we cannot live without water!
The Health Department becomes very upset if my septic system overflows, but they don't care if somebody injects liquid radioactive heavy metals into the drinking water supply? How can this be? What is going on here? I have this feeling that our federal government is pushing our state government for this development without considering the effects upon the local population. Our property will be worth less than nothing if our water becomes contaminated with radioactive and toxic liquid heavy metals. Our future and, more importantly, our children's future will be at risk. How long will it take for an excursion to reach their water? How will this affect their future?
Kidney failure, leukemia, a variety of other soft tissue cancers and severe birth defects could be expected if these liquid toxins enter our (your) water supply unexpectedly. It appears that somebody in government has their head up in the clouds (or buried in the sand). To date, not in one single instance has groundwater been restored to its original quality after In Situ mining!
If the Goliad Project uranium mine is approved by TCEQ, will it stop there? No! This will initiate a mass-mining frenzy that will migrate quickly into Victoria County. UEC, the mining company, is already hosting meetings in Victoria. Several other mining companies have begun to acquire leases as well.
If you oppose uranium mining in your water supply, it is imperative that you write a letter to TCEQ! Be sure to include the reason you object to the mining (for example, the risk of polluting the Evangeline Aquifer is too great to allow in situ mining because this aquifer supplies thousands of people and livestock with drinking water, and the possible migration of liquid radioactive isotopes and toxic metals into people's drinking water supply is an extreme threat to human welfare!)
Write to:
Office of the Chief Clerk MC 105
TCEQ
P.O. Box 13087
Austin, Texas 78711-3087
If you drink from a water well in western Victoria County or eastern Goliad County, GET YOUR WATER TESTED NOW!!! If your water becomes contaminated later, it will be too late and you will have no recourse! The mining company could disclaim any responsibility and claim that your water was contaminated the whole time! The Texas Department of State Health Services can perform the tests but the water samples must be delivered to their laboratory in Austin. The phone number for radionuclide testing is (512) 458-7111 ext. 3827. There are costs involved, but this is important not only to protect yourself from possible future contamination, but you may also be drinking substantial levels of naturally occurring uranium and radium right now and not know it.
Mark Krueger
Here are some interesting and educational links on uranium mining and its issues:
http://www.ksat.com/video/14920420/detail.html
http://www.nunnglow.com/
http://www.powertechexposed.com/
http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20080106/NEWS/29211963
http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5720721
http://texas.sierraclub.org/coastalbend/SouthTexasUranium.htm
http://goliad-tx.tamu.edu/uiag.html (click September Conference. Entire 2-Day conference video/audio)
http://www.txpeer.org/toxictour/uri.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4535148/
http://www.wise-uranium.org/
http://www.anawa.org.au/mining/isl.html
http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/uranium.html
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/uic/index.html
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/health/contaminants/radiation/pdfs/uranium.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/health/contaminants/radiation/pdfs/9283_1_14.pdf
http://www.uraniumenergy.com/
http://uraniumenergy.com/investor_info/news_releases
http://www.sedar.com/ (search for Uranium Energy Corp and form "Technical Report NI 43-101")
http://www.sacurrent.com/news/story.asp?id=67630
“In Situ” mining is the new wave. This is the new era of mining in which all these toxic and radioactive elements are turned to liquid underground and hidden from view, down in the aquifer that we drink from. The problem is that all these liquified toxic and radioactive elements could escape the mine site and migrate to water wells.
My family and I live less than five miles from a proposed uranium mining site, and we live downstream from it right on top of the Evangeline Aquifer in Victoria County.
We're told that liquid radioactive toxins cannot travel underground from the mine to our home. Look at the creek next to it. This aquifer slopes DOWN toward our well. If liquid radioactive pollution can find a channel (an underground creek), it will travel. What about the people who live less than 1/4 mile away? How long will it take for oxidized radioactive heavy metals to enter their drinking water if it escapes the mining site?
The aquifer that we drink from is called the Evangeline Aquifer and it drops toward the coastline. Gravity is pulling this water toward the ocean. Our well is in the "third sand" at 185 feet deep. The uranium is between 100 and 400 feet deep, so the probability that the mining will occur in our particular aquifer zone is very high. If liquid radioactive toxins find a channel and escape the mining zone, how will they stop it? They cannot stop it! If an excursion escapes the mining process, it's only a matter of time...how much time, nobody knows!
Also, self-filed reports by uranium mining companies reveal extreme spills on top of the ground as well. If a check valve fails or a joint cracks or if a meter breaks ...here it comes right down Coleto Creek! Hundreds if not thousands of spills are recorded at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
These are examples of actual spills in Kleberg County, Texas:
URI reports to TNRCC and TDH reveal :
1. a 2/23/99 spill caused by a faulty check valve on well 5704B. Approximately 2,000 gallons of extraction water with a concentration of 9 PPM uranium spilled on the ground,
2. an 11/2/99 spill caused by a cracked joint in a line from the RIX in Production Area. Approximately 1,000 gallons of bleed water with a concentration of 1.5 PPM uranium spilled onto the ground, and
3. a 1/25/99 spill caused by a broken meter for well 6168A. Approximately 12,000 gallons of extraction water with a concentration of 1.5 PPM uranium spilled onto the ground.
A few of us had our water tested specifically for Uranium and Radium 226. Water samples were taken from nineteen wells in our neighborhood on October 2, 2007 and delivered to the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin for testing. Our water appears to be safe according to EPA Drinking Water Standards. If an excursion from the mining area escapes and migrates to our wells, then at least we have an established baseline to compare to.
In situ mining is great in theory but it's not perfected. When the injection fluid called "lixiviant" is pumped into the ground, the uranium, radium and many other toxic and radioactive isotopes are oxidized and turned to liquid. The "pregnant lixiviant" is then pumped to the surface and processed. In the process, the uranium is extracted and the remaining isotope-bearing fluid is circulated underground again and again, until it's finally disposed of either by deep-well injection (back into the ground) or in an evaporation pond where radon gas is emitted into the air. During the process, some of the lixiviant escapes into the underground water supply. Even the mining folks will admit this but they say it won't substantially migrate.
Scheme of normal ISL operation
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality..."Protecting Texas by Reducing and Preventing Pollution". If TCEQ allows in situ uranium mining in an aquifer that supplies drinking water to people and livestock, how can this motto ring true?
"Two criteria must be met before an aquifer exemption is granted: The aquifer does not currently serve as a source of drinking water for human consumption, and until the exempt status is removed, the aquifer will not in the future serve as a source of drinking water for human consumption." -Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
This aquifer does currently serve as a source of drinking water for human consumption! Thousands of people and livestock drink from it, so what's to consider? We can live without uranium but we cannot live without water!
The Health Department becomes very upset if my septic system overflows, but they don't care if somebody injects liquid radioactive heavy metals into the drinking water supply? How can this be? What is going on here? I have this feeling that our federal government is pushing our state government for this development without considering the effects upon the local population. Our property will be worth less than nothing if our water becomes contaminated with radioactive and toxic liquid heavy metals. Our future and, more importantly, our children's future will be at risk. How long will it take for an excursion to reach their water? How will this affect their future?
Kidney failure, leukemia, a variety of other soft tissue cancers and severe birth defects could be expected if these liquid toxins enter our (your) water supply unexpectedly. It appears that somebody in government has their head up in the clouds (or buried in the sand). To date, not in one single instance has groundwater been restored to its original quality after In Situ mining!
If the Goliad Project uranium mine is approved by TCEQ, will it stop there? No! This will initiate a mass-mining frenzy that will migrate quickly into Victoria County. UEC, the mining company, is already hosting meetings in Victoria. Several other mining companies have begun to acquire leases as well.
If you oppose uranium mining in your water supply, it is imperative that you write a letter to TCEQ! Be sure to include the reason you object to the mining (for example, the risk of polluting the Evangeline Aquifer is too great to allow in situ mining because this aquifer supplies thousands of people and livestock with drinking water, and the possible migration of liquid radioactive isotopes and toxic metals into people's drinking water supply is an extreme threat to human welfare!)
Write to:
Office of the Chief Clerk MC 105
TCEQ
P.O. Box 13087
Austin, Texas 78711-3087
If you drink from a water well in western Victoria County or eastern Goliad County, GET YOUR WATER TESTED NOW!!! If your water becomes contaminated later, it will be too late and you will have no recourse! The mining company could disclaim any responsibility and claim that your water was contaminated the whole time! The Texas Department of State Health Services can perform the tests but the water samples must be delivered to their laboratory in Austin. The phone number for radionuclide testing is (512) 458-7111 ext. 3827. There are costs involved, but this is important not only to protect yourself from possible future contamination, but you may also be drinking substantial levels of naturally occurring uranium and radium right now and not know it.
Mark Krueger
Here are some interesting and educational links on uranium mining and its issues:
http://www.ksat.com/video/14920420/detail.html
http://www.nunnglow.com/
http://www.powertechexposed.com/
http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20080106/NEWS/29211963
http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5720721
http://texas.sierraclub.org/coastalbend/SouthTexasUranium.htm
http://goliad-tx.tamu.edu/uiag.html (click September Conference. Entire 2-Day conference video/audio)
http://www.txpeer.org/toxictour/uri.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4535148/
http://www.wise-uranium.org/
http://www.anawa.org.au/mining/isl.html
http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/uranium.html
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/uic/index.html
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/health/contaminants/radiation/pdfs/uranium.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/health/contaminants/radiation/pdfs/9283_1_14.pdf
http://www.uraniumenergy.com/
http://uraniumenergy.com/investor_info/news_releases
http://www.sedar.com/ (search for Uranium Energy Corp and form "Technical Report NI 43-101")
http://www.sacurrent.com/news/story.asp?id=67630
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Anti-nuclear group: Comanche Peak expansion could cost $27.6 billion
Comment: once heard a senator say nuke power will bring cheap power to the people, well think again, Nuke Power is not cheap, people who receive their power from Nuke power pays twice the amount kilowat than other forms of energy!!
By JACK Z. SMITH jzsmith@star-telegram
The price tag for adding two new generating units at the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant near Glen Rose could be a staggering $23.8 billion to $27.6 billion, according to the author of a report that raises concerns about the cost of new nuclear facilities and a potential escalation in electric rates.
Clarence Johnson, a former state utility regulatory official, prepared the report for the Texas office of Public Citizen, an organization that opposes new nuclear plants.
The report instead favors energy conservation and efficiency, along with accelerated development of renewable energy alternatives such as wind and solar power, calling them more environmentally friendly and cheaper in the long run.
Luminant, the Dallas-based power generator that operates Comanche Peak, 45 miles southwest of Fort Worth, estimates that it could cost $15 billion to build two 1,700-megawatt units there and that a license might be secured by December 2012. Construction of the additional 3,400 megawatts of capacity could take about four years, the company said.
In a statement Wednesday, Luminant said it is "taking prudent steps in considering this project," including "carefully evaluating cost, capital and market conditions throughout the process."
Luminant plans to partner with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, designer of the proposed reactors.
In his report, Johnson said a "reasonable estimate" of the cost of adding nuclear capacity in Texas would be $7,000 to $8,130 per kilowatt.
Based on that, Luminant’s proposed addition of 3,400 megawatts of generating capacity at Comanche Peak would cost $23.8 billion to $27.6 billion, Johnson said in a telephone conversation with the Star-Telegram.
A megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts.
Johnson’s report raises the specter of enormous costs not only for expanding Comanche Peak, but also for constructing two additional units that NRG Energy, a New Jersey-based utility, proposes at the South Texas Project near Bay City on the Gulf Coast.
The report made only brief mention of plans by Chicago-based Exelon to build two nuclear units near Victoria in South Texas.
Johnson, in his report, warned that Luminant, already the dominant power generator in North Texas, would have even more power to influence wholesale electricity prices if it expands Comanche Peak. Higher wholesale power prices could result in higher retail electricity prices for homeowners and businesses.
Proponents of added nuclear power in Texas say it would help diversify the state’s power-generation mix and reduce its heavy reliance on natural-gas-fired generation, which is more expensive than coal-fired plants.
Natural gas and coal fueled 80 percent of Texas’ power generation in 2008, with nuclear providing about 10 percent.
Nuclear proponents note that the plants are largely emissions-free.
Coal plants in particular have been criticized by environmental groups for emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the primary "greenhouse gas" that many scientists say contributes to global warming.
Robert Black, a spokesman for Nuclear Energy for Texans, which he said is funded mainly by Luminant and Exelon, took issue with the Public Citizen report.
Black, a former aide to Gov. Rick Perry, questioned why Texans should care about how much new nuclear units cost, since their builders have to absorb the expense in the state’s deregulated electricity market.
But Johnson, in his report, cited various federal subsidies available to builders of new nuclear plants, including loan guarantees, production tax credits, investment tax credits and insurance.
"As the owners of nuclear construction projects experience cost overruns and realize that the projects will produce large financial losses, the firms may become desperate to appeal for greater public subsidies," the report said.
"Loan guarantees probably impose the greatest risk on taxpayers."
Johnson said costs for previously constructed nuclear plants far exceeded initial estimates.
The current two-unit Comanche Peak plant, completed in 1993, cost at least $12.18 billion, Johnson said, citing Federal Energy Regulatory Commission records as his source. It is the most-expensive nuclear plant ever built in the U.S., he said.
The $12.18 billion amount is more than 15 times the original cost estimate of slightly less than $800 million for Comanche Peak. The Star-Telegram has previously estimated the final plant cost at about $11 billion.
Nuclear power proponents stress that the cost of Comanche Peak and other existing plants was hit by unusually high inflation and changing federal regulations that delayed projects after an incident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979.
They note that plant designs have improved, and the licensing process has been streamlined.
JACK Z. SMITH, 817-390-7724
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/1348489.html
By JACK Z. SMITH jzsmith@star-telegram
The price tag for adding two new generating units at the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant near Glen Rose could be a staggering $23.8 billion to $27.6 billion, according to the author of a report that raises concerns about the cost of new nuclear facilities and a potential escalation in electric rates.
Clarence Johnson, a former state utility regulatory official, prepared the report for the Texas office of Public Citizen, an organization that opposes new nuclear plants.
The report instead favors energy conservation and efficiency, along with accelerated development of renewable energy alternatives such as wind and solar power, calling them more environmentally friendly and cheaper in the long run.
Luminant, the Dallas-based power generator that operates Comanche Peak, 45 miles southwest of Fort Worth, estimates that it could cost $15 billion to build two 1,700-megawatt units there and that a license might be secured by December 2012. Construction of the additional 3,400 megawatts of capacity could take about four years, the company said.
In a statement Wednesday, Luminant said it is "taking prudent steps in considering this project," including "carefully evaluating cost, capital and market conditions throughout the process."
Luminant plans to partner with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, designer of the proposed reactors.
In his report, Johnson said a "reasonable estimate" of the cost of adding nuclear capacity in Texas would be $7,000 to $8,130 per kilowatt.
Based on that, Luminant’s proposed addition of 3,400 megawatts of generating capacity at Comanche Peak would cost $23.8 billion to $27.6 billion, Johnson said in a telephone conversation with the Star-Telegram.
A megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts.
Johnson’s report raises the specter of enormous costs not only for expanding Comanche Peak, but also for constructing two additional units that NRG Energy, a New Jersey-based utility, proposes at the South Texas Project near Bay City on the Gulf Coast.
The report made only brief mention of plans by Chicago-based Exelon to build two nuclear units near Victoria in South Texas.
Johnson, in his report, warned that Luminant, already the dominant power generator in North Texas, would have even more power to influence wholesale electricity prices if it expands Comanche Peak. Higher wholesale power prices could result in higher retail electricity prices for homeowners and businesses.
Proponents of added nuclear power in Texas say it would help diversify the state’s power-generation mix and reduce its heavy reliance on natural-gas-fired generation, which is more expensive than coal-fired plants.
Natural gas and coal fueled 80 percent of Texas’ power generation in 2008, with nuclear providing about 10 percent.
Nuclear proponents note that the plants are largely emissions-free.
Coal plants in particular have been criticized by environmental groups for emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the primary "greenhouse gas" that many scientists say contributes to global warming.
Robert Black, a spokesman for Nuclear Energy for Texans, which he said is funded mainly by Luminant and Exelon, took issue with the Public Citizen report.
Black, a former aide to Gov. Rick Perry, questioned why Texans should care about how much new nuclear units cost, since their builders have to absorb the expense in the state’s deregulated electricity market.
But Johnson, in his report, cited various federal subsidies available to builders of new nuclear plants, including loan guarantees, production tax credits, investment tax credits and insurance.
"As the owners of nuclear construction projects experience cost overruns and realize that the projects will produce large financial losses, the firms may become desperate to appeal for greater public subsidies," the report said.
"Loan guarantees probably impose the greatest risk on taxpayers."
Johnson said costs for previously constructed nuclear plants far exceeded initial estimates.
The current two-unit Comanche Peak plant, completed in 1993, cost at least $12.18 billion, Johnson said, citing Federal Energy Regulatory Commission records as his source. It is the most-expensive nuclear plant ever built in the U.S., he said.
The $12.18 billion amount is more than 15 times the original cost estimate of slightly less than $800 million for Comanche Peak. The Star-Telegram has previously estimated the final plant cost at about $11 billion.
Nuclear power proponents stress that the cost of Comanche Peak and other existing plants was hit by unusually high inflation and changing federal regulations that delayed projects after an incident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979.
They note that plant designs have improved, and the licensing process has been streamlined.
JACK Z. SMITH, 817-390-7724
http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/1348489.html
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Billionaire Texas Oil Man Makes Big Bets on Wind
By Chris BaltimoreFri Apr 18, 9:00 AM ET
Legendary Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens has gone green with a plan to spend $10 billion to build the world's biggest wind farm. But he's not doing it out of generosity - he expects to turn a buck.
The Southern octogenarian's plans are as big as the Texas prairie, where he lives on a ranch with his horses, and entail fundamentally reworking how Americans use energy.
Next month, Pickens' company, Mesa Power, will begin buying land and ordering 2,700 wind turbines that will eventually generate 4,000 megawatts of electricity - the equivalent of building two commercial scale nuclear power plants - enough power for about 1 million homes.
"These are substantial," said Pickens, speaking to students at Georgetown University on Thursday. "They're big."
Pickens knows a thing or two about big. He heads the BP Capital hedge fund with over $4 billion under management, and earned about $1 billion in 2006 making big bets on commodity and equity markets.
Though a long-time oil man, Pickens said he has embraced the call for cleaner energy sources that don't emit heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
"I'm an environmentalist - I can pass the saliva test," he said.
But Pickens is not out to save the planet. He intends to make money.
Though Pickens admits that wind power won't be as lucrative as oil deals, he still expects the Texas project to turn at least a 25 percent return.
"When I go into these markets, I expect to make money on them," Pickens said. "I don't expect to lose."
America is facing a looming power crunch, with electricity demand expected to grow 15 percent in a decade. And while many states have rejected big coal-fired power projects on environmental concerns, they are offering a bounty of incentives to build renewable sources.
U.S. crude futures at new records above $115 a barrel means a bright future for renewable sources like wind and solar.
Pickens' wind farm is part of his wider vision for replacing natural gas with wind and solar for power generation, and using the natural gas instead to power vehicles.
To picture Pickens' energy strategy, imagine a compass.
Stretching from north to south from Saskatchewan to Texas would be thousands of wind turbines, which could take advantage of some of the best U.S. wind production conditions.
On the east-west axis from Texas to California would be large arrays of solar generation, which could send electricity into growing Southern California cities like Los Angeles.
The end result would be to free up more clean-burning natural gas - primarily a power-generation fuel now - to power automobiles.
Major oil companies have embraced so-called natural gas liquids because they have spent billions of dollars building refineries and pipelines to turn crude oil into gasoline, Pickens said.
But shifting natural gas used in power generation to transportation needs could cut U.S. crude oil imports by nearly 40 percent, he said.
(Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Friday, May 23, 2008
State [Texas] Approves Radioactive Waste Dump
Company seeks additional license for site in far West Texas; groups say site would pose health hazards.
Asher PriceAMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The state environmental agency Wednesday approved a proposal to build a radioactive waste dump in West Texas.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality decided to issue a license for Waste Control Specialists to build a dump near the border with New Mexico for the disposal of radioactive waste related to Cold War-era uranium processing. Waste Control has applied for a second license, which it hopes to receive next year, for another radioactive waste dump on the same property to bury low-level radioactive material such as medical waste. Eventually, the company also could bury radioactive byproducts from uranium mining on the site.
The dump will be the first of its kind in Texas. Currently, uranium mining operations in Texas send the radioactive byproduct for burial in Utah and Wyoming.
The dumping of the waste could begin as early as spring 2009, said Rodney Baltzer, president of Waste Control Specialists.
The Sierra Club requested another hearing on the license, and Commissioner Larry Soward said one was warranted, in part "to clear the air" about suggestions in the media that the commission had repressed information relating to the application. In March, the American-Statesman reported that the agency refused to release some internal memos about the waste dump application. The state attorney general's office ordered some of the material to be released.
Soward was outvoted by the environmental agency's two other commissioners.
Read the full article here
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Uranium drilling doesn't taint water, report says
Comment: Sounds familiar? But again, no EPA or non mining companies!!!
Goliad opponents dispute results
By Gabe Semenza •
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Uranium mining supporters say a new report proves exploratory drilling does not contaminate South Texas groundwater.
The uranium was there in the water all along, they said Wednesday.
Critics in this circular debate, however, don't trust the report's data.
As early as the 1970s, levels of naturally occurring uranium found in South Texas groundwater exceeded today's federal standards, the Texas Mining and Reclamation Association reported Wednesday.
The association is a group of 100 mining industry members.(Again, why trust the mining group, where is EPA)
The group crunched an extensive online database hosted by the U.S. Geological Service. The mining group found high levels of uranium existed in groundwater in areas that had yet to be mined, members said.
"This is a pretty significant finding," said Larry McGonagle, chairman of the mining association's uranium subcommittee. "Exploration causes contamination? There's not really a basis in that conclusion."
In 1973, the Atomic Energy Commission sought to find, sample and analyze uranium deposits in the United States. Investigators sampled water from more than 17,000 Texas wells.
The mining association contends 400 Texas wells - 108 in the Coastal Bend - showed uranium levels greater than today's federal standards. The group cites the federal database.
Two Victoria wells tested positive for unacceptable uranium levels 36 years ago, but none in Goliad did, according to the mining association's findings.
In Goliad, a legal debate brews about proposed uranium mining.
Jim Blackburn, a Houston environmental attorney, represents Goliad County and concerned residents who sued Uranium Energy Corp. for allegedly contaminating their groundwater. The lawsuit is pending.
Uranium Energy Corp. drilled 100 Goliad test wells before reporting baseline uranium levels, which tainted findings and nearby wells, Blackburn said.
"This report is being put out in an attempt to create an argument.
I would be surprised if I don't run across this at the next meeting on the Uranium Energy Corp. permit," the lawyer said.
Goliad opponents dispute results
By Gabe Semenza •
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Uranium mining supporters say a new report proves exploratory drilling does not contaminate South Texas groundwater.
The uranium was there in the water all along, they said Wednesday.
Critics in this circular debate, however, don't trust the report's data.
As early as the 1970s, levels of naturally occurring uranium found in South Texas groundwater exceeded today's federal standards, the Texas Mining and Reclamation Association reported Wednesday.
The association is a group of 100 mining industry members.(Again, why trust the mining group, where is EPA)
The group crunched an extensive online database hosted by the U.S. Geological Service. The mining group found high levels of uranium existed in groundwater in areas that had yet to be mined, members said.
"This is a pretty significant finding," said Larry McGonagle, chairman of the mining association's uranium subcommittee. "Exploration causes contamination? There's not really a basis in that conclusion."
In 1973, the Atomic Energy Commission sought to find, sample and analyze uranium deposits in the United States. Investigators sampled water from more than 17,000 Texas wells.
The mining association contends 400 Texas wells - 108 in the Coastal Bend - showed uranium levels greater than today's federal standards. The group cites the federal database.
Two Victoria wells tested positive for unacceptable uranium levels 36 years ago, but none in Goliad did, according to the mining association's findings.
In Goliad, a legal debate brews about proposed uranium mining.
Jim Blackburn, a Houston environmental attorney, represents Goliad County and concerned residents who sued Uranium Energy Corp. for allegedly contaminating their groundwater. The lawsuit is pending.
Uranium Energy Corp. drilled 100 Goliad test wells before reporting baseline uranium levels, which tainted findings and nearby wells, Blackburn said.
"This report is being put out in an attempt to create an argument.
I would be surprised if I don't run across this at the next meeting on the Uranium Energy Corp. permit," the lawyer said.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
INVESTIGATION: Do dirty coal plants make us more vulnerable to swine flu?
Comment: Arsenic, which is also in uranium tailings ponds, which could be located all over Virginia, will ruin our water and our health. Just read the news piece about the swine flu and the environment, coal sludge ponds are all over VA too, some are located on the New River! Demand the State of Virginia ban uranium mining and milling now!Scientists have discovered that exposure to a common pollutant may make people more likely to experience severe symptoms from swine flu -- and it's a pollutant emitted in large quantities by coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities.
The culprit is arsenic, a highly poisonous semi-metal which, according to a new study by researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Dartmouth Medical School, compromises a person's ability to mount an immune response to the H1N1 swine flu virus.
Most disturbingly, the study -- published last month in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives -- found that arsenic can weaken the immune response to swine flu even in the low-level exposure levels that are commonly found in contaminated drinking water.
When normal people or mice are infected with the flu, they immediately develop an immune response where immune cells rush to the lungs and produce chemicals to battle the infection, the researchers explain. But in mice who over the course of five weeks had ingested 100 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic in their drinking water, the immune response to H1N1 infection was initially weak. When the response finally did kick in days later, it often overwhelmed the animal.
"There was a massive infiltration of immune cells to the lungs and a massive inflammatory response, which led to bleeding and damage in the lung," explains MBL senior scientist and report co-author Joshua Hamilton. The animals exposed to the arsenic were more likely to die from the infection than their counterparts who were not exposed.
The currently federal standard for arsenic in drinking water is 10 ppb, but levels in drinking water in some parts of the country routinely exceed that. A 2005 analysis of contaminants in drinking water by the Environmental Working Group found that the average arsenic levels in water supplied by at least 144 systems in Texas and 11 systems in Florida exceeded that standard -- in some cases at levels approaching those given to the experimental mice.
For example, average arsenic levels in water from the Bruni Rural Water Supply Commission in Webb County, Texas were 90.87 ppb. Levels of over 100 ppb were also documented in the drinking water in Jim Hogg County, Texas.
When Hamilton and his colleagues heard about the recent H1N1 outbreak, they were struck by the fact that there are high arsenic levels in well water in many parts of Mexico. That includes Veracruz, where news reports placed the first case of H1N1 swine flu, though there are now questions about that time line since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta more recently reported that the virus likely started circulating among the Mexican people as early as the fall of 2008.
No link has been established between any specific case of swine flu and arsenic exposure, "but it's an intriguing notion that this may have contributed," Hamilton says.
The coal power-arsenic connection
Arsenic has been linked to cancers of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidney, nasal passages, liver and prostate as well as fetal malformations. Earlier research by Hamilton and colleagues found that arsenic also disrupts the endocrine system that controls the release of hormones.
There are many parts of the United States where groundwater naturally contains high arsenic levels, including large swaths of Texas and Florida (click on map at left to see a larger version). If tests show that your water has high levels of arsenic, the Natural Resources Defense Council recommends purchasing filters certified by NSF International to remove it.
But arsenic is also released into the environment through industrial pollution. Across the United States, there are more than 700 toxic waste sites overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program where arsenic is a contaminant of concern. There are also scores of industrial facilities that routinely release arsenic and arsenic compounds to the air and water or dump it into surface impoundments like the one that collapsed last December at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in Roane County, Tenn., according to the EPA's online Toxics Release Inventory. All of these create potential exposure pathways for people.
Of the top 25 industrial emitters of arsenic and arsenic compounds via point-source air emissions (that is, releases through confined streams like smokestacks) in 2007, 22 were coal-fired electric power plants, according to the most recent TRI data available. The big arsenic air polluters are concentrated in the South, with 10 of the top 25 arsenic-emitting facilities located in the region.
In the Southern states, the biggest emitters of arsenic and arsenic compounds to the air were the Southern Company's Bowen plant in Bartow County, Ga. and Progress Energy's Roxboro plant in Person County, N.C., each of which released 2,200 pounds of arsenic to the air in 2007 alone. Besides coal-fired power plants, the other big arsenic emitters were copper refineries in Texas and Utah and a glass plant in Kentucky. The following are the top 25 point-source air emitters, their location and the amounts released:
Industrial facilities -- and particularly coal-fired power plants -- are also dumping large quantities of arsenic and arsenic compounds into surface waters such as streams and rivers. Of the top 25 emitters of arsenic and arsenic compounds into surface waters in 2007, 22 were coal-fired power plants. The facilities dumping arsenic and arsenic compounds into surface waters are again concentrated in the South, with 16 of the top 25 arsenic water polluters located in the region. Arsenic pollution of waterways is a particular concern since the pollutant concentrates up the food chain, which can render fish unsafe to eat.
In the South, the biggest dumper of arsenic and arsenic compounds into surface waters in 2007 was Dominion Power's Chesterfield power plant in Chesterfield County, Va. at 4,500 pounds. It was closely followed by the TVA's Johnsonville plant in Humphreys County, Tenn. at 4,200 pounds and TVA's Widows Creek plant in Jackson County, Ala. at 3,900 pounds. In fourth place was TVA's Kingston plant, which dumped 2,700 pounds of arsenic and arsenic compounds into nearby waterways in 2007. The following chart shows the top 25 emitters of arsenic to surface waters:
The failure of the Kingston plant's coal ash impoundment also released significant quantities of arsenic into the environment. An analysis of water samples taken downstream of the spill and released earlier this year showed elevated levels exceeding standards set to protect humans from dangerous concentrations of pollution, with arsenic levels more than double acute toxicity levels. The tests, which were sponsored by the Environmental Integrity Project and United Mountain Defense, also found widely fluctuating arsenic levels in the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers, with some 37 times higher than safe drinking water standards.
Catastrophic failures like the one at the Kingston plant are not the only ways coal ash impoundments are contaminating the environment with arsenic. For example, high levels of the chemical were recently discovered in water and sediment samples collected downstream of Progress Energy's coal-fired power plant near Asheville, N.C., raising concerns that arsenic contamination from unlined coal ash impoundments is seeping into the environment. In addition, a 2007 assessment by the EPA documented coal ash waste dumping sites around the country associated with arsenic contamination.
Enormous quantities of arsenic are currently being dumped into these unlined and poorly regulated surface impoundments at coal-fired power plants across the country. An EPA analysis found people living near these coal ash dump sites have as much as a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer from drinking water contaminated by arsenic, and evidence has surfaced since then suggesting the risk may be even higher.
Of the 25 surface impoundments where the greatest quantities of arsenic and arsenic compounds were dumped in 2007, 17 were at coal-fired plants; of those 17 plants, 12 are located in the South, as shown in the following chart. Note that TVA's Kingston plant doesn't even make the list of the top 25 facilities; the 44,000 pounds of arsenic and arsenic compounds it dumped into its surface impoundment in 2007 put it at number 27 on the list.
The fight for tougher coal waste regulation
In the U.S. to date, the swine flu virus has sickened more than 13,000 people and caused at least 27 deaths, according to the CDC. This week the World Health Organization said it was getting close to declaring a pandemic as the virus has infected more than 26,500 people in 73 countries, while researchers warn that the current outbreak may be only a "dress rehearsal" for a wider pandemic to come.
Many questions still remain about the virus. For example, last month we reported that scientists working to understand the genetic makeup of the current H1N1 strain linked it to a virus behind a 1998 swine flu outbreak at an industrial hog farm in eastern North Carolina. But Dr. Barrett Slenning, an epidemiologist at N.C. State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, points out that subsequent laboratory research suggests the 1998 virus was not a direct predecessor to the current H1N1, with recent genetic analyses showing greater similarities to flu strains from Asia.
"It all points to the importance of human health, animal health, and environmental health workers needing to come together," says Slenning. "You cannot protect one without protecting the others."
And when it comes to protecting ourselves from the worst effects of swine flu, it might also help to exercise precaution by reducing our exposure to arsenic -- which ultimately means cleaning up dirty coal plants and carefully regulating their toxic waste.
But that won't be easy. While environmental advocates have been pressing hard for enforceable federal standards governing disposal of coal ash waste in the wake of last December's Kingston disaster, some in Washington are working to protect the dirty and dangerous status quo -- despite new research suggesting that regulations to require safer storage of coal ash waste will likely produce far more benefits than costs.
This week, for example, congressional allies of electric utilities have been circulating "Dear Colleague" letters that oppose regulating coal ash as hazardous waste, instead calling only for federal "guidelines" for coal ash disposal rather than enforceable standards. The letters are based on the notion disproved by the Kingston spill that the current patchwork of state regulations is adequate for protecting the environment and public health.
Leading the effort to gather signatories are Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Rep. Tim Holden (D-Pa.). Among the lawmakers from the South who have signed the letter opposing tough federal standards so far are Reps. Marion Berry (D-Ark.), Travis Childers (D-Miss.), John Fleming (R-La.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), Jerry Jim Moran (D-Va.), Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), Mike Ross (D-Ark.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.).
In response, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project -- which has taken a lead role in pressing for better regulation of coal ash -- is urging concerned citizens to call their representatives in Congress and ask them not to sign the letter. Instead, says EIP, lawmakers should support consistent and enforceable regulations of arsenic-contaminated coal ash waste to better protect their constituents' health.
By Sue Sturgis on June 10, 2009 11:00 AM
http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/investigation-do-dirty-coal-plants-make-us-more-vulnerable-to-swine-flu.html
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