'Hot' fill frosts builder

Comment: This is a horrible mistake about the problems of uranium mining!

By CYNDY COLE
Sun Staff Reporter
Sunday, August 02, 2009

VALLE -- An attempt to clean up radioactive waste at a closed uranium mine on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon may have gone partially haywire.

A mix of clean gravel and radioactive rock may have been inadvertently sold to a businessman in Valle to use as fill material for a parking lot and the foundation of a new building. Officials with the National Park Service, the emergency response branch of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and a state radiation regulatory agency are investigating whether some of the rock and dirt near the Orphan Mine was removed along with a newly built road and hauled to private property in the town of Valle, about 30 miles south.

Data from one device used to test radioactivity showed Saturday that the material was indeed radioactive.

The Park Service is in the middle of evaluating and hauling away some radioactive materials from the former high-grade uranium mine that extended 1,600 feet below the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Contractors working on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation and National Park Service removed man-made structures from the rim area of the mine from November through April, screening them for radioactivity, said Greg Nottingham, National Park Service project manager for the Orphan Mine cleanup.

This included a metal tower, scrap metal, concrete that was the foundation of a few buildings, a water tower, and a bin formerly used to hold high-grade uranium ore.

Those materials that were radioactive were supposed to go to a facility in Colorado. Those that weren't radioactive were supposed to be sent to a landfill.

10 TRUCKLOADS FOR $1,000

Mining at the Orphan Mine ended in 1969, but the Park Service is investigating whether radioactive materials remain.

"Preliminary data suggests that we do have elevated levels of contaminants at the site," Nottingham said.

To get to the site during the winter and spring, a gravel road or driveway was built into the Orphan Mine area to a place where ore was formerly trucked away.

Two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity but with first-hand knowledge of the project say that after contractors finished hauling out the large manmade structures, they excavated and removed the road as planned, but then sent that material to Valle.

Valle businessman Robb Baldosky bought truckloads -- 10 large piles -- of fill material heading out of the Orphan Mine area for $1,000 in May, intending to use it to improve a parking area and build a foundation for a new parts shop, he said.

He's now asking the Park Service whether he should use it.

"If it's safe, I'd like to put it down," he said. "If it's not, it's gotta go."

100 TIMES MORE RADIOACTIVE

As Baldosky spoke Saturday morning at his Valle business standing near the piles, an employee with the company hired to do the cleanup work at the Orphan Mine, Pangea Group, approached in his car with equipment to measure radioactivity.

The employee did not approach the piles with the equipment as a reporter stood by, but began taking statements from others.

Meanwhile, another individual measured radioactivity in some parts of the piles.

Levels sometimes hit the limit of what his scintillometer could measure.

The measurements were as much as 100 times more radioactive than the nearby landscape, making some segments of the piles nearly as potent as uranium ore.

The Pangea employee declined comment.

The National Park Service said it would send personnel out to investigate over the weekend.

"We are taking very seriously and we are looking into" assertions that the material sent to Valle was radioactive, Nottingham said.

Cyndy Cole can be reached at 913-8607 or at ccole@azdailysun.com.

The Oprhan Mine: A brief history

Discovered in the 1800s and patented as a copper mine, the Orphan Mine was found to be a source of very concentrated uranium in 1951.

Its first shipment of uranium ore to the Atomic Energy Commission was in 1956.

The Orphan Mine pre-dated the Grand Canyon becoming a national park, leading to a later dispute when the owners wanted to mine beneath the park. That dispute was ultimately settled by Congress and President Kennedy, with a provision that the mine become national park property in 1987.

The property is now part of the national park, but the argument of who is financially responsible for cleanup is a case being argued in Coconino County Superior Court.

One hole and a pile of remnants from the mine, on the upper slope of the South Rim, is visible from Maricopa Point.

The National Park Service plans to investigate the risks associated with the mine by 2010 and hold public meetings to discuss any plans for further cleanup.

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