Cañon City uranium contamination looms over Montrose mill battle

By David O. Williams
9/25/09 8:39 AM

MONTROSE — For many in Montrose County and surrounding counties and communities in Southwest Colorado, the proposed Piñon Ridge uranium mill really is a clear-cut case of NIMBYism.

But for residents of Cañon City area, some of whom made the long trip to a special-use permit hearing in Montrose earlier this month, declaring “not in my back yard” could have spared them decades of health problems associated with the metal the Navajo Indians call “yellow death.”

Rebecca Lorenz of Colorado Springs was one of the attorneys who in the 1990s convinced two separate federal juries to award Cañon City area residents millions in damages stemming from radiation poisoning produced by Cotter Corp.’s uranium mill near Lincoln Park that was declared an EPA Superfund Cleanup site.

At a hearing before the Montrose County commissioners earlier this month, Lorenz read a laundry list of illnesses stemming from Cotter Corp. uranium processing that began in the 1950s and ran well into the 1980s: cancer, arthritis, bronchitis, infertility, birth defects and learning disabilities, to name a few.

She urged the commissioners to consider those considerable health risks before approving a special-use permit on Sept. 30 for a Canadian company, Energy Fuels, which wants to process uranium ore in far western Montrose County in the Paradox Valley between Bedrock and Naturita.

Cañon City resident Sharon Cunningham also made the long drive to Montrose, telling the commissioners that “ore from this area and tailings are less than a mile from my house.” She related the story of Cotter Corp. chemist Lynn Boughton, who worked at the Cañon City mill for decades and fought Cotter and Pinnacle Insurance for years to secure a settlement after contracting cancer.

Cotter Corp.’s Glen Williams also attended the hearing, acknowledging his company’s problems processing ore near Cañon City. But he said technology has changed dramatically since the state’s uranium-mining heyday, and he urged the commissioners to approve the Paradox Valley mill so mines Cotter still owns and operates in the area will have a much closer processing facility. Milling involves leaching uranium ore with sulfuric acid to produce uranium oxide, or yellow cake, which can then be converted into fuel rods for nuclear power plants.

“The [Paradox Valley] area is nice, but this county was built on natural resources,” Williams said.


uranium
Frank Filas, environmental manager for a U.S. subsidiary of Ontario-based Energy Fuels, said Cañon City is ancient history in his industry, with Cotter using unlined tailings ponds that led to groundwater contamination.

“You just can’t use [tailings] for sandboxes the way they were in the ’50s and ’60s, but comparing our situation to historic situations is a little disingenuous,” Filas said, adding his company will use state-of-the-art, double-lined ponds in the Paradox Valley.

Montrose internal medicine specialist Dr. Christine Gieszl and others cited numerous federal studies and a 2007 Colorado Medical Society (CMS) finding that uranium mining and milling pose a major public health risk. But Filas discounted the CMS decision.

“Our feeling is that decision was mostly political based on opposition to Powertech in Weld County,” Filas said, referring to a proposed uranium mine 15 miles northeast of Fort Collins that has now been opposed by the cities and towns of Fort Collins, Greeley, Ault, Wellington, Timnath and Nunn, according to the Fort Collins Coloradoan.

There are a number of other concerns associated with a revival of Colorado’s uranium mining industry to meet a growing call for carbon-free nuclear power in the United States and around the world, including transportation of ore and other mining materials on two-lane mountain roads.

The Montrose County commissioners have finished taking public testimony on the proposed mill and appear ready to make a decision at their next hearing on the proposal, set for 10 a.m., Sept. 30, at Friendship Hall in the Montrose County Fairgrounds and Event

http://coloradoindependent.com/38522/canon-city-uranium-contamination-looms-over-montrose-mill-battle

New evidence in uranium debate could result in court battle

by Amanda Ballard
on October 1, 2009

Environmentalists are threatening legal action against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for using insufficient and outdated environmental analyses to approve a plan to reopen a uranium mine near the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon Trust, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity have filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the BLM. They are accusing the BLM of relying on obsolete information to approve a plan for Canadian-based Denison Mine Corp. to reopen its Arizona I mine, located about 20 miles north of the Grand Canyon’s northern border. If the BLM chooses to correct its alleged violations against the Endangered Species Act within the 60-day period, the lawsuit can be prevented.

Sandy Bahr, the chapter director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, said conservationists want the BLM to address the issue and alleged environmental violations.

“In 1988, they did only an environmental assessment on the Arizona I mine,” Bahr said. “That is inadequate and outdated. They did not include any of the new data or information. They did not address issues with endangered species, the na- tional monuments or the tribes.”

The Arizona I mine is located on land included in the one million acres the U.S. Interior Department protected from new mining claims on July 20. During a two-year segregation period, the effects of mining will be evaluated to determine if the land should be protected from mining claims for an additional 20 years.

Scott Sticha, a public affairs specialist for the BLM, said although he could not address the issue directly because of legal matters, a ban was placed on new mining claims, and Denison Mine Corp. had been waiting on approval to reopen the Arizona I mine for some time.

Sticha said he encourages the public to give their opinion in the uranium mining debate. The BLM will be hosting a public forum at the High Country Conference Center on Oct. 15 so citizens can participate in the analysis of uranium mining’s impacts.

“We’ve already gotten somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 comments,” Sticha said. “This is the time [to comment]. It’s good for folks to comment early, because two years is a pretty short amount of time.”

Roger Clark, the air and energy director with the Grand Canyon Trust, said he hopes the conflict can be settled out of the courts.

“[My hopes are] to have the agency comply with these laws without our needing to sue them,” Clark said.

Bahr said environmentalists hope the threat of a lawsuit will motivate the BLM to better protect animal species and water supplies.

“We want to protect the public, the public’s lands and the public’s drinking water,” Bahr said. “The Grand Canyon and the Colorado River are critical to Arizona and to the nation. We should not risk them for the short-term profits of one company.”

Mining claims have grown with the price of uranium, which now is valued at approximately $55 per pound. More than 1,100 uranium claims are staked within five miles of the Grand Canyon.Taylor McKinnon, the public lands campaign director for the Center of Biological Diversity, said the land needs to be protected from the harm potentially caused by uranium mining.

“This issue comes down to risk,” McKinnon said. “Neither the government nor the uranium industry can guarantee against water contamination. Were it to happen, that contamination could be permanent and irretrievable. These are risks that shouldn’t be taken.”

For more information on this debate please visit, http://jackcentral.com/news/2009/09/decision-to-protect-land-near-grand-canyon-stirs-debate/

Mingo(West VA) residents sue over mining, flooding

September 17, 2009
Mingo residents sue over mining, flooding
By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer
Advertiser

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Twenty Mingo County families have filed a lawsuit alleging that strip mining related to construction of the King Coal Highway caused flooding that damaged their homes.

Melissa Lester, her family and 19 other families in the Murphy Branch area of Pigeon Creek, near Rawl, sued four coal companies in Mingo Circuit Court. Named as defendants were Alpha Natural Resources, Nicewonder Contracting, White Flame Energy and Cobra Natural Resources.

The suits blame unpermitted mining that allegedly did not include construction of runoff control structures that would typically be required by regulators.

Mining in the area, the suits allege, has "exacerbated flooding because inadequate or non-existent stormwater control, failure to return the land to Approximate Original Contour and other deviations from accepted standards of care increased peak-load water flow and proximately caused flooding and flood-related damages."

Jason Hammond, a lawyer for the defendants, refused comment Thursday afternoon.

The King Coal Highway is intended to run roughly parallel to U.S. 52 from the outskirts of Huntington to near Bluefield. The new four-lane highway will tie into the new Interstate 73/74, which will extend from Michigan to Myrtle Beach.

Mining companies became involved to build part of the roadbed with waste rock and dirt from adjacent mountaintop removal coal mining sites.

State and federal regulators allowed at least some of this mining to proceed without strip-mining permits, because they concluded it fell under an exemption for mining that is "an incidental part" of highway construction.

But the new lawsuits allege that, "Rather, the King Coal Highway construction is incident to the primary purpose of mining coal at the Red Jacket Project site, without following regulations intended to protect the public from just the sort of catastrophe that occurred in the instant case."

The lawsuits cite two earlier flooding events in May 2008 that "should certainly have alerted" the mining companies "that their stormwater runoff control structures, if any were in place at all, were woefully inadequate along the Pigeon Creek watershed."

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702

http://wvgazette.com/News/200909170305

Canadian-owned mine a threat to Grand Canyon: Groups

An eagle flies over the Grand Cayon in Arizona 05 April 2007. A planned Canadian-owned uranium mine near the Grand Canyon is being targeted in a lawsuit launched by three U.S. environmental groups that claim the project threatens four at-risk species of fish and an endangered songbird that inhabit the iconic Arizona park.Photograph by: Gabriel Bouys, AFP/Getty Images


By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service
September 10, 2009 4:01 PM

A planned Canadian-owned uranium mine near the Grand Canyon is being targeted in a lawsuit launched by three U.S. environmental groups that claim the project threatens four at-risk species of fish and an endangered songbird that inhabit the iconic Arizona park.

The president of Toronto-based Denison Mines told Canwest News Service that the legal action has the company "looking at what the potential ramifications might be," but insists the mine poses no harm to the famed natural wonder or its animal residents.

"We're within 10 or 15 miles (16 to 24 kilometres) of the north rim of the Grand Canyon," said Ron Hochstein. "We're in that general district. But geologically and everything, it's so separate that some of the allegations they are making are not even feasible."

The Sierra Club, U.S. Center for Biological Diversity and Grand Canyon Trust have filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over alleged violations of endangered species legislation in approving Denison's "Arizona 1" mine, near the northern boundary of the Grand Canyon National Park.

The Canadian company is not being sued.

The groups argue that the U.S. agency has applied outdated regulations and ignored new scientific data in permitting Denison's mine, which is located within a 400,000-hectare buffer zone declared off-limits to new mining operations in a July order issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the land bureau.

Denison's mine is exempt from the order because it received initial vetting decades ago. But the Sierra Club and its allies argue the land bureau has followed an "illegal course" of approvals and must now revisit a 1988 environmental assessment because the southwestern willow flycatcher and the four types of fish — all native to the Colorado River that cuts through the canyon — have since been added to the U.S. endangered species list or had new critical habitat identified in the region.

"The Grand Canyon and its endangered species deserve complete protection from the uranium industry," said Taylor McKinnon, the Center for Biological Diversity's public lands advocate. "And relying on outdated and incomplete reviews falls far short of that standard."

Roger Clark, the Grand Canyon Trust's air and energy campaigner, said "experience has shown that uranium development can permanently poison land and water in this arid region."

The groups also argue that new hydrology studies, increased traffic hazards due to a uranium-mining boom and other factors should have been considered before giving Denison the final OK to start its operation.

Hochstein said the idea that Arizona 1 threatens the Grand Canyon ecosystem can't be justified "by any stretch of the imagination" because the mine site is a safe distance from the park.

"This mine was originally permitted in the late '80s. This is not a case of a new mine," he said. "All we really needed to move forward from the position we were in was an air-quality permit, which we received last week from the State of Arizona."

He added: "As far as Denison is concerned, we have all the permits necessary to put this mine into operation."

Hochstein said all of the site preparation — including the digging of shafts and placing of equipment underground — was completed years ago and is now being readied for operation.

"This is a mine that was very close to being put into production, but uranium prices collapsed and as a result the mine wasn't fully developed and put into operation," he said. "Once we got the permit, we mobilized people from our local office — to do shaft inspections, start the vent fans operating — so that we're ready to go underground as soon as we can. The infrastructure is all in place. We are essentially ready to go."

In the lawsuit papers filed this week, the environmental groups quote U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's effusive remarks about the Grand Canyon and the potential threats posed by uranium mining when he announced the moratorium on new mines in July.

"I am calling a two-year 'time-out' from all new mining claims in the Arizona Strip near the Grand Canyon because we have a responsibility to ensure we are developing our nation's resources in a way that protects local communities, treasured landscapes and our watersheds," Salazar said at the time.

The announcement described the Grand Canyon as a "home to numerous rare, endemic and specially protected plant and animal species" and noted that "the Colorado River and its tributaries flow through the watersheds" of the park to supply water to several major U.S. cities, including Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Diego.

The threatened fish species identified in the planned lawsuit are the razorback sucker, Colorado pikeminnow, humpback chub and bonytail chub.

Salazar's announcement also emphasized that the lands encompassed in the moratorium "contain significant environmental and cultural resources" — including numerous archeological sites — "as well as substantial uranium deposits."

He stipulated, however, that the new measures would not "prohibit ongoing or future mining exploration or extraction operations on valid pre-existing claims."

http://www.canada.com/travel/Canadian+owned+mine+threat+Grand+Canyon+Groups/1980282/story.html

Earthjustice Seeks Supreme Court Review in Mountaintop Removal Mining Case

Comment: Mt. Top Removal must be stopped! It has ruin people's lives, ruin their water and ruin the land! Now Virginia wants to blow up the Piedmont of Virginia for uranium because the France and Canada wants Virginia uranium! No to Mt. Top Removal and Not to Uranium mining and milling!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2009
1:36 PM
CONTACT: Earthjustice
Raviya Ismail, Earthjustice, (202) 667-4500, ext. 221

Earthjustice Seeks Supreme Court Review in Mountaintop Removal Mining Case
Clean Water Act violated in issuance of permits for mining

WASHINGTON - August 27 - Earthjustice and the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment have filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court that asks the Court to review a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in a controversial mountaintop removal mining case. The case challenges the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' issuance of permits allowing companies to dump waste from mountaintop removal mining into streams without following basic requirements of the Clean Water Act designed to prevent irreversible harm to the nation's waters.

"This case is of great national importance," said Earthjustice attorney Steve Roady. "The Corps of Engineers is ripping the heart out of the Clean Water Act by granting permits that allow coal companies to permanently entomb vital streams in the rubble of exploded mountains. The destruction caused by mountaintop removal mining is enormous and the adverse impacts on local communities are profound. We're asking the Supreme Court to hold the Corps accountable."
Earthjustice and the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment filed this lawsuit challenging several West Virginia mountaintop removal permits in September 2005 on behalf of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and Coal River Mountain Watch. The lawsuit challenged the Corps' violation of the Clean Water Act by authorizing the permits to fill 23 valleys and 13 miles of mountain streams in southern West Virginia without first performing even the most basic, legally required assessment of the harm that would occur when the streams are buried forever.

"The Supreme Court must intervene in a case that strives to provide essential protections for Appalachian mountain streams under the Clean Water Act," said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment. "The Corps has not adequately controlled mountaintop mining removal activity and has allowed for the wholesale destruction of our vital waterways."

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia in March 2007 found those permits violated the Clean Water Act. In February, a panel of federal judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled 2 to 1 in favor of the Corps in the case, with a strong dissent from one judge on the panel. Earthjustice then requested rehearing by the full court of appeals, but in late May, by a close vote of 4 to 3, with 4 additional judges abstaining from the vote, the court denied that petition.

However, two judges filed dissenting opinions, each of which Judge Diana Gribbon Motz joined.

In his dissent, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote that he voted for the full court of appeals to hear the case because of "the potentially irreversible effects that the permitted operations will have on the Appalachian ecosystem." He concluded: "The requirements of the Clean Water Act are important. . . . Once the ecologies of streams and rivers and bays and oceans turn, they cannot easily be reclaimed. More often than not, the waterway is simply gone for good."

In his dissent from the denial of rehearing, Judge M. Blane Michael, who also had dissented from the panel's decision, explained that: "The ecological impact of filling headwater streams with mining overburden is both profound and irreversible . . . . No permit should issue until the Corps fulfills each distinct obligation under the controlling regulations. And this court should not defer to the Corps until the agency has done its job."

"We're constantly hearing about the decreasing amounts of clean water within our nation as well as 'water wars' between states," said Janet Keating executive director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. "Yet the coal industry is recklessly burying and polluting our headwater streams under millions of tons of mining waste in central Appalachia. We hope that the Court realizes how vital, urgent and necessary their input is on this matter."

"Scientific studies show time and time again that mountaintop removal does horrible damage to our nation's water supplies," said Vernon Haltom, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch. "It's now time for the nation's high court to uphold the laws intended to protect our communities from polluting industries that care only for their profit margin."

"In allowing high mountain headwater streams to be filled with waste rock, the Corps has allowed total disruption of the hydrology of hundreds of square miles of ancient mountains and the natural and human lives those ground and surface waters have supported for centuries," said Cindy Rank, chair of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy Mining Committee. "The future well-being of the region depends on stricter adherence to the nation's environmental laws."

Mountaintop removal mining is a method of strip mining in which coal companies use explosives to blast as much as 800 to 1000 feet off the tops of mountains to reach coal seams underneath. The result is millions of tons of waste rock, dirt, and vegetation dumped into surrounding valleys, burying miles and miles of streams under piles of rubble hundreds of feet deep. Mountaintop removal mining harms not only aquatic ecosystems and water quality, but also destroys hundreds of acres of healthy forests and fish and wildlife habitat, including habitat of threatened and endangered species, when the tops of mountains are blasted away. As of 2002, the Appalachian region had already lost 1,200 miles of mountain streams to this destructive process-and the Environmental Protection Agency has predicted that this could rise as high as 2,400 miles by the year 2013 if current practices continue.

This practice also devastates Appalachian communities -- in West Virginia, Kentucky, southern Virginia and eastern Tennessee -- and cultures that have existed in these mountains for hundreds of years. Residents of the surrounding communities are threatened by rock slides, catastrophic floods, poisoned water supplies, constant blasting and destroyed property.

Additional Resources:
The EPA's Environmental Impact Statement on mountaintop removal mining can be found here: http://www.epa.gov/region3/mtntop/eis2005.htm
Pending permits can be searched here: http://www.appalachian-center.org/foia/
A map of permits in West Virginia can be found here: http://www.earthjustice.org/library/maps/westva-mining-permits.pdf
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Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/08/27-6

Massey slurry pollution trial now set for October

Comment: The Corporations will ruin our Mother Earth for money!! They must be stop! We are tired of the greed of Electrical companies ruining our mountains, dumping the coal waste products in our streams, now Virginia wants to ruin our Piedmont, Mountains Valleys with future uranium mining and milling!!! Demand that Corporate Virginia to stop Mt Top Removal and Ban Uranium mining now!!

Associated Press - June 10, 2009 4:55 AM ET

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) - After being delayed by southern West Virginia flooding, a pollution lawsuit against a Massey Energy subsidiary is now set for trial Oct. 20.

Hundreds of current and former residents of several Mingo County towns are suing Rawl Sales & Processing for injecting coal slurry into old underground mines between 1978 and 1987.

They say slurry seeped into the aquifer, poisoning wells and causing health problems.

Virginia-based Massey has denied the allegations and said the disposal was legal.

West Virginia regulators allowed underground injection for decades but said last month they can't answer many questions about safety and will stop permitting new sites.

Plaintiffs' attorney Kevin Thompson says it's unclear how that might affect the case.

http://www.wric.com/global/story.asp?s=10507427

Teck Cominco fined $1 million by U.S. court

Comment: this is not uranium mining but zinc. However, the company dump the waste in the river on purpose!!!

Updated: Mon Mar. 16 2009 16:12:09

The Canadian Press

A U.S. court has ordered Canadian mining giant Teck Cominco to pay the legal fees of a Washington state Indian band in its fight over pollution from a B.C. mine.

The Washington state court rejected a bid by the company to derail a lawsuit by members of the Colville Indian band, finding instead that Vancouver-based Teck Cominco is subject to U.S. environmental law.

The court ordered the company to pay more than $1 million U.S. in legal fees that the Colville band has spent suing the company.

The band says Teck Cominco has dumped millions of tons of toxic pollution into the Columbia River at its zinc smelter 15 kilometres north of the B.C.-Washington state border in Trail.

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090316/bc_teck_pollution_090316/20090316/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome