Northern Ariz. tribes united against uranium mines

10:46 AM MST on Thursday, September 17, 2009
By FELICIA FONSECA / Associated Press Writer

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) -- The Hualapai Tribe has renewed a ban on uranium mining on its land near the Grand Canyon, joining other American Indian tribes in opposing what they see as a threat to their environment and their culture.

The tribal ban adds to a temporary mining ban on nearly 1 million federally owned acres around the Grand Canyon. The combined actions mean uranium-bearing lands in northern Arizona open to companies hungry to resume mining are growing scarce.

Much of the uranium in Arizona is in the northwest corner of the state with other deposits on the Navajo Nation and other tribal lands. The high-grade ore used in nuclear energy and for medicine is especially attractive at a time when prices for uranium have risen.

But members of northern Arizona tribes say it's not worth putting their health, water and land at risk, particularly when contamination from past uranium mining operations hasn't been fully addressed.

"Contamination emanates from mining, does not know any boundaries and it could easily cross community after community without them ever knowing," said Robert Tohe, a member of the Navajo Nation, which banned uranium on its 27,000 square-mile reservation that spans three states in 2005. "I think that's the real danger, and that's why tribes have become unified."

Tribes have long struggled to develop their economies, so when mining companies promised jobs and a revenue stream decades ago, many American Indian tribes jumped at the chance to work in the mines, particularly on the Navajo Nation and around Grants, N.M.

Thus far, mining companies have been hard-pressed to convince tribes that the health risks and environmental degradation they associate with past uranium mining would not occur with new mining operations, said David Brett, president and CEO of Pacific Bay Minerals Ltd. The Vancouver, Canada, company had been in negotiations to explore for uranium on the Hualapai reservation, where tribal leaders renewed a ban this month.

"There is a perception out there that is very hard to dislodge that it poses this massive health risk," he said.

While it wasn't known how much uranium could be mined from the nearly 1 million-acre Hualapai reservation, Brett said previous work had shown there was potential.

"This is what made it so attractive; it's basically unexplored territory," he said. "It's geologically crying out to be explored."

The frustration is just as evident on the nearly 1 million-acre area around the Grand Canyon that the Interior Department in July blocked from any new mining claims for a two-year period.

Sydney Hay, president of the Arizona Mining Association, said decisions by the federal government and tribes to prohibit mining in northern Arizona means less high-paying jobs. She said it also limits the state's ability to provide low-cost energy to its citizens.

She called decisions by the Hualapai, Navajo, Havasupai and Hopi tribes to ban uranium mining shortsighted.

"It's not your grandfather's mining industry anymore," she said. "There are some legacy sites that have given uranium mining a bad name, but the way to fix that is to clean up those legacy sites."

Tribal members don't see that happening and say taking the companies' word would be difficult.

Both the Navajo Nation and the Hopi tribe have sued or threatened to over cleanup of uranium and other radioactive waste from their land near Tuba City, and other tribes have cited health effects from breathing in dust in areas where uranium was mined, groundwater contamination and livestock born with mutations.

"I think we have good reason to ignore corporate America, the mining companies," said Manny Pino, a member of Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico who teaches American Indian studies at Scottsdale Community College.

The simple fear of environmental, groundwater and air contamination was enough to prompt the Havasupai tribe to issue one of the earliest bans against uranium mining among Arizona tribes. Tribal members live in a deep gorge off the Grand Canyon that is accessible only by foot, helicopter or mule.

"It will travel in the air and it will travel in the water," said tribal member Carletta Tilousi. "If we did tests right now, maybe there will be such evidence."

http://www.fox11az.com/news/topstories/stories/kmsb20090917jc-uranium-mines-opposed-tribes.18c507645.html

France orders toxicity test on seaweed

France has ordered toxicity tests to be carried out on the mounds of seaweed on the country's northern coast that have been blamed for the recent death of a horse, officials said Friday.

Comment: Again another problem in France, they can say it has something to do with farming but for years England and France dump their nuke stuff off in the ocean according to several news reports!

AFP News Briefs List
France orders toxicity test on seaweed

Potentially lethal fumes from the rotting weed have worried local residents and threatened the region's lucrative tourist industry.

The national institute for environmental threats (INERIS) will test levels of hydrogen sulphide (H2S) above the mounds of putrified green algae that have built up across the Brittany region, the environment ministry said.

It will also check for any other toxic components in the foul-smelling seaweed, the ministry said in a statement.

Part of the coastline has been declared off-limits as local authorities acknowledge they are unable to get rid of the decomposing seaweed that has washed up on shores in more than 80 communities around Brittany.

Green groups accuse President Nicolas Sarkozy's government of turning a blind eye to an "environmental cancer" caused by the algae and blame intensive farming for producing nitrates that feed the seaweed's toxicity.

Veterinarian Vincent Petit lost consciousness and his horse collapsed and died when they slipped on a patch of rotting algae near the beach of Saint-Michel-en-Greve on July 28.

Petit was pulled to safety by a crew of workers who happened to be nearby.

The horseman has since threatened to sue local authorities for reckless endangerment, spreading alarm in a string of coastal communities in Brittany's Cote d'Armor region.

http://www.france24.com/en/20090814-france-orders-toxicity-test-seaweed

Superfund money to clean 'mouth of the beast'

Comment: Not exactly California Dreamin is it! The Superfund Site has been around for years and now the EPA is trying to clean up the mess left from corporate greed. Will our Children see Virginia become a Superfund state because of the greed of uranium mining and Mt. Top Removal?

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, June 12, 2009

Rick Sugarek knows not to splash through the puddles inside "the mouth of the beast."

That is what he calls the gaping wound near Redding known to everybody else as the Iron Mountain Mine, which is widely regarded by scientists as one of the most polluted places in the world.

The project manager for the Environmental Protection Agency said he once dropped a pen in some running water inside the mine and when he recovered it, it was coated in copper. The water is so acidic that droplets eat holes in blue jeans and dissolve the stitching on boots, much like battery acid.

Sugarek stood Thursday in a shaft once known as the Richmond Mine. It is the source of the toxic stew that has polluted the Sacramento River and its tributaries for more than a century, killed thousands of fish and turned a once-majestic mountain into a hellish breeding ground for nasty bacterial slime that helps create what geologists say is the "world's worst water."

But on this day Sugarek was full of hope, despite the dismal surroundings. The EPA was recently awarded $20.7 million in federal stimulus funds to clean up the heavy metals that have flowed into and accumulated at the bottom of the Keswick Reservoir for decades, threatening fish if not people. Sugarek said the metals have settled to the bottom and do not affect the quality of the drinking water.

The money, combined with $10 million already budgeted for the project, will pay for construction of three pumping stations, piping and the hydraulic dredging of the 170,000 cubic yards of fine toxic metals that to this day coat the bottom of the Spring Creek arm of the reservoir.

Separating out the solids

"What we're trying to deal with now is the 50 years of stuff that has accumulated at the bottom of the reservoir since it was built," said Sugarek, who has been working at the Toxic Superfund site for 20 years. "This is an important management area for California's water supply, and toxic chemicals are flowing down."

Sugarek said the idea is to clean up the site, not restore the ecosystem, so other areas are not contaminated. He said a storm could stir up the sludge in reservoir. The plan then is to dredge the area over the next 18 months, pump the fine sediments up to a treatment center that will separate out the solids. The toxic sediments will then be dried out and dumped into a 12-acre pit on nearby federal land. The pit will be lined with thick plastic sheets and then covered and planted over.

Prospecting in 1860s

The work is expected to employ as many as 300 people over three years. In the end, Sugarek hopes, the threat to waterways, including the Sacramento River, should have ended.

The trouble began in the 1860s when gold and silver prospectors first discovered the mountain, about 9 miles northwest of Redding.

Poisonous runoff

The real damage began when a company called Mountain Copper took over the 4,400-acre mine in the 1890s and began to supply sulfuric acid to refineries in the Bay Area. At the turn of the century, it was the largest copper mine in California, and a small city of laborers lived on the mountain. Twenty cavities the size of office buildings were drilled into the mountain.
Much of the work on the Richmond Mine occurred during World War II, leaving the entire mountain scarred.

The mining operation turned to rubble what was originally a 200-foot-thick by 3,000-foot-long underground deposit of pyrite, exposing it to oxygen, water and bacteria that combined to create the poisonous runoff. Water that flowed out of the shaft where the pyrite lay formed bluish blocks of acid salt, which deer sometimes used as salt licks.

The Bureau of Reclamation built an earthen dam in 1963 to block the steady flow of sludge, but it would often overflow during heavy winter rains and the copper and metals would get into the Sacramento River.

The mine was finally abandoned in 1966 and collapsed in on itself shortly after that. The problem, it seemed, only got worse.

Lethal blend of copper, iron

Tens of thousands of fish have been killed since then. By the time the EPA took over management of the area in the 1980s, a ton of acidic water and heavy metals a day were flowing into the river, Sugarek said. The water in the debris dam was blood red from a mixture of iron and copper.

Desperate, the EPA built the Slick Rock Creek Retention Dam in 2004, which captured 98 percent of the sludge. The sludge is dried and dumped in the open pit mine on top of the mountain. Now the EPA is concentrating on the leftover mess.

But money cannot completely resolve the problem. Researchers recently found six unique strains of bacteria that live in a bed of pink slime that is part of a little-understood biochemical cycle that devours iron, produces sulfuric acid, and creates a nightmarish broth of copper, zinc and arsenic. That toxic broth will continue pouring out of the mine forever, or until someone figures out a way to neutralize the chemical and biological reactions, scientists say.

"We spent a good deal of time trying to see if we could shut it down, and our conclusion was that we couldn't," said Sugarek, adding that the only hope is for some future innovation or new technology. "We know we can continue what we are doing for 100 years. The estimate is that it will take the mountain about 3,000 years to use up all the pyrite."

The damp, dark passage where Sugarek stood Thursday was nothing compared with the hellish alien environment deeper inside the mine. There, chemical reactions drive temperatures up to 130 degrees, the water is almost pure sulfuric acid, and stalactites and stalagmites of acid salt cover the walls.

Dissolving aluminum, skin

"If you go back 1,500 feet, the temperature is 100 degrees, you start to see the acid salts and it smells like sulfur," Sugarek said. "You don't want to use an aluminum ladder because it will just dissolve."

A NASA scientist once sent a robot into the bowels of the mine. It did not return, Sugarek said. Nobody that he knows of has been killed, but Sugarek said a worker testing the water above the debris dam suffered "some exfoliation of the skin" after his rubber raft was punctured and he was forced to swim to safety.

Little help from owner

The elderly owner of the property, Ted Arman, who bought the 3,500-foot mountain from the last mining company for $100,000, has not been much help, proposing a resumption of mining in addition to construction of a 200-foot-tall marble statue of Jesus Christ.

Sugarek said rockslides and dam failures are still concerns.

"We have shut the leak off," he said. "What we're worried about is that a discharge from the debris dam during a big storm could cause an environmental disaster."

E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com.

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