|
|
Written by Kristopher Hite; Photographs by Kristopher Hite
|
|
Monday, 24 August 2009 04:41 |
|
photo by Kristopher Hite
A quiet place with five hundred and forty residents, Nunn, Colorado sits fifteen miles northeast of Fort Collins and has been on the brink of becoming a ghost town for the last half-century. A visit to the sole eatery in town - the Nunn café - reveals the kind of trouble this community faces: from the local newsletter dubbed “the Nunnion,” it is apparent the people’s basic needs are barely being met. The septic sewer system is failing, and their drinking water has to be trucked in regularly from a private company – North Weld County Water. Despite deficiencies in basic infrastructure the citizens have found the resolve to resist temptation of corporate promises.
Nunn experienced a jolt of media attention in recent years when Powertech purchased the land and mineral rights to mine uranium nearby. Along with a spike in the price of uranium from around $20 a pound in the early 2000's to over $130 in June 2007 corporate interest in the area grew. Reports compiled in the 1970's from the U.S. Geological Survey along with Rocky Mountain Energy (an extinct subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railway) were dusted off. Mineral prospectors were quick to recall the millions of pounds of uranium estimated to be sitting in ore deposits west of Nunn jutting out on the map towards Fort Collins in an area called the Centennial site. Higher uranium prices meant there could be over a billion dollars worth of this yellow metal buried where only Adam Smith's "invisible hand" might dig it up.
Today Powertech is moving forward with the permitting process required to mine the uranium. Despite a 41% drop in the price of uranium over the past year and a failure to woo the people of Nunn with the promise of one hundred high-paying local jobs Richard Clement, the CEO of Powertech, has vowed to finish the application process by the end of 2009.
Colorado House Bill 11 61, voted into law in 2008, outlines the conditions under which the state would allow any company to commence uranium mining operations in Colorado. Since the passage of the bill public outcry has died down and all sides have experienced a general feeling of complacency. Some environmentalists seem appeased by the language of the bill while Powertech lurches towards their goal of having an approved permit for pumping uranium out of the ground near Nunn. Both sides are wrong. No decision has been made.
House Bill 1161 introduced some tricky roadblocks for Powertech to overcome, but with a team of lawyers and cash infusions from the Belgian atomic giant Synatom, Powertech marches on in their quest down the yellowcake road. The fourth in a series of “stake holder” meetings hosted by the Colorado Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety took place Wednesday, August 19th, in Denver. Here lawyers and other spokespeople from Powertech continued their efforts in “manipulating” the language in 1161 to better suit their chances of having a permit granted in Colorado. The specific hurdles Powertech must overcome are more than daunting. First they must provide the state with proof that the type of mining they are proposing – in situ leach mining or ISL – has been used successfully in at least five other sites on planet earth by any company.
In situ leach mining lays at the crux of Powertech’s selling point. The company has gone to great lengths to convince the people on the Front Range that in situ leach mining is totally safe and poses minimal risk to public health and ground water quality. The technique differs from traditional open pit mining by using a process that is “contained” underground. Chemicals such as bicarbonate, carbon dioxide and oxygen are pumped into the water surrounding the uranium deposit and as the chemicals pass through the deposit they add oxygen atoms to the uranium atoms which make the uranium soluble. The uranium leaves the place it has rested for millions of years and is pumped to the surface to be collected by the mining company on large columns.
The process sounds neat and clean and provides a great sales pitch, but there is a problem. When previously used on other uranium deposits in the United States in situ leach mining has raised uranium, radon, selenium and arsenic concentrations in surrounding groundwater to levels that exceed the federally mandated maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for drinking water. Powertech claims that it will return the groundwater at the mining site to "a quality as close to pre-mining (baseline) conditions as can practically be achieved." Herein lays the problem. Does this mean that groundwater levels of uranium, radon, arsenic and selenium can exceed the MCLs if it is not "practically" achievable to reduce them any further?
The proposed mining site near Nunn sits atop one of Colorado’s most expansive water sources – the Fox-Laramie Hills aquifer. This vast underground slurry of water, clay, silt and other geological components provides water to most of the Front Range and approaches surface level near Cheyenne and Denver. If uranium, radon, selenium and arsenic accidentally breach the rock layer between the mining area and the Fox-Laramie Hills aquifer then drinking water for millions of households up and down the Front Range would be compromised.
The heath risks associated with drinking water contaminated with radioactive chemicals have motivated the Colorado Medical Society to author a resolution in opposition to all uranium mining in Colorado. The resolution is chock-full of references to scientific literature that spell out the adverse health effects of low level radiation exposure. The medical society reports that in populations near past uranium mines increased rates of testicular and ovarian cancer, leukemia, childhood bone cancer, miscarriages, infant death, congenital defects, genetic abnormalities and learning disorders have been recorded.
To Powertech’s credit Richard Clement the CEO personally returned my call within a day. Through a faintly veiled Australian accent he explained how Powertech will prevent contaminants from entering the surrounding aquifers which is unclear from information on their website. According to Clement the strategy for cleaning up the mine will be to remove metals and salts from the oxygenating liquid via reverse osmosis then re-inject the cleaned water back into the aquifer in its baseline quality or use the water in a process called land application applying it to the soil surface as in irrigation. Another option Clement mentioned would be to truck away the polluted water to Wyoming and re-inject clean water purchased from the Big Thompson River. This possibility overlaps the issue of uranium mining in northern Colorado with the issue of water conservation.
Colorado State law now defines “success” regarding proposed ISL sites as the ability of the mining company to return the site after mining to the pre-existing environmental conditions. In short, no chemical either introduced or dislodged from the surrounding soil or bedrock shall be present at any higher level than it was before the uranium was harvested. It has proved an impossible task to find a single example of ISL being implemented “successfully” anywhere. However, there are unsuccessful examples. Abandoned ISL sites near Goliad, Texas have left the groundwater there non-potable.
Powertech has already chosen five ISL sites to meet their quota of examples required by the State of Colorado. They claim that the O'Hern, Hobson, Zamzow, Pawlik, and Longoria mines in South Texas were exemplary closures. Powertech claims these sites were "successful" because the surrounding aquifers were "restored" according to environmental standards set by the State of Texas to within the contaminant levels of a designated “use category.” Their argument does not hold water because Colorado Law specifically defines success as full restoration of groundwater to pre-mining condition for all chemicals. If full restoration is not "practically" achievable then the permit will not be granted.
Enter faulty logic.
Richard Clement promises that Powertech can restore the centennial site ground water to conditions that match the pre-mining conditions for all chemicals. After speaking with a professor in the Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences department at Colorado State University it seems that this is an impossible promise and that groundwater around ISL sites almost always has higher levels of radon, arsenic, selenium, and uranium after the sites are closed. Clement knows that Powertech must make this promise in order to have the permit granted despite the fact that there is no evidence of full restoration being possible.
 The five listed sites are NOT successful according to the definitions set fourth in Colorado House Bill 1161. It will be interesting to see what kind of legal contortions the lawyers for Powertech inject into the language of this seemingly simple piece of legislation during the upcoming stakeholder meetings.
In July of 2009, Powertech displayed confidence that they will be granted a permit as they nearly doubled the acreage of mineral rights held west of Nunn. This in turn bumped up the estimated amount of uranium from 9 million to 12 million pounds.
Whether you are for or against uranium mining there are questions that remain unanswered about the fate of Northern Colorado and the uranium buried here. Twelve million pounds of uranium will potentially be solubilized atop the state’s most expansive aquifer and there is not clear evidence of guaranteed success. Is the benefit to be reaped by a corporation from the sale of this uranium worth the risks involved? Uncertainties surrounding the complex geochemical events that might transpire if Powertech begins mining operations are large and undeniable. Will the Front Range become nuclear energy’s next guinea pig?
Kris is the founder and author of the blog - Tom Paine's Ghost - a site dedicated to the dissemination of Free Thought and the stimulation thereof. During the day he is graduate student of biochemistry at Colorado State University. As an advocate of free speech and open access philosophy he is excited to witness an emerging world of instantaneous connectivity through social networks etc. When unplugged he prefers to wander around in the forests of Northern Colorado with his dog Ben. He is a fan of clean air, clean water, and sandwiches.
|
|
89°
32°
°F | °C
Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 31%
Fri
62 |
83
16 |
28
Sat
64 |
87
17 |
30
|
Comments
Call me or e-mail me at 9706312898 or ktistopherhite@ gmail.com and we can talk about this.
RSS feed for comments to this post.