Foes debate risks of uranium mining

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — The pair of mid-afternoon meetings the Gallup Water Board hosted inside City Hall over the past month were low-key as far as turning points go.

There was no shouting. There were no cameras. No one called anyone else names. Mostly just scientists throwing around phrases like "paleochannel" and "pregnant laxiviant." But those two meetings the last one was Wednesday might just mark the start of the city's first big step into a fight that's been going on around it for at least a decade.

That's how long American Indian groups in northwest New Mexico have been fighting the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission's decision to grant a Texas-based company a license to mine for uranium in Church Rock and Crownpoint. The Gallup Water Board, an advisory body of the City Council, wants to find out what that mining could mean for Gallup.

Board chairman Larry Winn made it clear from the start that it was neither the group's job nor intention to take a stand for or against uranium mining or nuclear energy in general. Its only purpose here, he said, was to help the council decide if the plans of Hydro Resources, Inc., posed a threat to Gallup's water supply.

Leach mining
Most of the debate boils down to one key question: Does in situ leach mining, a technique that involves injecting chemicals into underground rock to strip it of uranium and bringing the mixture to the surface for processing, pose an unacceptable risk to nearby drinking water sources?

Because the uranium HRI is after sits outside of Gallup, city officials haven't much cared about the answer. But as the city's own depleting water resources have forced it to search farther afield for new sources, they've started to take an interest. When Mayor Bob Rosebrough heard the Water Board would be holding meeting on the matter, he asked for a report when it was done.

HRI President Craig Bartels visited the board in mid-January to give his side of the story. The company's opponents met with the board Wednesday to give theirs.

Michael Wallace, a private hydrologist, is among those who believe the NRC should never have given HRI a license to mine Church Rock or Crownpoint. He's submitted data challenging the safety of the company's plans and thinks the company's own data should have been enough to at least raise some red flags among the commissioners.

But even Wallace doubts Gallup has much to worry about.

Separation
HRI wants to mine the Westwater Canyon aquifer of the San Juan River Basin's Morrison Formation. The new well Gallup wants to dig near Fort Wingate, called G-22, would tap the San Andreas-Glorietta aquifer, which sits farther underground. While water flows through each, the layers of rock between them tend to keep water from flowing from one to the other. If and when Gallup starts drawing water from G-22, said Wallace, who's studied the project, the depression could potentially suck water from the Westwater aquifer into the San Andreas-Glorietta, a problem for Gallup if the water is contaminated. Practically, though, he doesn't think that's likely.

"I don't think you have to worry about their mining operations affecting your water supply," he told Winn.

But Earl Dixon, principle hydrologist for the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources, gave the Gallup Water Board something else to consider.

G-22 is only a stop-gap answer to Gallup's long-term water needs. Along with most of the eastern Navajo Nation, it's counting most on the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, a pipeline that promises to deliver more than 30,000 acre feet of water to the area from the San Juan River by the time it's finished 15 to 20 years from now.

Gallup impact
By an arrangement that's yet to be fully worked out, the city and tribe will each get a share of that water. But if the aquifers the tribe will be using to supplement that water were contaminated, Dixon said, the tribe may have to take some of the city's.

"Because we're working in one water supply system," he said, "the City of Gallup is included in that risk."

All that assumes, of course, that HRI's operations will contaminate the Westwater aquifer. And Mark Pelizza doesn't buy it.

Pelizza, the vice president of HRI's parent company, Uranium Resources, Inc., sat in on Wednesday's meeting.

"You would have thought leaving (Wednesday's) meeting that this project would have proceeded without a mitigation plan," he said Thursday.

According to Pelizza, any leach mining site must be surrounded by a ring of monitoring wells to make sure no contaminated water leaves the area. Pelizza admits it happens sometimes. The monitoring wells are there for a reason, after all. And there's even a name for it: excursion. But it's always been corrected, he said.

In the 30 years HRI has been doing leach mining, Pelizza said, "there has never been an underground water resource that has been contaminated."

Opponents point out that no leach mining site has ever been restored to its original conditions, that uranium levels are always higher after the mining, even after the companies have cleaned up.

Pelizza didn't dispute that either. But they come awfully close, he said. And considering how slowly water moves underground, he added, any leftover contamination tends to stay confined.

Opponents say Church Rock and Crownpoint are different, that underground conditions there allow water to move faster than HRI will admit. Pelizza disputes that too.

What's not in dispute is that the members of the Gallup Water Board have their work cut out for them. Winn said the board has amassed a small library of information on uranium mining. These last two meetings only add to the collection.

Winn isn't sure what the board will do with it all. In addition to the report the mayor asked for, it could draft a resolution as it's done before asking the council to take a position one way or another.

Whatever the board decides, it won't be rushed.

"This is not a race," Winn said. "We want to do this right."