Too hot to handle?
Rising uranium prices means jobs; but some
say the risk is too great
Old buildings from a defunct United Nuclear Corporation uranium
mining operation and dirt contaminated with radium are bathed in
the evening light north of Church Rock on Friday.
By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer
A sign warns of the dangers at the United Nuclear Corporation's
old mill site north of Church Rock on Friday. [Photo by Brian
Leddy/Independent]
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CHURCH ROCK From 1967 to 1982, the United Nuclear Corporation
mined several million tons of uranium ore out of this 125-acre site
where New Mexico Highway 566 dead-ends 15 miles north of Church
Rock.
Back then, the jobs were plentiful and the pay was good, especially
for a young Navajo just out of high school. Larry King, who grew
up and still lives just miles south of the old mine, started out
as an underground surveyor for UNC in 1975 at $9 an hour, chasing
uranium drifts as they snaked through the rock 1,600 feet below
the surface.
"At the time it was good money," King said.
But when uranium prices began to tumble in the wake of Three Mile
Island, the mine shut down and the jobs disappeared. Today, the
few hollowed-out office buildings still standing at the site are
as empty as the shed-off skin of some long departed reptile. Weathered
tiles crack underfoot. Decades-old technical manuals litter the
floors.
They're the only tangible reminders of an industry that used to
thrive here. But with shrinking weapons stockpiles and new demand
once again driving uranium prices skyward, mining companies are
returning to this quiet corner of the state with new promises of
hundreds of jobs and millions in royalties. Some locals want them
back. Others, like King, who still live with the radioactive fallout
from the last boom and don't believe another would prove any safer,
say they'll try to stop those companies "until there's a cure
for cancer."
Show me the money
Although not one company has yet to mine a pound of uranium out
of New Mexico soil this century, many are making preparations. Few
are further along than Hydro Resources Inc., the local subsidiary
of a Texas company with four properties between Church Rock and
Crownpoint. It's already secured a crucial license from the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, although opponents have tied it up
in federal court.
Economically, HRI makes a tempting offer.
If and when production ever starts, the company says each site will
need nearly 100 workers and pump $35 million into the community
through payrolls and the purchase of supplies and services.
Richard van Horn, HRI's vice president of operations, said he could
probably fill half, maybe even three quarters, of those jobs locally.
All he's looking for is English proficiency, a high school diploma,
a strong work ethic, and a drug-free record.
"We don't need to go outside when we have people here who need
jobs," van Horn said.
He said salaries would range from $12 an hour to the low $20s and
come with benefits, health insurance and a 401-K, "the whole
works, so these aren't minimum wage-type jobs."
And those are just the employees. While HRI bought three of its
sites from other companies, some 400 Navajo allottees hold claim
to its 1,440-acre Unit 1 site in Crownpoint. If it can recover 75
percent of the 27 million pounds of uranium there, the company says
those allottees could collectively earn more than $200 million over
the lifetime of the mine.
The Navajo Nation could be in for a big payday, too. At HRI's Section
17 site in Church Rock, where it has surface rights, the tribe could
make more than $16 million off of royalties, according to the company.
But all that's assuming a uranium spot price of $100 per pound.
After the price of a pound of uranium crashed in early 1980s, it
stayed low enough to keep most mining companies out of the business
for the next two decades. It's only in the past three or four years
that it started to rebound. In early 2003, a poundwas trading for
less than $11. It's now trading for just over $133.
Van Horn says he believes the market is in for a correction but
doesn't know when.
"If I knew that," he said, "I would be buying uranium
futures."
The price has already dipped a few dollars since mid-June, for the
first time in years. Given all the volatility, what the allottees
and tribe would really end up earning is anyone's guess.
King's guess is that it won't be nearly what HRI claims, and he
questions the company's promise of jobs, too. When HRI first started
talking about the jobs it would bring to the area, he said, it mentioned
300, "but as time went by ... they mentioned a lower number.
The last time they mentioned the number of jobs they were going
to create it was 60."
The company's royalty figures seem to be changing as well. HRI provided
The Independent with that $16 million figure the Navajo Nation's
take from Section 17 a few weeks ago. In January, assuming the same
recovery rate, it said the tribe would earn $9 million from the
site at a uranium-per-pound price of $75. So if the price of uranium
has gone up a third since then, the tribe should be in for only
$12 million now.
But it's all a moot point to the tribe, which banned all mining
and production of uranium on Navajoland in 2005. HRI claims its
sites all sit on private land, beyond the tribe's jurisdiction,
but a recent ruling by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
concluded otherwise. HRI is appealing.
Land of opportunity
Unit 1 is another matter. Unlike its other sites, HRI leased it
from Navajo allottees whose descendants were granted private rights
to the land by the U.S. Interior Department in the 1800s.
With millions to be made, those allottees want the tribe to get
out of HRI's way.
"We have every right to have our land developed, and we have
people with no interest trying to control us," said Ben House,
president of the Eastern Navajo Allottees Association.
An allottee himself, House gets $3,000 a month from HRI to help
the company build local support. For a man charged with changing
the minds of some very staunch opponents, he's low key. He picks
his words slowly and carefully.
"Joe Shirley can do whatever he wants on the reservation,"
he said of the Navajo Nation president, who signed off on the Tribal
Council's uranium ban, "but out here we treat our allotments
as private land.
"Back in 1868, people were given this land to try and make
a living, and that's what we're trying to do."
But if the tribe won't listen to the allottees, House said it should
at least listen to its out-of-work citizens. Unemployment across
the reservation has hovered stubbornly above 40 percent for decades.
"The Navajo Nation promotes education, but they're not providing
jobs," House said. "We got people coming in to look for
work ... especially the young people. They're really hurting. They've
got bills and families."
He said people stop by HRI's Crownpoint office asking about jobs
every week, but he as nothing to give them. Several buildings sit
inside the company's fenced-off compound. But with mining yet to
start, it's a quiet place.
HRI and its allottees aren't the only ones who want to see that
change. The McKinley County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution
in support of the uranium industry's return last year. Commissioner
Earnest Becenti, who requested the resolution, said the county needs
jobs and more money for better roads.
"Thus far we've just been meeting the emergency needs,"
he said, "but we need to provide a better living standard for
our people."
Becenti said he voted for the resolution on the strength of a recommendation
from the county's advisory water board, which concluded that HRI's
proposed mining activities would pose no significant risk to the
county's water supplied. Larry Winn, who facilitated the board's
meetings on the subject, thinks its conclusion may have been different
if it had sought out some expert testimony from opponents rather
than settle for the emotional rebuke it got from a handful of residents.
Still, Becenti stands by his decision.
"We need the jobs," he insisted.
A Texas tale
The residents of Kleberg County in south Texas got that and more.
When Uranium Resources Inc., HRI's parent company, started mining
its Kingsville Dome site in 1988, said Richard Messbarger, executive
director of the Kingsville Economic Development Council, "they
hired every drilling rig they could find."
He said the company employed up to 200 people at any one time, "and
they paid very well."
With the tax revenue the mining generated, he added, the local school
district built a new gym and classrooms.
But what they also got, according to the county, was a breach of
contract. When URI decided in 2004 that it wanted to start mining
a section of the site called Area 3, it made a deal with the county
that any wells in Areas 1 and 2 that were suitable for drinking,
irrigation or stock watering before it started mining them in the
1980s would be restored to premining conditions first.
URI started mining Area 3 in January. But according to the company's
own data, one well, the only one that tested usable, has yet to
be restored.
As George Rice, a groundwater hydrologist working for a local group
trying to stop the mining, put it, URI "basically said, 'Forget
you, county. We're going to go ahead mining, and if you don't like
it, that's too bad.'"
By February, the county passed a resolution authorizing legal action
if the parties failed to talk the matter through. According to the
county's attorney, they're still talking.
URI insists it's breached nothing. Mark Pelizza, the company's vice
president for environmental affairs, said it found some old data
after 2004 indicating that the well was never usable to begin with.
Unconvinced, some county residents have banded together in hopes
of kicking URI out. They call themselves STOP, for South Texas Opposes
Pollution. They're worried that the elevated uranium levels at the
mine site could contaminate nearby wells that are still clean.
Pelizza says they have nothing to worry about. Over the 30 years
URI has been mining for uranium with the method it's using at Kingsville,
he said, "there has never been a water well impacted."
But it's also true that no mining company using the same method
has ever restored the underground water at a mine site to its original
conditions. The only way a company has ever managed to officially
call a site restored is by convincing the state or federal government
to lower its standards.
Teo Saens knew none of that when he and his wife leased 40 acres
to URI in the early 1990s.
"The words that were used were, 'We're going to take a batch
of uranium and leave (the water) crystal clear," cleaner even,
Saens said, than before.
The lease has since expired, and because URI never mined his land,
Saens earned only $100 a year per acre. But he considers even that
"blood money."
"It's little consolation for what they're doing to the land,"
he said. "If we knew what we know today, we wouldn't have leased."
Weighing the odds
Messbarger says most Kleberg County residents appreciate URI's presence.
He says its opponents are few.
"They're a small cadre," he said, numbering no more than
15 or 20 at any time.
In northwest New Mexico, the Eastern Navajo Din Against Uranium
Mining has been fighting HRI for years.
President Mitchell Capitan used to have high hopes for leaching
mining, the method URI uses in Texas and HRI wants to use in Church
Rock and Crownpoint. Instead of digging open pits or sending miners
underground, it involves injecting chemicals that loosen the uranium
from the rock so it can be pumped to the surface. As a lab technician
for Mobile Oil before HRI showed up, he tried to show it could work.
But what he discovered he's never forgotten.
"The thing that really bothered me was the end result of Mobile's
demonstration, where they couldn't restore the groundwater,"
he said.
Mobile ended up pulling out. Now, he said, "(HRI) is saying
that nothing will happen ... but I don't believe them."
What troubles opponents even more is that HRI wants employ the method
closer to active wells than it's ever been tried before.
"So more or less," King said, "HRI's going to experiment
with us."
The company's license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says
it has to move the wells before mining. But according to the NRC,
the company can always ask to have the license amended. And since
HRI tried convincing the NRC that the wells were not a problem before,
opponents believe it will try again.
House dismisses Capitan's objections as ignorant scare tactics.
"The Navajo Nation should not be held back by fear," he
said. "If we're afraid to make a move, we can't make any progress."
House wants the tribe to let the allottees live off their land as
they see fit.
"But it's not the land we're concerned about," King said.
"It's the aquiver, and the aquifer doesn't know where your
boundary line is."
Capitan summed up the choice these communities face by holding up
his two hands to the shoulder to make a human scale. In one, he
said, was all the wealth a new uranium mining boom could bring.
In the other, he said, were all the risks to health and homeland.
Messbarger disagrees with the company's opponents, but he understands
why the issue inspires so much controversy.
"In the Southwest, nothing scares people more than concerns
over the quality of their water," he said.
"Water is precious," Capitan said. "Water is life."
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Monday
July 16, 2007
Selected
Stories:
Too
hot to handle?; Rising uranium prices means jobs; but some say the
risk is too great
Prayer to target
Iraq war drought
Education helps
inmates take the high road
Deaths
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