Official to NRC: Mine uranium, but not on Navajo

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — Members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will conduct a public meeting Sept. 27 in Gallup to obtain public comments on a “generic environmental impact statement” designed to expedite licensing for new uranium recovery facilities and conventional mills.

The NRC says it is expecting numerous applications for new in-situ uranium recovery operations in the next two to three years and plans to lump together common issues associated with environmental reviews “to aid in a more efficient environmental review for each separate license application.”

Opponents, however, say it is just another attempt by the NRC to circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act and shortchange the public.

George Hardeen, communications director for the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President, said, “If people want to mine uranium, they can do it as long as it’s not on the Navajo Nation,” which in 2005 approved a ban on uranium mining and milling operations throughout Navajo Indian Country.

“If it’s in Navajo Indian Country, the Natural Resources Protection Act applies,” he said. Attempts to get around that act then become a challenge to Navajo Nation sovereignty.

“If a uranium company wants to mine on Navajo land and disregard Navajo law, they can expect some trouble. The governors of all of the states surrounding the Navajo Nation, every congressman that President (Joe) Shirley has visited with, tell him that indeed, they will stand behind the Navajo Nation and its sovereignty.

“So it doesn’t matter what the uranium companies say. The Navajo Nation just doesn’t want anything to do with it. It’s not good for the Navajo people,” he said.

An EIS already has been completed for Hydro Resources Inc.’s operations in McKinley County so the GEIS would not have a direct bearing on these projects, according to Mark Pelizza of HRI.

“In this process, NRC will evaluate the historic in situ recovery uranium operations and reclamation in the western United States and will review the successes and failures of such operations,” Pelizza said.

Using information obtained through the GEIS, NRC will analyze future uranium recovery operations and determine the potential impacts associated with such proposed operations, he said.

“More importantly, NRC will use this information to implement requirements for new uranium recovery operations that will mitigate or eliminate potential impacts that may have been posed by historic uranium recovery operations.

“From my perspective, I can see no downside to the creation and use of this type of intensive study of the broad and regional aspects of uranium recovery operations.

“They do not preclude the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from examining the site-specific aspects of each and every new proposed uranium recovery project in a manner consistent with federal law and their regulations.

“I am puzzled as to why some people would oppose this study when it does not eliminate the requirement for site-specific analysis,” Pelizza said. “Could it be that some people simply do not want to be confused with the facts?”

Eric Jantz, staff attorney with New Mexico Environmental Law Center in Santa Fe, which has represented Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining in its efforts to stop the start-up of HRI’s in-situ leach mining facilities in Churchrock and Crownpoint, views the GEIS differently.

“The NRC is bending over backward to accommodate the uranium mining industry. Rather than requiring a rigorous environmental analysis for each and every proposed ISL mine site, the NRC is instead proposing a GEIS that will require less site-specific environmental analysis.

“The GEIS will also dramatically reduce opportunities for public participation in the environmental analysis process, and could virtually eliminate environmental justice analyzes. And the NRC is proposing this because it feels it is not processing ISL mining applications quickly enough,” Jantz said.

Chris Shuey of Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque also is opposed to the NRC’s plan.

“The GEIS represents NRC’s continued efforts to streamline the uranium licensing process, long an objective of the uranium industry.

“It’s another attempt to limit public review of ISL operations and to avoid evaluating the ISL industry’s systematic failure to restore groundwater to pre-mining conditions. If NRC won’t drop this bad idea, Congress should do it for them,” Shuey said.

Steve Cone of “electors Concerned about Animas Water,” or CAW, in Farmington, in comments to the NRC, said, “We are sick and tired of government agencies such as the NRC acting as lapdogs for corporate interests to sanction and accelerate a culture of environmental degradation which threatens to transform the Southwestern United States into a National Energy Sacrifice Area.”

Cone said fast-tracking the GEIS process is “a gross miscarriage of environmental justice for indigenous populations and their neighbors, who refuse to see their homes and health sacrificed to increase the profits of a government-favored special interest group.”

“Reverse course now, adopt the no-action alternative, and get the hell out of dodge, or prepare to be tarred and feathered by those you seek to marginalize — described on your Web site as the ‘lower population density’ in ‘the western states.’”