Uranium Debate
Mining means jobs for some; death for others

George Byers the VP of Public Affairs at Neutron Energy Inc. talks about the benefits for uranium mining on the east side of Mt. Taylor to a panel from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at the GEIS Public Meeting on Thursday night at the Best Western on the Westside of Gallup. [Photo by Matt Hinshaw/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff writer

GALLUP — Along the eastern base of Mount Taylor, in the tiny community of Seboyeta, Jerry Poll can hardly wait for the uranium companies staking claims in the area to start mining again.

Before the price of uranium plummeted in the wake of Three Mile Island some 25 years ago, mining companies put him and his neighbors to work.

“It never hurt our water,” he said. “It gave us jobs.”

On the other side of the towering mountain, next to the Homestake Mining Company’s decommissioned uranium mill, Art Gebeau is in no rush to see those companies return. After years of company efforts to clean up the groundwater its operations contaminated, the plume beneath his land has actually spread. The 33-year industry veteran would rather see the companies clean up the mess they left behind before even considering letting them back.

The two men could stand in for the polar ends of a mounting local debate on the pros and cons of uranium mining. Inside a rented banquet room of Gallup’s Best Western Inn, they squared off for more than three hours Thursday evening over new rules the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing that would streamline the licensing of new mines.

Spurred by rebounding uranium prices, the industry is rumbling back to life. Companies are re-examining dormant claims and staking new ones. To handle the flood of mining applications it expects them to file over the next few years, the Generic Environmental Impact Statement is the NRC’s preemptive strike on a ballooning workload.

Industry representatives say a GEIS would help wean the country off unreliable foreign uranium supplied by spurring domestic production, and generate much-needed jobs. Opponents say it will weaken already lax safety standards and put long-suffering communities at further risk of contamination.

The GEIS would summarize everything that’s common among all solution mining operations across the county. It would save the applicant the trouble of collecting some site-specific information, and save the NRC the trouble of reviewing it. But as its opponents like to say, there’s nothing generic about the county’s environment. Each site, they insist, deserves its own full environmental review, as happens now.

Opponents also say the GEIS would cut down on the public’s chance to comment on applications.

A company that wants to start solution mining today must prepare an environmental impact statement, an involved report on all the ways the mine could affect the area. If the NRC had a GEIS, it could get by with a simpler environmental assessment. Besides less site-specific data, opponents complain, the NRC is less likely to follow up on an assessment with public hearings.

When the NRC hosted a forum on the GEIS in Albuquerque Aug. 9, Chris Shuey of the Southwest Research and Information Center called the commission’s talk of streamlining “a euphemism for reducing regulation ... and x-ing out the community.”

“The potential for fewer public meetings is there,” NRC branch chief Gregory Suber said at the time.

But the meeting gave the NRC something to think about. Taking the comments into consideration, Suber said, the GEIS will now insist that all assessments come with a public hearing.

“Your comments have been heard and they are important to us,” he told the crowd Thursday.

Suber also reminded them that a GEIS will not stop the NRC from requesting supplemental site-specific information if it is not satisfied with the environmental assessment.

The skeptics were not appeased. The staunchest among them asked the NRC to drop its plans for a GEIS altogether.

“The GEIS should not even be considered,” said Larry King, a former uranium miner from Churchrock. “It just makes the jobs of people in Washington easier.”

“The Navajos have clearly said no,” added Chris Kenny of Gallup Solar, a local group working to bring commercial-scale solar energy to the area.

“Why do another study?” he asked the NRC. “Because you’re paid to do it and it’s your job. Find another job.”

The Navajo Nation, which banned all uranium mining and processing in 2005, went even further. It implored the NRC not to grant any licenses, with or without a GEIS, on any “Navajoland” on or off the reservation.

“That is the Navajo Nation’s position, and it’s not going to be altered,” George Arthur, a member of the tribe’s Natural Resources Committee, reminded the panel of NRC officials emphatically.

The NRC won’t commit just yet.

“I don’t think that we would want to spend all the resources (reviewing companies’ applications) if we knew they would not be able to use the license because of the ban,” Francis Cameron, a legal advisor for the NRC, told the Independent the next day.

But the tribe’s ban has yet to be tested, and Cameron added that he’d want his staff to take a closer look at the law before deciding whether or not the NRC would actually respect it, “so I couldn’t say one way or the other.”

“It’s something that we well take a look at,” he said.

The tribe faces some opposition from within. Navajo allottees who have or want to lease their land to mining companies say the ban violates their right to do with their land as they please. They hope to earn handsome royalties off their land if mining ever starts. But Thursday evening they spoke about how many people the mines could put to work.

“The people of Crownpoint are desperately in need of jobs,” said Danny Charley, an allottee. “Instead of going to food stamp offices and selling burritos ... they can bring home a check.”

“There are a lot of groups running around protesting uranium,” he went on. “They’re not going to give us jobs. My land will.”

“We need opportunities,” another industry proponent said. “If you have better solutions, lets hear it.”

Opponents do have solutions. They want to develop the area’s abundant wind and solar resources.

Industry reps tell the tribe it has nothing to fear from modern mining methods. But they said the same thing in the 1940s when they first started mining uranium here to feed the country’s nuclear weapons program.

“They spoke of defending the nation and they promised economic benefits to the Navajo people, but they did not mention the brutal health and environmental effects of mining radioactive materials,” Calvert Curley told the NRC panel, reading from a statement from U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M.

As a lawyer, Udall helped his father, Steward Udall, seek restitution for some of the hundreds of Navajo miners those mines killed or chronically disabled. The work helped pressure Congress into passing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

“As you develop your proposal, I ask you to remember that an environmental impact statement is not just another piece of red tape,” Curley read. “It is a crucial defense against the kind of irresponsibility that has already led to the deaths of too many Navajo miners and the poisoning of some of the most beautiful land in our nation.”

“Our goal, our mission, is to protect human health and the environment,” Suber assured the crowd.

But the NRC’s actions leave opponents doubtful.

Eric Jantz, an attorney for the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, referred to a government report that cited a case in which it declared a mine restored though contamination levels had risen from 0.5 to 3.5 milligrams per liter.

“So that’s what restoration means to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” he said.

Though no solution mining site has ever been restored to its original conditions, none has ever contaminated a drinking water supply either.

The NRC is accepting public comment on the GEIS until Oct. 31. It plans to issue its first public draft in April, at which point it will solicit further comment. It hopes to settle on a final version by January 2009.