HRI offers grant program for nonprofit organizations

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Hydro Resources Inc. hopes a grant program it's just unveiled for local nonprofit groups will help address some of the area's pressing needs. The uranium mining company's opponents dismiss it as a desperate attempt to curry the favor of a skeptical public.

HRI, a Texas-based company that's been after northwest New Mexico's uranium for over two decades, started spreading word of the program two months ago and sent out the first batch of applications last week. Kristin Jensen of DWTurner, the public relations company HRI is working with, said it's sent out over 75, to every 501(c)(3) in McKinley County it could find.

The parameters are simple enough. The company is looking for proposals "that seek to positively impact the community" in at least one of four areas: environmental stewardship, youth and education, health and human services, and economic development.

The financial parameters are even simpler. According to Jensen, HRI has set aside no specific amount of money for the program and has set no limit on how much money any one group can ask for or even how often in can apply.

The goal, she said, is to "let the needs in the community dictate the amount of money that's invested."

It sounds like an impressive commitment for a company that hasn't even begun mining — and, consequently, making a profit — in the state. HRI started buying up land in McKinley County in 1986 and filed its application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission two years later; however, numerous appeals from opponents delayed final approval until late 2006. And with the matter now tied up in federal court, it could be years away from mining still.

Lynnea Smith of the Eastern Diné Against Uranium Mining, HRI's chief opposition, finds the company's timing telling. The Navajo Nation Council passed the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act, banning all uranium mining and processing on Navajoland, in 2005; meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an important decision on the "Indian country" status of one of HRI's sites in ENDAUM's favor only months ago.

ENDAUM believes the company's in situ leach mining, which involves injecting chemicals into underground aquifers to loosen the uranium from its host rock and pumping the mixture to the surface for processing, poses an unacceptable risk to the community's water supplies. To Smith, the grant program is nothing more than a divide-and-conquer strategy.

"HRI is trying to coax people to switch sides ... they're just trying to buy out the community," she said. "And now that the heat is being turned on, they're doing something about it."

Smith was actually glad to hear about the program. It's a sign, she said, that "they're running scared."

But to Herb Mosher, director of the McKinley Development Foundation, a local nonprofit that stands to benefit from the program, it's not so simple.

Mosher said he was sensitive to the Navajo Nation's concerns about the open pit and underground uranium mining that's scarred its land in the past, when poorly regulated radon levels poisoned many a Navajo miner. But Mosher also has more faith in the leach mining of today.

Whether HRI will use the grant program merely to curry favor, he said, remains to be seen. The test will be to see what programs and projects the company decides to fund.

"I think people need to wait and reserve judgment," he said.

With HRI's plans for New Mexico still awaiting resolution in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, the company may still be years away from turning a profit in the state. But Jensen said the grant program will be around as long as HRI remains "active" here.

The company plans to announce its first awards July 13.