by Roger Clark, Grand Canyon Director
Why should we halt uranium mining in and around the Grand Canyon? Answer: It could put Grand Canyon waters — including the Havasupai Tribe's sole source of drinking water — at risk.
Earlier this year, Energy Fuels — the company that owns Canyon Mine and the White Mesa uranium mill in southern Utah — “proactively implemented emergency response actions including enhanced evaporation through the use of land sharks” at the Canyon uranium mine, according to a June 26, 2017 email (see page 27).
What could be so dangerous as to trigger the use of such devilish-sounding devices? Welcome to our second installment of "Why Ban Grand Canyon Uranium Mining?"
Canyon Mine is a uranium mine that was partially constructed during the 1980s on publically owned national forest land, six miles from where millions of visitors enter Grand Canyon National Park each year. After decades of dormancy, its owners recently completed digging the mine shaft to more than 1,400 feet beneath the surface. Problems arose, however, when the mine shaft filled with far more groundwater than expected.
This winter, snowmelt and rain nearly filled the mine’s wastewater pond. As required by state and federal permits, all surface runoff from the 17-acre mine site must be captured and contained in this lined pond, including floodwaters from a 100-year storm event. The pond must also have enough capacity to collect any groundwater that is encountered when digging the mine shaft. Under ordinary circumstances, this lined pond is supposed to evaporate wastewater fast enough to make room for all surface wastewater and groundwater and capture runoff from major storms.
This past spring, circumstances were far from ordinary. As miners dug the shaft, they struck a water-bearing zone in the Coconino Sandstone, where “perched” aquifers are found. Unfortunately, they hit so much groundwater that they had to pump it out continuously to keep the shaft from completely filling with water. By March, the 3.3 million gallon pond was full, according to a May 23, 2017 email (see page 20).
The company had to avoid overfilling the pond to ensure compliance with its Forest Service approved plan of operations and its state of Arizona aquifer protection permit. To deal with this “emergency” situation, Energy Fuels implemented, without any public process or regulatory approvals, a two-step scheme.
Near the end of May, Energy Fuels reported that it was paying 25 cents per gallon to truck “approximately 1.3 million gallons of impacted water [to date]” to its White Mesa uranium mill in southeastern Utah. And from February through May, the company ran high-pressure pumps (known as “land sharks”) to shoot unwanted groundwater, some of which was contaminated, into the air in order to accelerate evaporation, according to a May 23, 2017 email (see page 20).
By July, the Forest Service reported that the water level in the pond was dropping. The Arizona Department of Water Resources decided not to enforce violations of state law because Energy Fuels had agreed to employ new measures to eliminate the risk of overtopping the pond in the future, including using “electric boilers to enhance evaporation rates, continued use of land sharks, segregation of the clean groundwater aquifer from the mine wastewater, and possible on-site treatment of contaminated water.” The Arizona Department of Water Resources also warned that, in the future, Energy Fuels is required to get permission prior to trucking water across the state line for use and disposal at the White Mesa uranium mill, according to a July 27, 2017 letter from the Arizona Department of Water Resources (see page 50).
For approximately six months, precious groundwater was pouring into the bottom of the mine shaft, where construction materials likely contaminated the water. Not only did the company intercept a “perched aquifer,” the water-infused shaft likely increased the risk of polluting the deeper aquifer that provides drinking water for the region. Like a poisonous hypodermic needle stuck into a watermelon, the uranium mine’s shaft punctured a tiny hole into porous rock, which risks contaminating the whole melon — or, in this case, permanently polluting the Grand Canyon’s most prolific aquifer.
In the aftermath, Energy Fuels representatives were found speaking out of both sides of the company’s mouth. In the press, Energy Fuels reassured the public that regional water supplies were not at risk. According to Curtis Moore, vice president of marketing and corporate development, "The excess water we are managing is relatively clean, and contains only trace amounts of natural uranium…In fact, the water we are trucking offsite either meets — or comes very close to meeting — EPA drinking water standards for dissolved uranium."
But company lawyers painted a slightly different picture during negotiations with the state relating to Energy Fuels’ trucking of water to Utah. State law prohibits moving Arizona water to other states without prior approval, unless the water is a waste product. The company argued to the state that the water was contaminated with a variety of toxic materials, including uranium, and that Energy Fuels was simply “managing” and “disposing” of this waste, according to a June 26, 2017 email (see pages 31-32).
Although state water regulators didn’t buy Energy Fuels’ argument (you might say it didn’t hold water), they and the Forest Service have issued no citations and continue to allow Canyon Mine to operate.
Using “land sharks” to “manage” the Grand Canyon’s precious waters is no way to secure our national treasure. Nevertheless, regulators keep issuing pollution permits to private corporations whose bottom lines don’t include protecting our public interest. This latest episode demonstrates, once again, our collective failure to recognize (or to prevent, remove, or mitigate) the potential danger of dissolved uranium in waters in and around Grand Canyon National Park.
To fully protect this region, the temporary ban on new uranium mines near the Grand Canyon must be made permanent and additional monitoring wells should be required at Canyon Mine, where contamination of the aquifer may already be well underway.
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