Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Protecting our water

Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004 | 8:52 a.m.

ALMOST SEVEN YEARS HAVE PASSED since this column expressed concern about the uranium tailings, from the Atlas Minerals mill, piled up on the bank of the Colorado River in Southern Utah. This week we have been told that the Department of Energy will release the draft of the environmental impact statement in April, but will withhold its preferred solution of the problem until the final impact statement is released.

Just to refresh your memory, the problem is the toxins and radiation from the tailings entering the Colorado River, which is our water supply. Bill Hedden of the Grand Canyon Trust told us in a 1997 briefing paper that "At low water levels, the river is about 750 feet from the pile, but in moderately high water years (about every five years), the river floods against the tailings pile itself. Water levels in Atlas' shallow wells show a strong hydraulic connection to the river level. The base of the pile is in intimate contact with the alluvial aquifer, and is periodically saturated by the groundwater. Outflow from the pile reaches the river from the seeps described above and from springs in the riverbed."

At that time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was overseeing the problem. The NRC was seriously thinking about leaving the tailings where they fell and capping them. This resulted in several Western members of Congress providing then-Vice President Al Gore with the following information: "We understand that the NRC is ready to approve leaving the tailings pond in place rather than requiring removal to a safer location. We are deeply concerned that the risks to drinking water supplies, human health and the environment have been grossly underestimated in the decision-making process. Leaving a tailings pile of the size and state of the Atlas site in place adjacent to the Colorado River does not make sense. In the event of a flood, the Colorado River could easily be contaminated.

"The National Park Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and many state and local government agencies have all expressed concerns about the quality of scientific data and information upon which NRC decisions have been and will be based."

Two years later the responsibility for the uranium tailings was taken over by the Department of Energy, which has much more experience cleaning up toxic waste sites. Then in 2000 money was appropriated, through the Defense Department budget, for the DOE to begin its work, which had to include an environmental impact statement. The DOE had made it known that capping the tailings would not be an acceptable solution to the problem and that the tailings must be removed. It also estimated that 28,800 gallons of the poisonous liquid from the tailings is entering the river every day. The liquids include radioactivity mixed with ammonia, arsenic, lead, selenium, mercury and other heavy metals.

This week another red flag was hoisted over Utah, and we all should pay attention. The withholding of what method the DOE will recommend to solve the uranium tailings threat to our drinking water will not be released with the draft report. The Associated Press gave Sun readers the following: "Critics claim the agency is being cowardly, possibly because it is going to recommend capping the tailings.

" 'They don't want to put out a preferred alternative, because they don't want to take any heat from the public,' Moab resident Bill Love said.

"Sharon Buccino of the Natural Resources Defense Council said, 'The Department of Energy should put its cards on the table so that the affected public has a meaningful opportunity to react.' "

Allow me to again tell our elected representatives that they had better get on top of this deadly mess right now and not wait for another surprise from a government agency seeking a cheap fix that will solve nothing. Our water supply is too valuable and so is the health of our families too precious for us to accept anything less than complete removal of the threat posed by the uranium tailings already leaking into the Colorado River.