First, the Griping
Every job has its moments when you really know that you are earning your money the hard way. For my daughter working in a fast food restaurant, one of those moments came every time she had to reach into a vat of tuna fish up to her elbows to stir in the mayonnaise. Now I have to reach into my reserves of courage in my job as a conservationist: Jim Stiles asked me to write up a comprehensive account of the legal and political wrangling over the Atlas uranium tailings pile--and please make it charming and fun to read. Since it's my job, I couldn't say 'no way', but now, sitting here at the keyboard, I think I would choose tuna fish.

You, dear reader, are ensnared in this, too. If you just skip on to the next article, you'll soon be into the dumb cartoons at the back of the paper, and you'll never recoup the investment you made in stealing the Zephyr. So, bear with me in surveying this bowl of spinach we have to eat in order to understand what is going on with that big pile of radioactive debris sitting on the riverbank north of Moab.

It could be fun...first, there's the side-splitting story of how the Atomic Energy Commission told Charlie Steen's Uranium Reduction Company to build the tailings pile in the flood plain of the Colorado river. Then, during the height of the Cold War, came the salad days of pumping the tailings straight out of the pile and into the river. Oh, I'm seeing it now...on to the mesmerizing story of the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act and the dawning of environmental consciousness in these matters; a consciousness which arrived, right on schedule, fifteen years later in Utah in the form of a feisty Grand County Council willing to take on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All this building to a climax in the thrilling U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Revised Draft Biological Opinion for the Atlas Moab Mill, and finishing up with a prescient look into the crystal ball to guess the future. On second thought folks, buckle your seat belts...it's going to be a wild ride!

The Early Days
Who hasn't heard the famous story of dejected prospector Charlie Steen leaving Moab in the early 1950's, his grubstake spent, with nothing to show but some ore samples from Lisbon Valley in the back of his pickup truck. He stopped in the metropolis of Cisco to get some gas and discovered that his samples sent the needle of a Geiger counter off the scale, inducing him to turn right around and drive back down the river to put Moab on the map as the "uranium capital of the world." By 1956, under the direction of the Atomic Energy Commission, he had built a mill on the site of an old uranium buying station near the Colorado river and was producing material for the nuclear weapons program. The tailings pond where the radioactive mill wastes were dumped was established by excavating a shallow bathtub in the floodplain and surrounding it with sandy berms.

Those were heady days. In a few short years of uranium money, Moab went from dirt streets and outhouses to a real town with a population substantially larger than it has today. Much of the celebrated ugliness of the town originates in the fact that so much of it was built by and for miners during the architectural disaster that was the 1950s. Steen held parties for the whole town and flew in plane-loads of seafood from the coast. A marvelous photograph that used to hang in the MiVida Restaurant shows Charlie, grinning like mad, shaking hands with a beaming Vice President Richard Nixon who is handing over a huge check for uranium delivered to the weapons program. Steen was getting rich saving the world from communism, and nuclear power promised to produce power "too cheap to meter." We will never again recapture that kind of innocence, nor have we yet really shaken off its effects. Wouldn't it be wonderful if things could really be that simple?

Uranium fever gripped the whole southwest. Predictably many facilities were concentrated in Native American communities. Also, mills, which needed lots of water, were built beside the Colorado river in Grand Junction and Rifle; beside the Animas river in Durango; along the Gunnison river in Gunnison; the Green river at Green River; the San Juan river at Shiprock; the San Miguel river at Naturita; the Little Wind river at Riverton; and the Dolores river at Slick Rock. One use for rivers was diluting mill wastes.

The Moab mill, bought by Atlas Corporation in 1962, was fairly typical in that effluent from the mill drained into a "scalping pond" where suspended solids were dumped. Pumps pushed this liquid up into the main tailings pond where the bulk of the "fines" settled, surrounded by dikes of less radioactive sandy tailings. Overflow towers drained off the liquid to yet another pond where barium was introduced to precipitate radium before the liquid was allowed to flow into the river through a ditch. Spills and seepage from the unlined tailings pond poisoned the groundwater that flowed to the river, and the good that was done by intercepting contaminants was undone when most of these ancillary ponds were simply buried in the floodplain as changing mill operations rendered them obsolete. The other mills were doing the same thing to nearly every river in the desert region. Cold war was prompting us to display the survival instincts of dodos.

Then a fascinating series of things happened: first, our nuclear stockpile grew so large that even the government was satisfied, and orders for uranium fell off, sending most of the mills into bankruptcy and abandonment. Next, the Arab oil embargo of 1973 revealed our debilitating dependence on foreign energy sources. Soon thereafter, the Carter administration began to prop up the price of domestic energy essentials like uranium and oil shale, prompting the most recent mining and milling boom in this part of the world. This lasted until Ronald Reagan cut off the subsidies and killed the boom, just as he promised he would. As soon as the federal handout was gone, Atlas closed the mill in 1984. But, I'm getting ahead of myself back to the story. The new uranium market for commercial nuclear power caused a second wave of uranium mills to be built during the 1970s. These were built on stable sites away from rivers, and the tailings ponds at some were even lined. (See? We can learn.) The Atlas facility, unlike most other mills of its generation, was refurbished to compete in this new market, with the result that its tailings pile eventually grew to be the granddaddy of all the old mills.

The Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978 (UMTRCA)
The spate of new mill construction coupled with growing awareness of high cancer rates among uranium workers prompted Congress to look at the whole issue of uranium mill regulation in the mid 1970s. What they found were abandoned facilities, that had once operated under contract with the government, emitting radon into the air and leaking toxic sludge into the waterways of the West; clearly a situation to be addressed. The Congress also wanted to get a handle on environmental concerns at the new facilities then being built, and to clarify how the tailings piles, which remain dangerous for 400,000 years, ought to be reclaimed. The result was The Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act, a landmark piece of legislation that frames the issues to this day.

The Act classified mills according to whether they were still in operation or not: abandoned mills were given to the Department of Energy (DOE) to clean-up under the regulatory authority of the newly formed Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); whereas, companies still operating uranium mills in 1978 were to clean-up their own facilities under the watchful eye of the NRC. Congress appropriated money for reclamation at the DOE sites, but not for the NRC ones which are to be paid for by the responsible companies. Generally, this was a sensible scheme. The abandoned mills were from the days before any semblance of environmental awareness, and involved extensive contamination of soil, water and air in sensitive places like towns and riverbanks. Clean-up required the resources of the federal government. In contrast, the operating mills were second-generation, located and built with effective reclamation in mind. It was reasonable to suppose the companies could do the job. Atlas, appropriately "Exhibit A" in the DOE portfolio of sites, was handed to the NRC because the mill was still in operation. And that is where things began to go wrong.

Reclamation Plans
Once the law had been laid down, everybody got busy figuring out how to comply with it or get around it. The DOE originally thought that all of the twenty four abandoned mills on its docket would be stabilized where they sat, but public outcry convinced the agency to move every one of the riverside sites listed above to safer places (except the Shiprock mill, which sits on a bluff high above the San Juan river). Altogether, the American public now has an investment of about $1.6 billion in cleaning up the mess, with most of the groundwater work still to be done. Whether you think that's too much or not probably depends on what you think the water supply in the southwest is worth. Only the Atlas pile, the largest and leakiest, remains beside a river.

Over on the NRC side, lawyers and lobbyists from the companies got busy working with the agency and the Congress to get financial help and to set reclamation standards they could live with. They did pretty well on both counts. On the money side, they prodded Congress to pass the Energy Policy Act of 1992. This Act contains a provision that makes the federal government responsible for a share of the clean-up costs equal to the percentage of total mill production that went to the government. Taxpayers propped up the price of the uranium and now have to pay for the clean up, too. Atlas is being reimbursed for 56% of its reclamation costs, with a potential federal subsidy of nearly $30 million dollars.

Equally important, the companies quietly won important victories in the way standards for reclamation are set. Soon after passage of UMTRCA the companies proposed, and the NRC approved, reclamation plans for each of the mills. In 1981, before any standards were set, Atlas offered to dredge sand and gravel out of the Colorado river and put it on top of the tailings to keep the radon in. NRC agreed with the adequacy of this plan, and the company set aside a bond for $6.5 million to do the job. A decade later, NRC adopted standards stating that reclamation must permanently isolate the tailings from the environment in such a way that no ongoing maintenance is required. The "prime option" for doing that is below ground disposal at a suitably stable and isolated site. Residual contamination is supposed to be reduced to such low levels that the site can be released for unlimited uses (That is how the Grand Junction Climax uranium mill site became Colorado River State Park after clean-up by the DOE.). It all sounds pretty good, but read the fine print: in the introduction to the NRC regulations is a provision that allows the companies to propose alternatives to the standards that will get the job done done "to the extent practicable". Anything that the companies consider too inconvenient or expensive is "impracticable" and thus not required. Laugh, if you like, but NRC got taken to court on this one and they won. Through this loophole Atlas is pouring 30,000 gallons of toxic sludge into the aquifer of the Colorado river every day. The leakage will continue at a gradually declining rate for hundreds of years. Like dozens of other contaminants, the concentration of uranium in the groundwater at Atlas is 560 times higher than the NRC maximum standard, but it isn't "practicable" to clean it up. NRC accommodates situations like this by issuing what it calls "Alternate Concentration Limits," and Atlas' whole reclamation plan is built around "ACLs."

License Amendment
Narrow technicalities compelled Atlas to seek amendment of its reclamation plan in 1993. Since the tailings are so near the river and the two highways, it isn't possible to flatten out the side slopes of the pile to meet regulations. Atlas said it was not "practicable" to comply and asked NRC to approve slopes three times steeper. Without worrying about stability, NRC agreed, and issued a Finding (FONSI) that its decision to amend Atlas' license would have no significant impact on the environment.

It was at this point that the Grand County Council intervened. In strongly worded comments, local government asked how a reclamation plan that left 10.5 million tons of tailings towering 100 feet high on unstable alluvium in the floodplain of the southwest's largest river, adjacent to a town and the entrance to a national park, blocking the mouth of a major wash, at the confluence of two fault systems and directly across the river from the largest wetland on the upper Colorado could possibly meet the objectives of below grade disposal at a suitable site? Senator Orrin Hatch agreed and told NRC to go back to the drawing board. They reluctantly announced that they were doing a full blown Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Technical Evaluation Report (TER) on Atlas. This had never happened before, and NRC has been angry ever since at the boors who just don't realize that they have already approved leaving the tailings there, and that they lack the authority to consider any plan that Atlas has not proposed. Writing the EIS and TER has been a perfunctory exercise for NRC, and the conclusions are foregone.

The bureaucratic stalemate has been influenced by several new wrinkles as we await the Final EIS. First, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been asked to consult with NRC on the possible effect of the capping plan on endangered fish living in the river. This stretch is designated as Critical Habitat for four species of fish, and after surveying contamination in the river, Fish and Wildlife concluded in its Revised Draft Biological Opinion that Atlas' plan will jeopardize the continued existence of Colorado squawfish and razorback suckers. Ammonia in the river below Atlas is seven times the lethal dose for the fish, and that stretch is the river's most critical young-of-the-year rearing area for squawfish, so Fish and Wildlife isn't just being picky. This raises the possibility of a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act. Also, the Grand Canyon Trust, Sierra Club and brave local businesses and individuals have served Atlas with a notice of intent to sue under the Clean Water Act for discharging pollutants into the river without a permit. If any of the trains could get moving, there would be a wreck.

Money
You knew this all would come down to money, didn't you? After a two year process, NRC issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement that concluded that moving the tailings out to Klondike Flats would be preferable to leaving them on the river bank in every respect except it would cost more. So, of course, they recommended leaving them. Atlas contends that it can cap the pile for about $20 million and that moving it would cost $150 million or so. That is debatable since the least expensive reclamation-in-place which has ever been completed, at Ambrosia Lake, N.M, cost $7.57 per cubic yard. There were no complicating factors there, but, assuming Atlas could match that figure, the 7.5 million cubic yards of tailings at Atlas would still cost $56.8 million to cap on the riverbank. And that includes no money for groundwater clean-up. The reason Atlas hopes to get off for less lies in the old practicability standard. The company plans to scrape some dirt and rocks over the pile, hand it to the DOE for perpetual care, and walk off into the sunset; a reclamation that might not cost too much, but that wouldn't be worth doing, either. Though costs for the best relocation procedures have not been estimated yet, moving the tailings will be expensive, partly because if the nuclear materials are moved offsite, NRC loses its authority to warp the standards and must force a real clean-up of the groundwater. The truth is that any clean-up, capping or moving, that comes halfway close to meeting standards and that protects the river and the air will bankrupt Atlas with its paltry $6.5 million bond.

NRC knows this and is terrified of any option that will cost more than Atlas planned for. The agency has no budget for reclamation, and does not want to stick Atlas with costs for regulations that were developed after the company bonded for an approved (albeit worthless) reclamation plan. Atlas will either sue NRC or go bankrupt or both, and we won't even get a cap on the pile. That is why NRC is happy to concur every time Atlas proposes yet another exemption from the standards. Only congressional action addressing this unique situation and appropriating money for it can help taxpayers and Atlas avoid paying for a failed reclamation on the riverbank, followed by a wholly taxpayer funded project to move the mill wastes out to Klondike Flats.

What would such congressional action look like? Well, if Atlas made some appropriate exit payment (Say, a full match of the Energy Act money.), and the site was transferred to the DOE which has staff and experience with twenty tailings piles, the terror over Atlas' fragile financial situation would be removed, and we could look honestly at the total long term costs of various alternative reclamation actions. Senator Bob Bennett is considering flushing out some money to hire a big mining contractor to submit actual bids to cap or move the tailings. If the bids compare relocation and groundwater clean up that meets standards with a fully compliant capping plan that first reduces the tailings to a dry husk and then covers them with a watertight cover, then this would be a good first step to getting the information we need to make the right decision.

tailings pile from air

tailings pile from ground