But the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment says its issuance of the first radioactive materials license in the United States since the Cold War was perfectly legal and followed “a robust public process” that included two public hearings and six additional public meetings.

Warren Smith, a spokesman for the state agency, said in an interview Thursday that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission never communicated any formal determination to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and state officials only learned of the problem from a third party.

“The NRC didn’t even copy us on that letter. The way they went about this was really inappropriate and unprofessional,” Smith said.

State officials dispute Telluride-based Sheep Mountain Alliance’s contention that the application process for the Piñon Ridge uranium mill should be reopened to include “a proper public hearing,” or that they must overhaul the system they use to grant licenses for uranium mining operations.

The Paradox Valley (Photo by Jim Wark/Airphoto)

Sheep Mountain Alliance representatives say the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent its lawyer a letter last week that corroborates the group’s concern with how the Piñon Ridge process was conducted.

“Intervention by the NRC is unusual,” Sheep Mountain Alliance attorney Jeffrey C. Parsons said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “NRC rarely comes down so clearly and explicitly stating that a state’s public review process was flawed. The CDPHE ignored our concerns over this; they went ahead and issued the mill license. The NRC has irrefutably substantiated our concerns.”

The Piñon Ridge Uranium Mill, proposed by Canada-based Energy Fuels Inc., would be built between the San Miguel and Dolores rivers on an 880-acre parcel in scenic Paradox Valley.

Sheep Mountain Alliance representatives worry the mill could contaminate the area’s groundwater and air. They also cite concerns about the mill’s socioeconomic impacts and its effect on wildlife.

Energy Fuels executives say the mill will create scores of well-paying jobs in the hardscrabble region.

The company issued a statement questioning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s purview.

“Colorado is an ‘agreement state’ whereby the sole authority for the licensing of uranium mills was granted to the state by the NRC itself, and continues to reside with Colorado,” Energy Fuels stated. “The NRC has no jurisdiction or authority to issue, amend, or revoke mill licenses in Colorado, including the license for Piñon Ridge. The NRC’s primary remedy is to work with Colorado to correct any perceived deficiencies in Colorado’s laws and regulations. While the Company and Colorado dispute that any deficiencies exist, these corrections would only apply to future radioactive materials licenses issued by Colorado, and not past actions like the approval of the Piñon Ridge Mill.”

Sheep Mountain Alliance maintains more public scrutiny is needed.

“The NRC has confirmed CDPHE failed to provide the public with a meaningful opportunity to review the … permit,” Parsons said. “We need new and objective eyes to look at this mill proposal.”

Rather than seek an appropriate technological solution, managers of a decommissioned uranium processing mill near Cañon City want the state to let them stop testing a radioactive holding pond because wooden pallets used to cross the pond are sinking into the toxic mud.

Environmental attorneys and watchdog citizen groups point out that the company that owns the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Cleanup site that’s been leaking into local groundwater since the 1950s is Cotter Corp., a subsidiary of General Atomics, which is a division of General Dynamics – the company that makes high-tech Predator Drones.

As the Denver Post first reported late last week, Cotter officials have asked (pdf) the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to allow them to stop testing the pond for acidity. Cotter is in the process of dismantling the old mill, although at one point recently the company was considering re-starting operations there. Now the facility is the subject of ongoing litigation.

“The attached photos will indicate the problems getting to and the distance from the water,” a CDPHE official wrote in a July 21 report (pdf) on the situation. “Personnel have used pallets to provide a stable walking and work platform but the pallets are now at least two deep and continue to sink into the mud. It is my opinion that accessing the ponds edge is no longer safe.

“With the pallets continuing to sink and the stability of the ground it is recommended that personnel discontinue the practice of taking pH measurements in the Primary Impoundment.”

Travis Stills, an attorney with the Durango-based Energy Minerals Law Center, points out that these are the same state regulators who will oversee the proposed new Piñon Ridge Uranium Mill that the Canadian company, Energy Fuels, wants to build in western Montrose County.

“Basically, the judgment of the nuclear fuels industry and its captive regulators in Colorado is not to be trusted when it comes to matters of health, safety, and a clean environment,” Stills said in an email. “[Coloradans Against ToxicWaste], without the benefit of attorneys, examined Cotter in 2005 to establish the importance of monitoring and maintaining pH levels to stabilize the tailings and prevent further deterioration of the liners.”

Denver District Judge Brian Whitney sided with the Telluride-based Sheep Mountain Alliance, which contends the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) may have violated various state and federal laws in issuing a permit for the mill. The lawsuit can now move forward.

The state and the project developer, Toronto-based Energy Fuels, had argued that the court had no role in reviewing the radioactive materials license for the proposed mill or jurisdiction in the case.

“For too long, state radiation regulators and the uranium industry has had a cozy relationship that has caused long-term contamination to continue unabated here on the Western Slope and on the Front Range,” said Hilary White, executive director of Sheep Mountain Alliance.

“That questionable relationship continues today as both Energy Fuels and the state try to argue Colorado residents have no seat at the table in trying to protect our clean air and water from uranium mining and milling. Thankfully, the court has rejected those arguments.”

Sheep Mountain also has sued Montrose County for permitting the proposed mill, which would be the first new uranium processing facility in the United States in nearly three decades. In an earlier interview with the Colorado Independent, Energy Fuels President and CEO Stephen Antony said legal challenges have been taken into consideration in the time frame for building Piñon Ridge.

“It’s all subject to how that process winds its way through the judicial system, but we added about six months in the schedule, so that puts us breaking ground in the fourth quarter of this year and commissioning [a working mill] a year later in the third quarter of 2012,” Antony said, adding the project is also contingent on capital investment and the global uranium market.

In his ruling on Wednesday, Whitney wrote that Sheep Mountain Alliance “members’ property interests, monetary interests, recreational interests, agricultural interests, and ecological interests are adversely affected by the issuance of the license” and that their “interests are those of an organization whose members are or will be injured, not an organization with mere interest in a problem.”

Sheep Mountain Alliance also is requesting the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delay its proposed approval of radon permits for the mill until it updates outdated Clean Air Act regulations. Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet has also urged the EPA to move cautiously on the mill.

A Telluride-based environmental group claims state regulators violated various state and federal laws last month when they issued a radioactive materials license to the proposed Piñon Ridge Uranium Mill on Colorado’s Western Slope.

In a legal challenge filed in Denver District Court last week, the Sheep Mountain Alliance alleges the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) violated both the federal Atomic Energy Act and the Colorado Radiation Control Act when it issued a license for Toronto-based Energy Fuels to build the first new uranium processing mill in the United States in more than three decades.

The Piñon Ridge project hopes to capitalize on a resurgent interest in the nation’s nuclear power industry as a means of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions more prevalent with coal and gas-fired power plants. But environmentalists insist nuclear power is still too costly, consumes too much water and leaves a legacy of toxic waste from spent fuel rods and uranium mining operations.

The mill would be built in far western Montrose County, near the old uranium industry company town of Uravan – an EPA Superfund cleanup site. Many residents of rural and economically depressed Montrose County favor the mill, while the strongest opposition comes from neighboring San Miguel County – home to the famous ski town of Telluride and a more vibrant tourism, outdoor recreation and real estate economy.

The Sheep Mountain Alliance lawsuit alleges the state didn’t allow the public to ask regulators or Energy Fuels’ officials direct technical questions about the mill, which violates the Atomic Energy Act.

“Sheep Mountain Alliance exhausted all remedies before we decided to file this lawsuit,” Linda Miller, a member of Sheep Mountain Alliance board of directors, said in a release. “We participated in the approval process but our concerns were not addressed. We’re disappointed that the state did not issue a decision that would have protected the public interest and we must now rely on the district court to uphold the law.”

A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Radiation Management Unit did not return a call requesting comment.

Energy Fuels President and CEO Stephen Antony told The Colorado Independent that environmental groups and the members of the public had ample opportunity to ask any and all technical questions.

“They could have addressed questions orally or they could have put them in writing, and to our knowledge, the CDPHE said they addressed all questions,” Antony said. “They had something like 435 questions that they responded to.”

The lawsuit accuses the CDPHE of violating state laws designed to keep Colorado taxpayers from having to shoulder the costs of cleaning up uranium mills, which the suit claims have contaminated groundwater everywhere they’ve been built in the state.

Past facilities such as the Cotter Mill near Cañon City – also an EPA Superfund site – have cost anywhere from $50 million to $500 million to clean up and reclaim, the lawsuit claims, arguing the $11 million surety bond required of Energy Fuels for Piñon Ridge is woefully inadequate.

“If state regulators ignore basic federal and state law to permit this mill, how can we ever trust them to monitor the mill once it’s in production?” Miller said.

Antony counters that the bond is “$12 million roughly,” and that it comes from a fact-based formula.

“That’s calculated based on the state regulations and is sufficient to cover all the requirements of reclamation, and it’s calculated on actual contractor-estimated costs – in today’s dollars, of course,” Antony said. “It’s adjusted every five years when you renew [the permit]. They look at the inflation index and adjust the amount for inflation and any other factors.”

Opponents of the Piñon Ridge Mill have long assailed what they consider shaky financing should things go bad at the proposed mill, saying Energy Fuels can barely afford startup, let alone cleanup. The size of the surety bond has long been a sticking point.

By comparison, state regulators originally set a price tag of nearly $44 million to finish cleaning up the Cotter Mill, then settled on just over $20 million. That prompted a lawsuit last fall from a grassroots activist group in the Cañon City area, Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste (CCATW).

Antony said there’s no merit to any of the Sheep Mountain Alliance claims and that his company expects to prevail and proceed with the mill.

“Of course it’s contingent on raising the capital in the market to fund the mill,” he said. “We’ve always said that; that’s no different either. [Uranium] is $73 a pound and forecasted to still moderately increase. We don’t know where it’s going to end. All that does is increase our chances for funding.”

The Sheep Mountain lawsuit, he added, doesn’t affect the timetable for the proposed mill. Energy Fuels built six months into its schedule for anticipated legal challenges.

“It’s all subject to how that process winds its way through the judicial system, but we added about six months in the schedule, so that puts us breaking ground in the fourth quarter of this year and commissioning [a working mill] a year later in the third quarter of 2012,” Antony said.

Hilary White, executive director of Telluride-based Sheep Mountain Alliance, which is already suing Montrose County for its special use permit approval of the project, said it’s too soon to discuss legal action against the state. But she said her organization will weigh all of its options, including appeal, after fully digesting the 432-page license decision.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment (CDPHE) issued the decision after 14 months of review and eight public meetings in Montrose and San Miguel counties. Piñon Ridge, which would process up to 500 tons of uranium and vanadium a day, is a project of Toronto-based Energy Fuels.

Uranium

“Energy Fuels is actively consolidating uranium mining in the Uravan Mineral Belt of western Colorado and eastern Utah,” according to the company’s website. “Through the development of its Piñon Ridge Mill, Energy Fuels is facilitating the opening of both developed and new mines and will return this region to its former position of prominence as a source of uranium to fuel the U.S. nuclear power industry.”

That consolidation includes a partnership with an Australian company, announced last month, to acquire the mine holdings of another Canadian mining company, Uranium One, which has been divesting itself of its Colorado assets ahead of a takeover by a Russian company.

White argues the state did not fully consider the potential environmental and socio-economic impacts the mill will have on the region’s air and water quality given the outdoor recreation and tourism economy that has grown in the area in the decades since the last major uranium boom in the 1950s and 60s. She pointed to a recently released study commissioned by her organization.

“It’s just unfortunate that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment that is charged with protecting the public health and the environment of the state of Colorado chose to ignore significant — not only public health — but serious environmental and socio-economic impacts that could result from this mill,” White said.

Warren Smith, community involvement manager of the state’s Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division, said the concerns raised by the public and groups such as Sheep Mountain Alliance that participated in the review process are addressed in the decision and the Environmental Impact Analysis.

“Because Sheep Mountain Alliance has issued this reaction on the same day as our decision was announced, it is unlikely that they have actually read the 432-page decision document that we believe addresses all of these issues,” Smith said in an email. “Therefore, we do not see a reason to respond to these allegations at this time.”

In a press release announcing the decision, the state listed a number of conditions of approval, including an $11 million financial warranty for decommissioning the facility – which some critics say would be woefully inadequate to fully clean up the mill if things go wrong — and a long-term care fund of $827,590 to be deposited in the state treasury. Questions about the financial viability of Energy Fuels given current uranium prices have dogged the project since its inception.

“Energy Fuels has demonstrated it can build and operate the mill in a manner that is protective of both human health and the environment,” Steve Tarlton, the state’s radiation program manager, said in a release. “Our comprehensive review considered short- and long-term impacts of the proposed mill, including radiological and non-radiological impacts to water, air and wildlife, as well as economic, social and transportation-related impacts.”

Opponents counter that past uranium milling and mining projects, including an EPA Superfund Cleanup site at the Cotter Mill near Cañon City, have cost the state and its taxpayers dearly, and that Energy Fuels lacks the resources to fully mitigate the impacts should the facility run into economic or environmental problems.

“I am deeply concerned that this mill will damage our health, our air, our water and our property values,” said Craig Pirazzi, a member of the Paradox Valley Sustainability Association. “The legacy of uranium mining and milling in Colorado is contaminated groundwater and hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs – which is a real possibility here. The economics of this mill and the mining associated with it have proven themselves not to be sustainable.”

The Uranium Processing Accountability Act passed last legislative session calls for public notice and comment periods when state regulators – in this case officials with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) – negotiate the amount of money companies must post against future cleanup costs or pay for ongoing cleanup efforts.

As revealed by the Colorado Independent in June, Cotter Corp. disagreed with state estimates that it would cost $43.7 million to clean up the Cotter Mill near Cañon City. CDPHE officials reportedly agreed to just $20.2 million in cleanup costs at the EPA Superfund Cleanup site.

The lawsuit (pdf) claims the deal lacked transparency as required by the new law.

“It appears regulators ignored this requirement by conducting closed-door negotiations instead of conducting a review which was open to public involvement and timely public scrutiny,” said Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, a sponsor of the new law. “I share the frustration felt by the citizens of Canon City.”

A spokeswoman for the CDPHE said Wednesday afternoon that the state still had not been served, and that she wouldn’t be able to comment anyway. She did point out that the Cotter Mill case is unrelated to the company’s refusal to pay a $55,000 state fine levied for failure to clean up a contaminated pond at an old uranium mine in Jefferson County that is allegedly threatening the Denver water supply.

Union Carbide's toxic Uravan mill

Energy Fuels Inc., a Toronto, Ontario-based company seeking state approval for the Piñon Ridge Mill in far western Colorado, admits in its own financial filings that “there is a significant doubt as to whether the company will be able to continue as a going concern and realize its assets and pay its liabilities as they fall due.”

In a consolidated financial statement for the six months ending March 31, Energy Fuels states: “The company’s cash balances have reached a point where they can support current operations only through early calendar year 2011 without additional financing.”

That lack of cash is a serious concern, say environmentalists and state public health officials. Set against the backdrop of the British Petroleum Gulf oil spill and its astronomical environmental and business costs, they say any company looking to mill uranium in Colorado has to be prepared to pay the enormous costs of catastrophe clean up and reclamation.

Environmentalists and residents of both Montrose and neighboring San Miguel counties bitterly opposed the proposed milling project during special-use permit hearings last fall. News of the thin cash reserves of the company behind the proposal is fueling further opposition.

Frank Filas, Energy Fuels environmental manager, downplayed concerns in an interview with the Colorado Independent:

“So far this company has been able to raise $45 million. A lot of that went into investing in mine properties. A lot has also gone into investing in the mill property and the permitting associated with it,” Filas said.

“So yeah, our cash resources are much smaller than they were, so we’ll be financing this project in phases, and basically the next phase will be to get investments to carry us through the permitting and the final design phase of the project.”

Put up or shut down

Documents obtained by the Independent indicate Energy Fuels is spending between $250,000 and $285,000 a month and had cash reserves of a little more than $2.6 million as of March 31 – or about enough to last through January of 2011, which is when the state must wrap up its permit process for the Piñon Ridge Mill.

Proposed for an 880-acre site in the Paradox Valley about 12 miles west of Naturita, the mill would produce about 770,000 pounds of uranium a year by processing 500 tons of ore each day from surrounding mines in the Uravan Mineral Belt.

The area once supplied yellowcake for Cold War-era weapons but left a toxic legacy that lingers to this day. Still, there is a considerable push for a nuclear-power renaissance to replace carbon-spewing, fossil-fuel-fed power plants. Energy Fuels is banking on that resurgence, first abroad and then domestically.

“Once the permits are approved, that’s going to allow us to go after and get the financing we need for the mill, which we don’t know what exact dollar amount that is, but it’s in the neighborhood of about $150 million if you include the bond with the state also,” Filas said, referring to the company’s proposed $12 million surety bond in the event of a worst-case cleanup scenario.

“That’ll be a big chunk of change that we’ll need to come up with, but we think we’re in pretty good position to do that, and obviously some of it depends on things that are currently outside of our control like the current long-term price of uranium and those types of things.”

The true cost of a uranium disaster

Travis Stills, managing attorney with the Durango-based Energy Minerals Law Center, which is suing Montrose County over the Piñon Ridge special-use permit, said: “$12 million to clean up a $150 million project seems out of line, and with the existing cleanups – the Cotter Mill – the most recent numbers are coming in around $43 million.”

Currently the state’s only uranium mill, Cotter Corp’s Cotter Mill near Cañon City, is an EPA Superfund Cleanup site with its own contamination issues from the 1950s and ’60s. In an April Site Reclamation Plan filed with the state, Cotter put the cleanup price at $23.2 million and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) countered with $43.7 million.

Besides imploring the state to demand a much higher surety bond from Energy Fuels, Stills generally questioned the strategy of using county and state permit approvals as a basis for rounding up more investors.

“[Energy Fuels] suggested that they would be able to raise a lot more money and capital to work with once they got the county permit, and if I’m correct, the stock price has dropped by more than half in that amount of time, so their ability to raise money just by announcing a permit, if that’s what it is, that’s a pretty questionable goal,” Stills said.

Energy Fuels’ stock was trading at 16 cents a share on Tuesday, down from 40 cents a share a year ago.

“It wouldn’t be the first operation that made all of their money by mining investors instead of mining the resource,” Stills added.

Taxpayers on the hook for industry catastrophes

CDPHE spokesman Warren Smith said the state will thoroughly review the Energy Fuels’ bonding proposal and make its own recommendation at the appropriate time.

“The worst case scenario would be, say, the company goes out of business and walks away and the state has to clean it up,” Smith said. “They have to have enough financial assurance that the state wouldn’t have to bring money to the table to do that.”

Smith also said there is precedent for the state rejecting an application on socio-economic grounds.

“Several years ago Cotter Corp. had an application for a radioactive materials license where they wanted to accept out-of-state waste to put into their impoundment, and we rejected that application due to the information that we had about the potential socio-economic impacts on the town,” Smith said. “Yeah, we can do that, and we have done that.”

Again, Energy Fuels’ Filas downplayed the financial concerns.

“It’s a moot point actually,” he said. “The bottom line is that, assuming the state approves our license, they are not going to give us the go-ahead until we place that bond money in their hands. It’s not like they have to worry about it too much; it’s just not going to happen without a reclamation bond in place for whatever amount that they think is necessary.”

A series of meetings on the project will be held in southwestern Colorado in June, starting with a CDPHE public-input session from 6 to 9 p.m., Tuesday, June 8, at the Montrose Pavilion in Montrose and followed by a special session of the San Miguel County board of commissioners from 4 to 7 p.m., Wednesday, June 9, at the Telluride Firehouse in Telluride.

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“Martin’s leadership on the state air commission was essential to cutting mercury pollution 90 percent from coal-fired power plants in 2007,” Environment Colorado advocate Matt Garrington said in a statement. “As head of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, Martin was key to protecting our drinking water and making sure oil and gas development is done right.”

Martin got his undergrad degree in biology from Knox College in Illinois and his law degree from Northwestern School of Law, Lewis and Clark College, in Oregon. But Sherman, the man Martin replaces at DNR (confirmed earlier this month by the Senate as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment), is a 1964 graduate of Colorado College.

The Colorado College connection is becoming a noteworthy one in the Obama administration, with a half dozen CC grads assuming significant roles. Last week, Marcia Kemper McNutt (Class of ’74) was confirmed by the Senate as the first female director of the U.S. Geological Survey, and Sherman was confirmed the week before.

McNutt will also serve as a special science advisor to CC grad and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (Class of ’77), who, interestingly, is also a former head of the Colorado DNR.

Other CC grads in key roles include Jane Lubchenco (Class of ’69), administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Lori Garver (Class of ’83), deputy administrator of NASA; and Aaron Gutierrez (Class of ’08), intern in the office of legislative affairs at the White House. Gutierrez, of Pueblo, is a brain cancer survivor.

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According to a press release from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and a story in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, penalty settlements totaling $680,000 will be paid by Enterprise Products Operating LLC, Berry Petroleum Co., and Marathon Oil Co. for the incident last year.

The state, which will put the money into its Water Quality Improvement Fund, will use the funds to improve water quality in the Parachute area through the “planning, design and construction of stormwater and domestic wastewater treatment facilities.” State officials said the companies did not use best-management practices to prevent pollution, although none of the companies admitted wrongdoing in the settlement.

Impacts on water quality as a result of natural gas drilling have been a hot issue all summer in Colorado, with most of the debate centering on the practice of hydraulic fracturing.

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Uranium yellowcake (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy)

MONTROSE — It began with the audience turning, facing the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Just over an hour later, a special Montrose County commissioner meeting ended with the unanimous approval of controversial uranium mill permit that was as much an endorsement of American energy independence as it was a repudiation of environmental concerns.

“The worst mining accident that I ever saw happened on 9/11,” commissioner Ron Henderson told the crowd gathered in Friendship Hall to hear a decision on the proposed Piñon Ridge mill. “There has never been a place on earth where the specific density of the air was ever any heavier than it was right there [in Manhattan], caused by political unrest.

“To me that’s a sign that we need to go ahead and stand strong, move forward and be firm and not allow all of our money to go to people that don’t like us,” Henderson added, referring to weaning the American power grid off of fossil fuels. “If they don’t like us, I think it’s fine, but I would just really rather they stay where they are.”

The commissioners voted 3-0 to approve a special-use permit submitted by the Canadian company Energy Fuels more than a year ago. In doing so, all three emphasized they were making a land-use decision, up-zoning from general agricultural, that fits into the county’s master plan. Health and environmental concerns are up to the state and federal governments, they insisted.

“Quite simply, this is a land-use question for Montrose County,” county commission chairman David White said. “So much of what we’ve heard concerning perceived or real environmental impacts are not within our general scope of authority. Expert testimony by those who had environmental concerns was lacking, in my opinion, during the public comment period.”

Travis Stills, managing attorney for the Durango-based Energy Minerals Law Center in Durango, countered after the meeting that testimony was lacking because the commissioners refused to allow environmental opponents more than three minutes of public input during two meetings in Nucla and Montrose. No public input was taken at today’s hearing.

White said federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have much more authority over uranium milling and mining than Montrose County, which has a long history of supplying ore for both nuclear weapons and power. But first the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment will take up to a year to review the Energy Fuels’ proposal, allowing the county to make appropriate changes.

“Uranium and the mining and milling of it does pose a danger, but that’s also the reason why it could give us a huge benefit,” said Henderson, a zoology major at the University of Colorado and former miner who says he goes to sleep every night watching the Science Channel. “It’s like any relationship; it’s got to be properly handled. And properly handled, uranium can do us a lot of good.”

Commissioner Gary Ellis also cited energy independence in casting his yes vote, which some environmental groups have promised to legally challenge.

“I am a strong proponent personally that we need to be energy independent,” Ellis said. “I know we’ve discussed issues of green energy and that type of thing, which still has a long way to go to be developed. In the meantime we have a country that needs to have energy resources. I don’t like to be dependent on other nations that can cut us off at any time.”

Ellis also pointed to statements from U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, U.S. Rep. John Salazar and then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, on the campaign trail at the time, indicating support for nuclear power as a carbon-free way of obtaining power and easing the greenhouse gas emissions of coal, oil and gas-fired power plants.

“Sen. Udall and [Rep.] Salazar indicated support in those statements,” Energy Fuels environmental manager Frank Filas said after the meeting. “We think after people evaluate the challenges that are ahead, that they would agree with us that nuclear has to be part of the mix, especially if we’re going to lower the amount of carbon dioxide that we’re putting into the atmosphere.”

But Stills, who would not say if his group plans to challenge the commissioners’ decision, did indicate the county put forth a number of conditions that may make the mill proposal more difficult financially.

“As far as what Energy Fuels got, they got less than what they came for,” Stills said. “They came for a full yes from the county. Everybody expected them to say yes without conditions, and now they have 19 conditions, many of which are going to be very difficult to comply with.”

Specifically, one of the conditions dictates that the mill can only handle raw uranium and vanadium ore and that Energy Fuels must regularly provide details of shipments coming into the facility. No other feed stock or waste from other facilities can be handled at Piñon Ridge.

“The two mills that are currently operating sporadically [the Cotter mill and on near Blanding, Utah], they can’t make the finances work without alternative feeds, without processing waste, and there’s no indication that Energy Fuels is somehow different than them,” Stills said.

As for the intense interest focused on Montrose County from residents of surrounding counties, chairman White was fairly blunt about outside concerns impacting a potential revival of the local uranium industry.

“To those in San Miguel, Ouray and Mesa counties, I would ask that you look at your own counties through the same eyes that you have looked at Montrose County,” White said, referring to mining operations in those areas. “Your issues are your issues, and you have them.”

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