According to the Montrose Daily Press, commissioners Ron Henderson and Gary Ellis rejected a resolution supporting the 2010 Census because it will actually count people living in the country – information that might be generally beneficial for Uncle Sam.

(Staver: Flickr)

“I just don’t think it’s right (to count undocumented residents). I just don’t think it’s being done correctly,” Henderson told the paper. “It’s not that we’re stopping it, but our government needs to wake up. It’s not waking up.”

Ellis balked for the same reason, rejecting the Census Bureau’s notion that residency status is not relevant in the process of conducting an accurate population count, according to the paper. “Otherwise, from my perspective, we really kind of support people who are violating our laws,” he said.

Commissioner David White, who was clearly exasperated with the invasion of liberal greenies from Telluride during the uranium hearings, apparently doesn’t share Henderson and Ellis’s take on the 2010 Census. He voted in favor of the resolution.

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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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Uranium yellowcake and sulfuric acid would be carted along I-70 in Colorado

By state statute, uranium ore and processed yellowcake, used to make fuel rods for nuclear reactors, are considered mere hazardous materials and therefore not limited to transportation along the state’s designated nuclear materials routes.

“When you’re dealing with yellowcake shipments, they get carried in pretty much a dump truck,” said Capt. Allan Turner of the Colorado State Patrol’s Hazardous Materials Transport Safety and Response (HMTSR) team.

“We actually had one of those turn over in the city of Colorado Springs, turn over in the median, and people were going to the hospitals with facemasks on, thinking they were contaminated with radiation, when in actual fact it doesn’t really present that much of a hazard.”

Environmentalists looking to stop, or at least dramatically slow, the Montrose County commissioners’ special-use permit approval process for the proposed Piñon Ridge Mill between Bedrock and Naturita in far western Montrose County have fixed on transportation and the potential for spills as a major rallying point.

Toward the end of a lengthy and contentious public hearing earlier this month, Ridgway resident Dana Ivers got up and asked the commissioners if they had any idea what roads Energy Fuels — the Canadian company proposing the mill — would use to bring in uranium ore and ship out yellowcake.

Montrose County Commission Chairman David White said that was a question probably best directed to the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), which has approved an access permit for the mill. “Apparently it was OK” with CDOT said White. White told Ivers he did not know the exact route the trucks carting the materials would travel.

“[Ivers] hit the nail on the head when she said, ‘Do you know anything about any of the transportation corridors for either incoming or outgoing traffic?’ and they had nothing,” said Hilary White, executive director of the Telluride-based environmental group Sheep Mountain Alliance. “They knew nothing about it; they had obviously not looked at; they had not seen the plans. It’s a huge concern.”

But according Montrose County’s own website, the Piñon Ridge Mill plan already conditionally recommended for approval by planning staff would use 24-ton capacity trucks to bring in 21 loads of ore a day — or about 500 tons a day – on Colorado Highway 90. After processing, the mill would ship out about 200 pounds of yellowcake a day in sealed, steel 55-gallon drums.

Two facilities in North America can then turn processed yellowcake into fuel rods for nuclear plants: one in Metropolis, Ill., and the other in Port Hope, Ontario, near Toronto. Facilities in Great Britain and France can also convert yellowcake into fuel rods, meaning the yellowcake would have to first be trucked to ports in Texas. Europe, where nuclear power is much more prevalent, is one of the major potential markets for the Piñon Ridge yellowcake uranium.

“It’s a global commodity,” said Frank Filas, environmental manager for a U.S. subsidiary of Ontario-based Energy Fuels. “It could go just about anywhere, but it’s not going to North Korea and it’s not going to Iran.”

According to the county, trucks headed to the nearest major interstate, I-70, would travel east on Colorado Highway 90 (not a designated hazardous materials route), north on Colorado Highway 141 (which is a designated hazardous materials route), north on U.S. 50 (a hazmat route) and finally to I-70 (also a hazmat route).

“The Colorado State Patrol controls the designation of hazmat and nuclear routes in Colorado,” CDOT spokeswoman Stacey Stegman said. “The current, established, hazmat route includes all of U.S. 50, so hazmat moves on U.S. 50 daily. This is just a new hazmat product that will be moving on that route.”

Many in the audience at the most recent hearing were from Grand Junction and Fruita, and were clearly concerned about processed yellowcake moving through their communities.

But the CSP’s Turner said even the crash of a truck hauling uranium ore in Colorado Springs presented no extraordinary health risk. The Fremont County Independent Outreach Committee, a community-based watchdog group monitoring the cleanup activities at the Cotter Uranium Mill near Canon City, appears to agree. That mill, which operated steadily from 1958 to 1979, was later declared an EPA Superfund cleanup site after numerous incidences of contamination.

Turner added that even processed yellowcake doesn’t present that much of a threat, but both yellowcake and unprocessed ore are not considered nuclear materials. That designation is reserved for spent fuel rods and other radioactive waste such as materials from Rocky Flats, which are shipped along Interstate 25 to the Waste Isolation Pilot (WIP) Plant in Carlsbad, N.M.

“When you talk about uranium itself, the materials that you’re dealing with, the ore, that is specifically exempted from our regulatory authority,” Turner said. “We have no regulatory authority to route them; they can go wherever they want.”

Nuclear materials are restricted to I-25, I-70 east of Denver and I-76 in northeast Colorado. There are no nuclear materials routes in southwest Colorado.

Of even more concern to watchdog groups is sulfuric acid, which is used to leach the uranium ore. Energy Fuels’ Filas said three to four trucks of sulfuric acid a day will be coming into the proposed Piñon Ridge facility. CSP’s Turner said only tanker trucks carrying 500 gallons or more must stick to designated hazmat routes. Companies hauling hazmat also must be licensed by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

All of this industrial activity is alarming to many in southwest Colorado who do not want to see a return to the glory days of the state’s uranium mining past. Residents of the resort communities in and around Telluride, Ridgway and Ouray tend to oppose the new mill, while those with mining roots in western Montrose County argue the local economy needs a boost. They resent opposition from “outsiders.”

Sheep Mountain’s White said the mill is a regional issue and that the commissioners need to take that into consideration or they will be open to litigation.

“I feel, and many other people feel, that [the commissioners] are being totally irresponsible to the public’s health, safety and welfare that they are ultimately responsible for — not only Montrose County, but the neighboring counties as well,” White said. “And if they choose to put blinders on and look at a very narrow scope in their approval process, then it will be challenged.”

But even Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a huge proponent of renewable energy such as wind and solar, has taken the controversial position that nuclear power needs to be part of the mix in order to break U.S. dependency on coal, oil and natural gas. Environmentalists, however, say the long-term wastes from nuclear power — and the potential for catastrophic accidents — make it a bad choice in the fight against global warming.

The next Montrose County commissioner hearing is 10 a.m., Sept. 30 at Friendship Hall in the Montrose County Fairgrounds and Event Center.

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