Tag: Sheep Mountain Alliance

Colorado officials failed to allow the public to properly vet a proposed uranium mill they licensed last year, U.S. regulators declared last week in a letter to an environmental group suing the state.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday issued the first federal approval for a controversial uranium mill in western Colorado that would be the first such processing facility in the United States in decades.

A proposal to designate more than 60,000 acres in southwestern Colorado as either wilderness or a special management area is back before Congress.

Environmental groups battling to get the Cotter Mill uranium processing facility near Cañon City properly cleaned up applauded a decision late last week by a district court judge in Denver that allows their lawsuit to go forward.

Colorado conservation groups battling a proposed uranium mill in far western Colorado have asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to hold off on approving the project until the federal agency updates its antiquated air quality regulations for radon emissions.

Until recently, most of the debate over nuclear power in Colorado had to do with whether to mine and mill more uranium to be shipped elsewhere for conversion into fuel rods to power nuclear plants in other states and other countries around the world. The magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan on March 11 changed both the nature and the tenor of the discussion in Colorado – a state that produced some of the uranium ore used in developing the nation’s first nuclear weapons.

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.

Conservation groups opposed to the planned Piñon Ridge Mill in far western Colorado expressed “extreme disappointment” with Wednesday’s state approval of a radioactive materials license for what would be the first new uranium processing facility in the United States in a quarter of a century. 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.

A new study commissioned by an environmental group opposed to a proposed uranium mill in far western Colorado concludes the project could adversely impact economic growth in the area because of potential radiation contamination and the stigma of a new nuclear boom. Produced for the Telluride-based Sheep Mountain Alliance, which is suing to stop the proposed Piñon Ridge Mill in Montrose County, the new report (pdf) found that the outdoor recreation, tourism and residential sectors (both retirees and new residents) would be hurt by an upsurge in uranium mining activity in the area.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment late last week deemed complete a uranium mill application by Ontario-based Energy Fuels, starting what will...