Atlas Tailings Environmental Study Delayed

Atlas Tailings Environmental Study Delayed


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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The federal Energy Department is delaying an environmental report on how to deal with a massive uranium process tailings dump in Moab that is polluting the Colorado River, a water source for 25 million people.

The draft environmental impact statement assessing four proposals for the Atlas uranium tailings was originally expected to be released this month.

Energy Department spokesman Tom Welch said work on the environmental impact study isn't finished. The report now is scheduled for release in the fall, he said.

One longtime advocate of removing the tailings says that the delay could be a good sign.

Bill Hedden speculated that the Energy Department is taking a hard look at a new proposal that would dispose of the tainted waste in a salt cavern at the old Moab potash plant about 12 miles from the city.

"We were lobbying hard to get them to study this," said Hedden, of the Grand Canyon Trust.

Hedden said under the salt cavern proposal, the tailings would be transported in a slurry pipeline and injected into the newly excavated, 4,000-foot-deep cavern.

Options already under review include securing the tailings pile where it is, heaped at the edge of the river three miles north of Moab, pumping it as slurry to the White Mesa uranium recycling mill near Blanding, or hauling it to a disposal site away from the river.

The salt-cavern option would cost about the same as the cheapest alternative, which would cap the tailings where they sit, said Hedden.

What to do about the tailings pile has vexed the Moab community for more than a decade, with a volume of uranium waste six times the rubble taken from the World Trade Center collapse. The pile is leaching uranium and ammonia into the river, endangering downstream users.

Four years ago, Congress ordered the Energy Department to take over the site from the Atlas Corp.'s bankruptcy trustee.

Lawmakers as far away as California have demanded removal of the tailings. So have Grand County officials and the state Department of Environmental Quality.

With the Atlas environmental impact statement, the Energy Department plans to depart from the usual practice of choosing a "preferred alternative" for the cleanup. Critics have complained the agency is letting the project's price tag dictate its decision rather than finding the safest alternative.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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