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Friday, October 3, 2008
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From The Telluride Daily Planet: "In the far west reaches of Montrose and San Miguel counties, the nuclear boom is rippling, but with those ripples has come a final close to a mill as old as the Atomic Age itself. Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced cleanup of the Uravan Mill Superfund Site was finished.
More from the article:
It was simply called Uravan, and it rested along the San Miguel River in far-flung Montrose County. An early version of the mill fueled Madam Curie's research into radioactivity and isotopes. In 1942, its ore fueled the Manhattan Project. Later, uranium from the mill was used to power nuclear planets. The mill shut down in 1984; it was designated a Superfund site in 1986 with cleanup beginning in 1987. More than 20 years and $120 million later, the storied site is clean, and it could see campers and ballfields and someday a museum. There's no longer any threat to the San Miguel River, whose waters licked at the nuclear waste site for years...
Jeff Deckler, the remedial programs manager with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, has been associated with the cleanup for the past 15 years. "Completion is always sweet," he said. "There is no way to do this quickly. The jobs are huge."
The old site was a timeline of the first boom and the nuclear age; it was a reflection of both progress and misstep. Mills were located on rivers because they needed the water, and ponds for wastewater were unlined. The question remains: How safe is uranium mining and its by-products "Our knowledge of contamination, and how it affects the environment [sigma] all that has increased enormously," Thomas said. "Our environmental regulations are much stricter." Not everyone's so sure uranium's second coming is a good thing. "We just have this big boom in energy demand and everyone thinks we've got to find a solution," said San Miguel County Commissioner Joan May. Uranium, for all its pluses, is nearly impossible to store when used. "It's a problem that does not go away," May said. "We're going to see the ramifications of uranium for many generations to come."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
"cc"
6:35:56 AM 
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Here's an update on Shell Oil's oil shale operation in Rio Blanco County, from The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article:
In a remote valley southwest of Meeker, a tangle of pipes surrounds a parcel much like a fence corrals a rodeo arena. The pipes' purpose is to create an underground corral that provides a barrier to groundwater movement and protect water from contamination during oil shale extraction. This is the site of Shell's latest phase of research into a possible means of recovering oil from shale. The pipes go as deep as 1,850 feet and circulate an ammonia refrigerant used to create a freeze wall. Shell is developing a process to heat up oil shale underground and bring kerogen and natural gas through wells to the surface. The plan is to remove groundwater in the area to be heated, and use the wall to protect surrounding water from contamination...
Unlike Shell research going on beneath the surface and out of the public eye, the politics surrounding oil shale recently have attracted lots of headlines. With gasoline topping $4 a gallon earlier this year, pressure has mounted to remove obstacles to eventual commercial oil shale development. Just this month, one obstacle went away with the expiration of a congressional moratorium on developing final rules for commercial oil shale leasing on public land. Opponents to issuing the rules say it's premature, with all the unknowns about environmental impacts and water, electricity and work force needs related to shale technologies that are still in development. But Shell is glad the rules may be forthcoming this year and is particularly interested in learning how much the government plans to charge for royalties...
Shell is hoping to eventually convert its three 160-acre federal research and development leases into commercial leases that each would cover about eight square miles. That acreage sits in the heart of shale country in northwest Colorado's Piceance Basin, which holds some 90 percent of recoverable U.S. oil shale reserves.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
"cc"
6:28:26 AM
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Democrats haven't let up on John McCain for his gaffe over renegotiating the Colorado River Compact, according to The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
On the eve of Republican presidential candidate John McCain's visit to Pueblo, local Democrats with a special interest in water took aim Thursday at McCain's earlier comments about the need to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact. "Simply put, when John McCain is in Pueblo tomorrow, we demand that he explain why he wants to steal our water," said Sal Pace, an unopposed Democratic candidate for state House District 46. Pace brought along a bag of straws to symbolize how McCain would "suck the water out of Colorado." Pace was joined on the Pueblo County Courthouse steps by John Singletary, a member of the state Board of Agriculture and chairman of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District; Nick Gradisar, president of the Pueblo Board of Water Works; Wally Stealey, past president of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District; Pueblo County Commissioner Jeff Chostner and state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West...
The local officials made the point that Pueblo and the Arkansas Valley are dependent on water brought over from the Western Slope and that McCain, as president, would appoint key officials who oversee federal water operations: the Secretary of Interior and commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. They also urged protection of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, which imports the greatest amount to the Arkansas Valley. "John McCain knew exactly what he was saying," Pace said. "As junior water rights owners, Southeastern Colorado's Fry-Ark water will be the first water sent to water the lawns of McCain's seven homes." Singletary said it is dangerous to the Arkansas Valley because fully 25 percent of the water available to the Arkansas Valley comes from the Western Slope. "The Colorado River is not even in the top 25 rivers in the United States, but 25 to 30 million people rely on the Colorado River for most of their water supply. Two-thirds of them live in the lower basin states (California, Arizona and Nevada)," Singletary said. "As a senator from a Western state, he showed he had little recognition of the importance of the Colorado River Compact."
The Lower Ark district is challenging Reclamation in federal court over its presumed authority to issue contracts to out-of-basin cities such as Aurora, and said the key officials in the next administration's Department of Interior could make a huge difference in future federal water policies. Gradisar said more than half of Pueblo's water supply comes from Western Slope water and could be affected under the existing compact by a call on the Colorado River by downstream states. He said any renegotiation of the compact would be a "terrible idea." "I can't imagine why he would say that, except as a senator from Arizona," Gradisar said. "I hope he'll explain what he was talking about." Stealey said he talked to Obama about water issues last month during his visit to Pueblo, and found him to be "very receptive."
On Thursday, Stealey compared Reclamation's plans to wheel water in the West to Enron's wheeling of power in California several years ago. He said continuing those policies under McCain could be damaging because so many Western rivers originate in Colorado. "Wheeling water won't work," Stealey said.
Chostner said it didn't matter if McCain was simply being naive or fully understood the import of his comments in August. "The Colorado River Compact is the cornerstone of water rights in this part of the country and needs to stay in place," Chostner said. "Renegotiation is a dangerous approach." McFadyen talked about the historical importance of the compact, praising the compact's architect, Delph Carpenter, for his foresight in seeing that lower basin states were growing faster than Colorado at the time it was negotiated in 1922. "Whether he was speaking off the cuff or if he was uneducated, it was the wrong point to make," McFadyen said. "We know what a fight we've had with water. Imagine if we have to fight California and Arizona."
Meanwhile McCain was in Denver yesteday and had this to say, according to The Denver Post:
In Colorado, McCain said the state's natural resources need to be "explored and exploited in an environmentally sensitive fashion." He said he understood Colorado values because he is a Western senator. As he does at the beginning of most of his Colorado campaign stops, he thanked Colorado for the water, and emphatically promised he would never renegotiate the Colorado River Compact, a water-sharing agreement that gives Colorado River water to Arizona.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
"colorado water"
6:15:29 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 2:41:13 PM.
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