Sunday, March 30, 2008

Energy policy: Nuclear Here's a look at a proposed uranium operation down in Fremont County, from The Colorado Springs Gazette. From the article: [Jim] Hawklee and his neighbors in the Tallahassee Creek area learned they live above one of the richest uranium stashes in Colorado, one that was drilled extensively in the 1970s. Black Range Minerals wants to drill 75 test holes. It estimates it could extract 46 million pounds of uranium and has suggested it could set up a milling operation there. Hawklee and some of his neighbors fear the impact on water, traffic, noise and quality of life. He is president of a group, Tallahassee Area Community Inc., formed to stop it. There are 44 properties within 500 feet, and 570 homes within a few miles, the group claims... Lee Alter thought the pond across the street from his horse ranch was an old fishing hole. He recently found out it is one of 79 abandoned uranium mines in Fremont County, most of which dot the hills of his neighborhood. "When we bought in 1995, the Cold War was over. The nuclear power industry was at a standstill. There was no reason to believe there would ever be a demand for uranium," said Alter, who knew only that there had been some exploration in the area... According to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, there are 76 uranium exploration projects in eight of the state's counties, including Fremont County. Uranium is selling for $70 a pound - about what it was in the late 1970s, when adjusted for inflation - up from $7 a pound five years ago. In a belt from Cañon City northwest through Teller and Park counties, several companies - most foreign-owned - have bought mineral rights for tens of thousands of acres. Among those staking claims in the area are Royal Resources, also of Australia, Vancouver-based Buckingham Exploration and another Canadian firm, Energy Metals Corp. Another company, Golden-based Horizon Nevada Uranium, Inc., is notifying property owners near Hartsel in Park County that it plans exploration on up to 3,000 acres. "The good thing about the U.S is it's been heavily explored and very well-documented," said Robin Relph, CEO of Buckingham Exploration, which is exploring for uranium on private land on High Park Road in southern Teller County. "You can usually find where you want to be." But there is another factor spurring the exploration: a mill in Cañon City that could process the uranium - the same mill that was behind one of the worst pollution episodes in the region. "The water is not suitable for drinking, but it's suitable for gardening." John Hamrick, vice president of milling at the Cotter uranium mill in Cañon City, is talking about the groundwater downhill from the plant. And the fact that you can garden with it is an improvement. The plant, built in 1958, is one of four uranium mills in the U.S. where uranium can be manufactured into yellowcake, the raw material for nuclear power plant fuel rods. After sputtering along for years, it shut down in 2006. At its peak in the late 1970s, it employed 121 people. Today, it has a skeleton crew of 31, most of whom are involved in environmental monitoring. The mill is a Superfund site, a federal designation reserved for the most serious environmental hazards. Decades of improper storage of uranium tailings - they were thrown into an unlined pit - contaminated the water for an entire subdivision in Cañon City. The company paid to hook residents up to city water. The mill continues to rile neighbors, despite being closed. This month, a federal judge fined the company for a 2005 spill of solvent that killed 40 geese and ducks. The company this month also dropped a plan to import radioactive waste from New Jersey, after losing an appeal of a state health department denial. Critics of uranium exploration point to the Cotter pollution as evidence of the industry's impact on neighbors. Despite its rocky history, Cotter is considering reopening because of high uranium prices and the possibility of fresh ore being pulled from the ground in Fremont County. The company expects to finish a feasibility study this year on whether to launch a $100 to $200 million rebuilding of the plant. The uranium exploration companies are counting on it, since having a mill nearby would cut transportation costs. It is a key point in companies' rush to find investors. Cotter officials said if they reopen, the mill would be completely rebuilt, with modern safeguards to prevent contamination. The raw uranium would not be left outside, as it once was, and the tailings would be dumped in lined pits, as they have been since the early 1980s. "You're never going to make everyone happy," Hamrick said. "You have to be able to at least show people that you are concerned about the effect of the operation on your environment. "When we build a new mill, we'll get to build one the right way," Hamrick said. A Cañon City residents group, Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste, has vowed to fight the plan. Its argument is much the same as that of the Tallahassee Creek group: It is too close to where people live. "It's like Pandora's Box. You put a mine in the wrong place or a mill in the wrong place, and contamination gets out into that groundwater, and it's over," said group co-chairwoman Sharyn Cunningham. Steve Tarlton, of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's radiation management unit, said the mill's license is active. But the mill needs agency approval to resume operations, which would involve public comments, he said. "Our job is to make sure that, if they do move out of the stand-down phase, that it is done properly, with all the appropriate protections in place," Tarlton said. There isn't much that would satisfy Cunningham. "We drank this damned water for eight years, and for the rest of my life, every time I get some illness, I'm going to wonder, [OE]Is it from that water I drank?'" she said. More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here. Category: 2008 Presidential Election 10:49:47 AM     Carabyl downstream of Silverthorne? From The Vail Daily News (free registration required): "The chemicals local towns and neighborhoods are spraying to prevent the spread of the pine beetle could be contaminating local water supplies, according to the Silverthorne/Dillon Joint Sewer Authority...One of the three most commonly used pesticides in the U.S., carbaryl has been an agent of choice for the majority of those spraying Summit County's lodgepoles to protect them from the pine beetles during the local beetle spraying season, which runs from May through July. As with other hazardous materials, it's illegal to dump the insecticide into the sewer system. At its peak, the concentration of carbaryl in the Silverthorne plant's discharge was fairly small -- only 3 parts per billion (ppb) -- not enough, once diluted in the river, to harm animals , but the fact that it showed up at all concerns Bittner. The health of stone flies, which are even more sensitive to carbaryl than the water fleas, can be a clue to the quality of the water." Category: Colorado Water 10:29:53 AM     Southern Delivery System From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb): The Bureau of Reclamation is hosting a series of six open houses as part of its public comment process for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed Southern Delivery System. Open house-style meetings will be held during the first two weeks of April in Buena Vista, Pueblo, La Junta, Fountain, Colorado Springs, and Cañon City. All open houses will be from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. The schedule is as follows: Tuesday, April 1: Buena Vista Community Center, 715 E. Main Street, Buena Vista, CO 81211 Wednesday, April 2: Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center, 210 N. Santa Fe Avenue, Pueblo, CO 81003 Thursday, April 3: Koshare Indian Museum, 115 W. 18th Street, La Junta, CO 81050 Tuesday, April 8: Fountain Fort Carson High School, 900 Jimmy Camp Road, Fountain, CO 80817 Wednesday, April 9: Leon Young Service Center, 1521 Hancock Expressway, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Thursday, April 10: Quality Inn, 3075 E. US 50, Cañon City, CO 81212 Each open-house will consist of informational displays and available staff for answering questions and providing information. Public comments will be received throughout the evening, either verbally to a court reporter or in writing. To access the Draft EIS, Draft EIS Summary, or supporting technical documents please visit www.sdseis.com. Comments must be provided in writing no later than Tuesday, April 29, 2008. For more information on the Draft EIS, please visit the www.sdseis.com website or contact Kara Lamb at (970) 962-4326. Here's some background from The Pueblo Chieftain. More Coyote Gulch coverage here. Category: Colorado Water 10:09:02 AM     Denver Water: Long-term planning for climate change While not getting into the debate over whether climate change is natural or caused by humankind Denver Water is running long-range planning exercises to develop a strategy to deal with a warmer climate, according to The Summit Daily News. From the article: Climate change is real, and it's here, so Denver Water recently tried to determine how increasing temperatures would affect stream flows and water supplies, said Marc Waage, manager of water resource planning. Waage said Denver Water considered two different scenarios: - With a temperature increase of two degrees over a 50-year stretch -- assuming no change in precipitation -- streamflows and water supplies would decrease by 7 percent.- The second scenario plugged a 5 degree temperature increase into the model. Streamflows would drop by 19 percent, with a 14 percent impact to Denver Water's supply. Both temperature scenarios are "modest" compared to what many climate change models are predicting, he added. Most of the decrease in stream flows and supplies is due to increased evaporation and sublimation. The bottom line is that Denver Water's system is very sensitive to warming temperatures, Waage said. "It would cost a bundle of money to replace 14 percent of our water supply," he said. It would also take a significant increase in precipitation to make up for the losses. "We know the climate is variable, but within a certain range. Water planners have always dealt with uncertainties, like population change. Now, we also have to deal with hydrological uncertainty," he said. Up to now, planners have based their planning on past streamflows, for example using the worst recorded droughts as a baseline. "We need to go beyond that," Waage said, explaining that global warming could result in more severe droughts. Denver Water's long-range planning effort is trying to factor those unknowns into the equation. The city utility has also joined in a regional effort with other municipalities from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. "We hope it will show the value of regional planning," Waage said. The joint studies will encompass the three major watersheds -- the South Platte, the Upper Colorado and the Upper Arkansas -- that provide supplies to Front Range municipalities. Category: Colorado Water 10:03:49 AM     Snowpack news Here's some snowpack news from The Greeley Tribune (free registration required). From the article: Just off the parking lot of Cameron Pass the snow was deep. But it was not as deep as John Fusaro and Todd Boldt had hoped for as they started measuring the snow pack for its water content. The conservation specialists with the Fort Collins office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Service discovered the snow was not much deeper than it was a month ago. "But the density is a lot better, which means it's got good water. When we were in the Big Thompson (Thursday) it was in the upper teens and low 20s. But here, it's about 35 percent, which is about what it should be this time of year," Fusaro said... Fusaro and Boldt found the snowpack at or above the 30-year average in the snow fields they measured Friday in the Poudre Canyon, but that was not the case the day before when they were in the Big Thompson Canyon above Estes Park. Both the Poudre and Big Thompson empty into the South Platte River and according to automated sites, the South Platte basin was 3 percent above the long-term average as of Friday. Category: Colorado Water 9:54:09 AM     Aspen Environment Forum Here's a recap of yesterday's climate change forum in Aspen, from The Aspen Times (free registration required). Read the whole article. Here are a few excerpts: Some scientists say the Earth is headed for "a very large extinction spasm" if current trends continue, moderator Michael Totten told a panel of experts at the Aspen Environment Forum on Saturday. That prediction, he said, is based on estimates of how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be pumped into the atmosphere in the coming decades, and the level at which the scientists believe the animal and plant life on Earth will begin to die off in massive numbers. Totten, an expert in environmental leadership in business, was moderator for a panel discussion entitled, "Environment and Security." His statements were a preamble to a chat among panelists Gail Norton of Shell Oil, Robert Williams of Princeton University, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)and Andy Karsner of the U.S. Department of Energy. Totten said scientists have estimated that earlier "extinction spasms" on Earth -- at least three periods in which large percentages of life on the planet went extinct -- corresponded with carbon dioxide levels of around 990 parts per million, most of it from volcanic activity... Totten's question to the panel members was whether they could envision a way to balance legitimate energy security concerns with pressing issues of global economic fairness and equally legitimate worries about the environment, and still prevent the accumulation of fatal amounts of CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere as the world's economy spins along on its oil-based axis. The question never was completely answered, although each panelist had his or her ideas about how best to approach the matter. "That's our mission," said Karsner, referring to the Applied Science division of the Department of Energy, which he said is charged with encouraging research and development into all aspects of energy use except for nuclear and oil-based technologies. "Our mission is to design that vision," he said of Totten's scenario, explaining that while his agency does not actually do the research, it acts as a "pipeline" for federal enticements, regulations and strategizing to make sure the research gets done. His job, he said, is to find "the silver buckshot, instead of the silver bullet," a reference to the oft-stated conclusion that there is no single answer to the world's energy-related problems. One concept that got considerable attention at the forum was "carbon capture and storage," the idea of capturing greenhouse gases as they are emitted from power plants, whether they burn oil, coal or the compounds created through coal gasification. Williams said that while coal gasification leads to higher CO2 releases than either coal or oil alone, it is in a "pure stream" that can be captured at the smokestacks and stored, preventing it from reaching the atmosphere. Category: Climate Change News 9:46:38 AM     Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel update From The Denver Post: "Lake County Commissioner Ken Olsen and his wife, Stephanie, have changed their minds about charging the EPA $20,000 for access to their property to install a mine drainage pipeline. They have now agreed to provide access for free. 'The issue has been resolved,' Stephanie Olsen, president of the Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad, told 9News. Olsen credits state Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Castle Rock, with helping to negotiate the agreement. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will use a steel-encased pipe to move the water, which is expected to be contaminated by mine waste." More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here. Category: Colorado Water 9:35:49 AM

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