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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (151493)	6/8/2001 12:20:03 PM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Utah citizens protest nuclear waste dumping BLANDING, UTAH — Citizens and environmental groups in southern Utah held a "Walk Against Nuclear Waste" last week. More than 40 individuals walked simultaneously from Blanding (San Juan County) to Moab. The eighty-mile walk, led by longtime San Juan County activist Ken Sleight, followed U.S. Highway 191. Cosponsoring groups included Moab-based Living Rivers, Glen Canyon Action Network, and the Sierra Club Glen Canyon Group, as well as HEAL-UTAH from Salt Lake City. The event was held in conjunction with a Utah Radiation Control Board tour of a mill operated by the International Uranium Corporation (IUC) at a site near Blanding. The mill uses an acid heap leach process to extract uranium and other minerals from the waste. Activists are protesting the recent application by IUC to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which seeks to transport and process radioactive lead waste, by truck from a site near San Bernardino, California, for processing into high-grade material. The Sierra Club is fighting the application. "We want this mill closed and the awful mess cleaned up," said John Weisheit, Chair of the Glen Canyon Group. "This multinational corporation is hauling out-of-state nuclear waste through our communities, and dumping it in the backyards of Utahns." As the volume of radioactive materials grows at White Mesa, residents increasingly express concerns that the IUC mill could become "another Moab," a reference to the highly polluting Atlas uranium mill tailings site near that community on the banks of the Colorado River. The mill site, just north of the White Mesa Ute Indian Reservation, has been controversial since its opening in 1980. Currently the mill receives shipments of waste material from a number of toxic and radioactive dumps around the country. The uranium-bearing wastes are brought to the IUC facility--in unmarked containers on trucks and by rail--from sites in New York, New Jersey, and Missouri. Proposals to bring nuclear wastes in from other locations, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, are pending. Meanwhile, the company's annual report indicates that it has lost substantial sums of money in recent years. The company is only responsible for closure costs of ten million dollars. This news has stirred fears that IUC may be intentionally stockpiling large amounts of radioactive and toxic metals and other wastes, with the intention of declaring bankruptcy and closing the facility. A similar situation exists in Moab, where one of the nation's largest uranium tailings piles leaches thousands of gallons of radioactive ammonia into the Colorado River each day. Cleanup estimates of this site, formerly owned by Atlas Corporation, range into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Atlas spun off the Moab mill to a subsidiary, then allowed the new company to go bankrupt, thereby avoiding liability. The latest proposal would bring radioactive sludge material to the IUC mill by truck from Unocal's Molycorp Mountain Pass Mine in San Bernardino County, California. The mine sludge is laced with lead, a potent toxin known to cause a host of serious health problems in humans, as well as environmental damage. The Sierra Club is currently appealing a decision by a NRC administrative law judge, seeking a hearing on the Molycorp license amendment. The judge denied the group's request, saying that the Sierra Club lacked standing in the case. The well-known conservation group may take the NRC to court over the matter. The environmental groups will called on the Radiation Control Board to regulate existing wastes at the mill and to oppose all incoming shipments of additional wastes. "We will march to the Governor's office in Salt Lake City if need be," said Ken Sleight, a San Juan County businessman. "There's no excuse for Utah state government to spend our tax dollars fighting the Goshute Indians who want to dump nuclear waste on their own lands, while sitting quietly and letting white people dump poison next to the White Mesa Ute Indians." sports.yahoo.com