At an Earth Day event in Rapid City on April 20, opponents of Powertech’s proposed uranium mining 50 miles from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation invited signatures on a petition demanding South Dakota Tourism Department Secretary James Hagen reject the project. Photo by Dahl McLean.
Deadline passes for uranium mine 50 miles west of Pine Ridge
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor PIERRE – With an April 22 deadline for people to intervene in Powertech (USA), Inc.’s permit application for a tribally- contested uranium mine 50 miles west of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a state agency recommended licensing approval – as long as the company complies with a list of some 75 conditions. The staff of the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) made the recommendations to the governor’s Board of Minerals and Environment, but has not yet set a date for a public hearing on the permit application. In an April 15 letter to interested parties, the DENR said only that “a hearing on the mine permit application will be scheduled for a future date.” In 2009, the same Board of Minerals and Environment denied Lakota requests to stop Powertech’s uranium exploration. The requests from the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Debra White Plume of the non-profit Owe Aku (Bring Back the Way), Charmaine White Face, and her non-profit Defenders of the Black Hills called for a determination that the 10,580-acre proposed Dewey-Burdock mine site in Custer and Fall River counties is “special, exceptional, critical or unique.” Now the tribe and several other opponents are petitioning and intervening again to prevent the mining, arguing for protection of cultural resources, land, water, health, agriculture and tourist economy. Powertech proposes South Dakota’s first uranium injection mining and milling — or in-situ leaching (ISL) — to be conducted at a previously mined and unreclaimed site 13 miles northwest of Edgemont in the Black Hills. The project entails extracting groundwater, forcing it back into the aquifer with oxygen and carbon dioxide to dissolve and release uranium from rock, pumping the mineral water to the surface, refining the product, shipping it to nuclear power producers, disposing of the waste and effluent, cleaning up the site, and monitoring for environmental compliance. The proposal calls for drawing down as much as 9,000 gallons per minute from the Black Hills area aquifers throughout an estimated 20-year project period. The process would involve extraction and on-site refining of an estimated 1 million pounds of uranium oxide (U3O8) per year for shipment by truck. Most of the water would be returned to the surface or underground once it was cleansed of toxics and radioactive elements remaining from the extraction process. Powertech projects 86 construction jobs during the first couple years of the endeavor. The Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement for the undertaking qualifies the economic and employment impact as small; it deems the largest impact to be on cultural resources. STANDING ROCK SIOUX QUESTION COMPLIANCE
The DENR states that it recommends the governor’s Board of Minerals and Environment approve the large-scale mining permit “conditioned upon compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.” Therein lays the catch, according to Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Archeologist Terry Clouthier. “There has been no compliance,” he claims. The project is snagged precisely on the issue of cultural resources and the Section 106 mandatory tribal consultation rules of the National Historic Preservation Act, under which 23 consulting tribes are demanding a survey of the entire permit area, instead of just the immediate environs of the mining infrastructure, as Powertech would prefer. Already surveys have revealed at least 100 prehistoric archeological finds in the permit area, and tribal historic preservation officers insist they be involved directly in further surveys before permitting can be considered. Clouthier’s comment came in a letter earlier this year to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in response to the federal government’s offer of a $10,000 honorarium from Powertech to each tribe for three people to do 30 days’ of assessment. “This current proposal is just short of a bribe disguised as a token identification effort,” Clouthier said. “If the applicant is unwilling to fund a proper survey for historic properties of significance to tribes, the federal agency cannot complete its Section 106 responsibilities and compliance, and therefore no permit can be issued for this process,” he concluded. DENR recommendations do not address the cultural resource issue. Following the release of the recommended conditions, shares for Powertech (USA), Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canadian holding company Powertech Corp., plummeted to their lowest level of less than eight cents. The DENR’s April 15 letter notes that the Board of Minerals and Environment already has authorized staff approval of 32 changes that Powertech has proposed to its initial Oct. 1 large-scale mining permit application. The changes include a request for permission to mine and extract vanadium, which is used as a steel alloy and as a catalyst to produce sulfuric acid. Powertech proposed changes of plans for monitoring, compliance, wastewater disposal, drainage, infrastructure, chemical storage, roads, topsoil, size of areas to worked simultaneously, dust control, timetables, water treatment and storage, reclamation, reporting procedures and post-closure. Now the board will review the conditions the DENR suggests. The conditions stipulate that Powertech will not get a large-scale mining permit unless it first secures water rights, which it is seeking through two permit applications to the DENR’s Water Management Board. Water rights hearings are scheduled the weeks of Oct. 7 and Oct. 28, at the Ramkota Conference Center in Rapid City. The DENR’s suggested conditions on the large-scale mining permit also include: Powertech’s abiding by recommendations of the South Dakota departments of Tourism; Agriculture; Game, Fish and Parks; and Health. They include: Powertech’s obtaining: a Source and Byproduct Material License from the NRC; an aquifer exemption from the EPA; an Underground Injection Control Class III permit from the EPA; an Underground Injection Control Class V permit from the EPA; a South Dakota Surface Water Discharge Permit; a South Dakota Ground Water Discharge Plan; and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 404 permit for affecting federal water rights. According to DENR staff, Powertech should have to submit a sediment and erosion control plan before startup, as well as updates to the plan prior to developing new well fields, roads, and facilities. It would have to submit a storm water sediment and erosion control map, as well as updates. It would have to follow best practices in erosion control. Staff envisions Powertech conducting inspection of its own efforts in this regard. Powertech would have to submit drawings of its buildings to authorities within 60 days after construction finish of each component. The DENR staff envisions Powertech conducting inspection of its own sediment and erosion control efforts. In addition, the company would be in charge of notifying the DENR of its settling-pond leaks and mitigating any fugitive airborne or liquid emissions. If the DENR deems that a written complaint about the operation is viable, it should require Powertech to develop a mitigation plan to correct the violation or hazard, at which time the authority would set a deadline for cleanup, according to the recommended conditions. The company would have to install protective structures and contain solutions or chemicals to guard against harm to wildlife, including mesh fencing, bird and bat deterrent systems, and escape routes to prevent trapping animals in steep-sided settling ponds. Powertech would be charged with notifying authorities of any sighting in the permit area of species that are endangered, threatened, or critical habitat designees, as well as with reporting wildlife mortalities. “Powertech shall implement a response plan to assess impacts to the aquatic system if a discharge, release or spill of process solutions, waste water, or toxic solutions occurs,” the list of proposed conditions states. Prior to construction, Powertech should submit a spill contingency plan. Thereafter, it must report “suspected discharges of regulated substances” within 24 hours, according to the suggestions. For any wells constructed, the company would have to file construction records within a month of completion and provide well-testing records to the department upon request. It would have to supply records for abandoned and plugged wells on an annual basis, plus corrective action plans for improperly sealed, completed or abandoned wells, if the board approves the permit with the recommended conditions. Powertech would have to notify authorities within seven days, if a leak or spill occurs; then it would be expected to “restore ground water.” The department would require submittal of plans and procedures for land application of wastewater, as well as the operator’s control of volume and development of a comprehensive sampling plan for soils and vegetation informed by baseline studies the operator would have to conduct. The company would be in charge of retaining all the monitoring information at the mine site for three years. It would have to submit to the state all the reports and documents it provides to the NRC and EPA. Reclamation would be required on an ongoing basis, with a reclamation bond submitted by Powertech in the amount of $395,000 for the first year of construction, and the amount for following years to be determined. Once Powertech submits the “first installment of the bond”, the permit can be issued, the department said. “Powertech shall submit an updated post-closure plan, to include an updated hydrologic monitoring plan,” the DENR recommended. Once the water is restored in the first well field, its post-closure period would begin, and each successive well field would follow the same procedure, for a period “not to extend beyond 30 years after the last well field has achieved ground water restoration and other elements of the facility are decommissioned and reclaimed, unless the board determines that a longer or shorter period is necessary,” the staff noted. An annual post-closure bond would be determined on the basis of an evaluation of each well field and facility. “Powertech’s liability for the affected mine area shall continue until certification of the completion of the post-closure care plan is approved by the board. The department shall give Powertech the opportunity to accompany any inspector from the department or other agent of the board during the post-closure period,” the recommended conditions state. “The post-closure bond shall be held for a period of 30 years after reclamation bond release to ensure that … the affected land is stable and free of hazards, vegetation is self-generating, impacts to the hydrology and other natural resources have been minimized, and the site is maintenance-free to the extent practicable,” staff noted. (Contact Talli Nauman, Native Sun News Health and Environment Editor at talli.nauman@gmail.com)
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