Susan Henderson sides with Native Americans in advocating water rights remain in South Dakota. PHOTO BY/Talli Nauman
Mark Hollenbeck sides with Canadian company in promoting uranium mining in Inyan Kara Aquifer.PHOTO BY/Talli Nauman
Cowboys and Indians choose sides
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor PART 1 EDGEMONT- Mark Hollenbeck and Susan Henderson are both cattle ranchers in Fall River County, South Dakota. They are both listed under “H” in the Edgemont telephone directory. They get their mail from the same post office in this railroad town 50 miles west of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. That’s where their similarities end. Edgemont is at Ground Zero for the nuclear industry in Lakota territory: It is the headquarters for the first in-situ uranium mining proposed in the state, and therefore the metaphoric epicenter of a clash over whether to go ahead with the project. Hollenbeck, whose ranch is north of town, not only sides with the industry, but he is its local face and one of its champions nationally. Henderson, whose ranch is south of town, sides with Native American constituents: Recognizing herself as the “baby poster-child” for the opposition, she vows that the mining will proceed only over her dead body. Together with Lakota allies, Henderson will go head-to-head with Hollenbeck and colleagues at a week’s worth of state hearings on the large-scale mining permit, set to open with public comments at 10 a.m., Sept. 23 at the Ramkota Conference Center in Rapid City. Friction is mounting as the state Mining and Environment board hearings and others loom on the mining proposal by Hollenbeck’s employer, a Canadian holding company called Powertech Uranium Corp. Conflict about the front end of the nuclear power chain is nothing new to the tiny town of Edgemont, which takes its name from its location on the extreme southwestern edge of the Black Hills. Silver King Mines, exploited by the local husband-and-wife team of Roy and Virginia Chord, started producing the raw material for atomic bombs here in the 1950s. In the late 1970s, the likes of Union Carbide and Tennessee Valley Authority took over the ore body and set up shop to supply the energy market’s demand for yellow cake. Then the bottom dropped outta the market, and their plans ran amuck. Again poised for a revival, uranium mining and milling will get underway in 2014, if Powertech Corps’ wholly owned subsidiary Powertech (USA) Inc. has its way on the 10,000-acre Dewey-Burdock tract, so-named after two Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad whistle stops demarcating it. Back in the day, the U.S. government encouraged the mining, kept scarce records, and imposed minimal regulations. The resulting scars are visible. The U.S. Forest Service map shows 200 abandoned uranium mines in the Dewey-Burdock area. Powertech claims 4,000 exploration drill-holes dot the tract. In the 1970s, ad hoc organizations, including the Black Hills Energy Coalition, Black Hills Alliance, Women of All Red Nations, and Miners for Safe Energy, banded together against minefield redevelopment. Their opposition and advocacy of alternative renewable energy options drew tens of thousands of participants for a 17-mile march and Black Hills International Survival Gathering encampment in 1980. They successfully held the mining at bay until the uranium market downturn shortly thereafter. When uranium prices rose again during a 2003-2007 speculation bubble attributed to aspirations for nuclear power in China and India, it motivated Powertech and other startups to invest in mineral claims. This time around, the mining interests face challenges from 23 Sioux tribal governments; Native American non-profits Owe Aku (Take Back the Way) and Defenders of the Black Hills; statewide organizations including Dakota Rural Action, South Dakota Peace and Justice, and Democracy in Action, as well as local groups, such as Clean Water Alliance and Action for the Environment; and individual landowners wary of the proposal, among them Wild Horse Sanctuary proprietor Dayton Hyde, and of course, Henderson. Powertech (USA) Inc. bought claims in 2005 and began filing applications to reopen the mines in 2009. At the time of the initial purchase, uranium was netting $300 a kilogram, and hopes were high for an upward trend. Powertech told its potential investors about the great seam of uranium on the southwestern roll front of the Black Hills. The company called the Dewey-Burdock prospect its flagship operation. After the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) twice rejected Powertech’s deep underground injection water discharge plan, Hollenbeck went to the statehouse in Pierre to lobby for streamlining the application process. The 2011 South Dakota Legislature responded by suspending the state agency’s accountability in the matter. Lawmakers hewed to arguments that the state supervision was a duplication of federal controls. An attempt to reestablish the state’s jurisdiction failed in the 2012 legislature, leaving the Class III Underground Injection Control to Region 8 EPA, based in Denver. Then came the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns and a market slump that could prove to be an even harsher antagonist than the public opinion being marshalled against the mining in the comment period leading up to the scheduled 2013 regulatory board decisions. “The earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011, with the resultant damaging effect on that country’s nuclear reactors, negatively affected public opinion regarding nuclear energy as a safe and viable source of power,” Powertech Uranium Corp. stated in a “Management Discussion and Analysis” briefing paper in July 2012. “Since the occurrence of these events, the company and other companies engaged in uranium exploration and development have experienced a reduction in the trading prices of their shares on applicable stock exchanges. Further, a number of heads of government and their legislative bodies announced reviews and/or delays of plans to develop new nuclear power facilities,” Powertech admitted. Among them are Germany, which immediately closed eight reactors and plans to shutter the rest by 2022. Austria had long-since set the trend for developing country phase-outs of nukes, beginning in 1978. Sweden followed suit in 1980, Italy in 1987, and Belgium in 1999. Switzerland and Spain have a ban on the construction of new reactors. Japanese and Taiwanese heads of state advocate reducing dependence on atomic energy. By 2013, uranium’s value was down to $42 from $300 a kilogram in 2007. Powertech shares were worth 30 times less than the $1.63 of their trade value at the acme of the bubble, hitting an all-time low of five cents in July. According to the company’s first-quarter financial statement, its revenues were down to $1.38 million and it was spending them at the rate of about $350,000 a month, a little less than what the state of South Dakota would require for an annual construction bond -- just enough to cover potential road damage from the first year of mining operations. In August, Powertech announced it procured a $500,000 loan from a new 17-percent shareholder, Azarga of the British Virgin Islands, with headquarters in Hong Kong. The shot of fresh cash allowed the business partners to pursue permits. The South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment set hearing dates for interveners registered in the contested large-scale mine permit process for Sept. 24-26 daily at the Ramkota, following the Sept. 23 public comment period. The interveners’ testimony was set to continue Sept. 27 at a time to be determined in Rushmore Plaza Civic Center’s Alpine Ponderosa Room. The board also set Nov. 11-14 to reconvene the hearing at the Ramkota and Nov. 15 at Rapid City’s Hilton Garden Inn, if necessary to consider all testimony. The hearings could be postponed due to a motion for continuance filed by the interveners. Meanwhile, the state’s Water Management Board set 8:30 a.m. Oct. 7 as the time to start taking public testimony on Powertech’s two water rights permit applications and its surface water discharge plans at a hearing in the Ramkota lasting through Oct. 11. That hearing was scheduled to reconvene Oct. 28 -Nov. 1, in the same venue, if needed. Once a board reaches its decision, either proponents or opponents can appeal the administrative resolution to the state judicial system. In order to begin mining, Powertech also will have to obtain several federal authorizations. For one, Powertech will need a uranium recovery license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Toward that end, NRC’s draft supplemental environmental impact statement for Powertech’s operation remains to be finalized. The drafters on the NRC staff state that the project will have little economic effect, “small to moderate” impacts on water and other conditions, and a “large” impact only on cultural resources, mainly Native American artifacts. Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, requiring consultation between the federal government and tribes on these resources, means the impact statement cannot be concluded until formal negotiations between the parties is achieved. Meanwhile, the federal agency’s staff has arrived at a preliminary recommendation to proceed with the mine licensing under 75 conditions. It determined that “the benefit from building and operating the facility would outweigh the economic, environmental, and social costs. “Unless safety issues mandate otherwise, the preliminary NRC staff recommendation to the commission related to the environmental aspects of the proposed action is that a source and byproduct material license for the proposed action be issued as requested,” staff said. That granted, although Powertech no longer has to deal with state oversight to dispose mine waste water deep in aquifers, the company needs Class III or Class V Underground Injection Control permits from EPA. In addition, Powertech still has to obtain other federal permits, including an exemption from the Clean Water Act in order to mine uranium. The government provides an escape valve to industry by granting requests to exempt portions of the aquifers designated for uranium mining from having to comply with standards for underground drinking water. That way, Powertech will have the legal duty to monitor only the leaks or spills outside the exempted area and “restore groundwater parameters affected by ISR operations to levels that are protective of human health and safety.” ISR stands for in-situ recovery. It is another name for in-situ leach mining (ISL) or solution mining. In this case, the process entails building wells to extract water from the Inyan Kara Aquifer, injecting that water under high pressure to dissolve uranium in the aquifer, pumping the solution to the surface, processing the mineral into a concentrated product called yellow cake for storage and shipment, purifying the water, releasing most of it on the surface or underground, and disposing of toxic wastes off-site. The technology is in use just across the state lines in Wyoming and Nebraska, but neither Powertech nor the state of South Dakota has experience with it. The issue of most concern to Henderson is the water. The company has applied to take 8,500 gallons a minute from the Inyan Kara Aquifer and 551 gallons a minute from the Madison Aquifer over a 20-year-period. That’s almost 13 million gallons per day, according to the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). Rapid City used 11.35 million gallons per day in 2012, the municipal Water Division statistics show. If Powertech bought the water from the city, the price tag would be $1 million a year. Water permits to the company will provide it free. Hollenbeck’s assurances that the company will only consume or “bleed” about 2 percent and put back the rest do not move Henderson. “Most of the ranchers in this area have Inyan Kara wells,” Henderson says. “Mine is in the Lakota Sandstone in the Inyan Kara. “The effect of this is that you’ll put these guys out of business.” The Oglala Sioux Tribe contends that both surface and underground water could be negatively impacted. “The tribe is correctly trying to protect the Cheyenne River because the Cheyenne ultimately makes its way down into the reservation, and the Indians are smart enough to know that their livestock water comes from that,” Henderson says. “Plus they also have Inyan Kara wells and some Madison wells. If you look at the reservation, there’s a lot of cattle operations down there and they need that water just the same way we do,” she adds. The Cheyenne drains both the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Indian Reservation before joining the Missouri River. Oglala Sioux Tribal Historical Preservation Officer Wilmer Mesteth, who will offer testimony at the state Mining and Environment Board hearing, notes that the area of Powertech’s application includes water resources “known as favored camping sites of indigenous peoples, both historically and prehistorically, and the likelihood that cultural artifacts and evidence of burial grounds exist in these areas is strong.” IS BLACK HILLS URANIUM MINING ANY DIFFERENT?
Clean Water Alliance spokesperson and Oglala Lakota College Professor Lilias Jarding contends that no ISL mine has ever been able to return the mine water to its original condition before mining. Hollenbeck counters that the water around the Dewey-Burdock ore body isn’t even fit for livestock consumption to begin with, and the mining will extract uranium, reducing the seam’s radiation. “Oxygen and carbon dioxide are the only things we’re gonna inject,” he says. “Why would that be degrading their water quality?” Trace toxic minerals would be disturbed along with the uranium, and their disposal would be via transportation to out-of-state toxic dumps. “You cannot reclaim anything to its original condition. You can reclaim stuff to its original use and everyone has been reclaimed to its original use,” Hollenbeck contends. Oglala Lakota College Math, Science and Technology Department Chair Hannan LaGarry explains in testimony for the state Water Management Board hearing why rock strata fractures created by the ancient Black Hills geological upheaval create a risky scenario for in-situ leaching. The aquifers that have no uranium in them could accidentally be polluted by transference of water from the Inyan Kara. “I am not against uranium mining in fact or principle,” LaGarry states.” This issue isn’t about uranium. It’s about protecting the region’s water supply, and the future inhabitability of southwestern South Dakota and adjacent Nebraska. “In order for ISL mining to be considered safe, the uranium-bearing, mined strata must be isolated from rocks above and below by confining layers. There are three principal pathways through which contaminated water could migrate away from the uranium-bearing strata through adjacent confining layers. “The first, and most common, are along joints and faults. Powertech concedes that there are breaches in the upper confining layers. The third pathway for mine fluids to breach containment is through perforations made by wells. In Powertech’s application, they repeatedly mention ‘thousands of exploratory wells,’ along with wells that supply drinking water and water for livestock. “Once mining begins, and minerals are being extracted, flow pathways within the uranium-bearing rocks will change. Once into adjacent water-bearing strata or the land surface, contaminants can enter rivers and flow downstream with each successive rain event, or flow down gradient into other water supplies.” Early-on in the application process, Powertech pledged in writing to provide Madison water to any local rancher who experiences detrimental effects from the aquifer mining. Still, the Hot Springs City Council in Fall River’s county seat and the Rapid City Council in the Black Hills’ largest population center voted overwhelmingly to oppose the project. Rapid City’s Aug. 19 resolution states, “Due to the potential risk to the Madison Aquifer, the city opposes the proposed in-situ mining of uranium in the Black Hills by Powertech Uranium Corp.” In November 2012, Fall River County Commissioners voted to intervene in the state hearings, but in 2013 reversed the decision, arguing the issue was too complex for them. (Contact Talli Nauman is the Health and Environment Editor for Native Sun News and she can be contacted at talli.nauman@gmail.com) Copyright permission by Native Sun News
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