By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor PIERRE — A South Dakota legislative committee ignored Native American pleadings Feb. 13, when it killed a bill aimed to protect water supplies from unprecedented in-situ uranium mining and milling upstream from the state’s largest Indian reservations. The Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee voted, 10-2, against HB 1193, a bill that would have required mining companies “to show that waste water will not reduce the quality of groundwater.” The gist of the bill was: “Full-scale operation may begin, following satisfactory demonstration of restoration in the authorized production area.” Native American Rep. Troy Heinert requested the committee approve the bill so it could go to the full House of Representatives for consideration. “This is about how do we regulate our water in our state,” he testified to the committee. “All I’m asking for is that we have a small avenue where we know we can protect the water.” Heinert, a business owner in Mission, is a new Democratic member of the legislature, representing Dist. 26a in Mellette and Todd counties and the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. Voting in favor of the water bill were two committee members elected by heavily Native American districts: Democratic incumbent Rep. Dean Schremp, a Lantry rancher, from District 28a, which covers Corson, Dewey and Ziebach counties, and the Cheyenne River Sioux and Standing Rock Sioux reservations; and first-term Republican Rep. Elizabeth May, a Kyle rancher and business woman from Dist. 27, which is made up of Bennett, Haakon, Jackson, Pennington, and Shannon counties, Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux Indian reservations. “I want you to think of two Lakota words,” Heinert told the committee. “Mni wiconi: Water is life. We cannot deny it. This is important,” he said. “I would like to see this get to the House floor. Let’s have the discussion.” Ten companies are leasing land and considering in-situ leach (ISL) mining of uranium in South Dakota, which has never before had to regulate the technique, Fall River County rancher Susan Henderson testified at the committee hearing. Among them, Powertech (USA) Inc. is the groundbreaker in the permitting process. The company is seeking 9,000 gallons per minute of water rights, with the stated intent of using them for 20 years to pressure-wash uranium, vanadium and other heavy metals out of the ore-bearing strata. The company would dissolve the minerals underground and pump them to the surface for processing into yellow cake at the Dewey-Burdock project site in Fall River and Custer counties adjacent to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Commercially unviable heavy metals released in the process would be isolated through evaporation ponds on sight for land-transport to licensed dumps, and waste water would be injected into an aquifer and/or spread on the ground, depending on what permits the company obtains. “This bill will begin some type of regulation,” Henderson stated. “It says, ‘Prove to us you aren’t ruining the water and the quality’.” She argued for local oversight, asking, “Do we want to just let the federal government and the EPA decide what they’re doing with this?” Dist. 29 Republican Rep. Gary Cammack, a new member of the Legislature who runs a business in Union Center and was elected from Butte, Meade and Pennington counties, said yes to leaving the issue in the hands of federal agencies. He moved to nix the bill on the grounds that that the EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have not found fault with the Powertech proposal. “I have a clear understanding of the value of water,” he said, adding, “When two different agencies come back with no findings that [proposals] are detrimental, and we have a small community that can benefit by this project, we should move forward with it.” Cammack’s comments followed testimony by Powertech’s Dewey-Burdock Project Manager Mark Hollenbeck, a former state legislator, who claimed that the NRC “has been studying this for four or five years and concludes there are no impacts that would hurt the environment.” On Jan. 30, NRC staff announced its final supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) recommending approval of Powertech’s proposal. However, it noted, a license cannot be issued on the basis of that recommendation until a cultural resource analysis is completed, under the National Historic Preservation Act. In addition, NRC approval cannot be granted until public hearings are conducted, because the Atomic Energy Licensing Board is hearing administrative arguments from the Oglala Sioux Tribe and several other parties contesting the case on the grounds of concerns over water and sacred sites. On Feb. 12, one day before the legislative committee vote, lawyers for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Henderson, and Powertech held a telephone conference with the NRC staff and licensing board in an effort to set dates for hearing those concerns. They agreed the hearings would not take place until the summer of 2014. They are expected to be held in proximity to the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Indian reservations, the two largest in South Dakota. The reservations are located on the Cheyenne River, which has headwaters flowing through the proposed 10,000-acre uranium mining and milling site near Edgemont in extreme southwestern South Dakota. HB 1193, proposed by the grassroots non-profit Dakota Rural Action, would make South Dakota law comparable to Wyoming’s in the realm of in-situ leach mining of uranium, according to Sabrina King, the registered lobbyist for the statewide organization. “Wyoming requires restoration of groundwater for uranium mining to baseline level or better,” she testified. “Our bill requires, not that they have to make it pristine, just that they put it back the way it was,” she told the committee. The bill would have brought regulations for underground mining operations more in line with those already set for surface mines, she noted. “We have an entire chapter in state law on mined land reclamation,” she said. “Because this is a new process we don’t have the same kinds of regulations for below-ground mining as we do for above-ground mining. But why shouldn’t we? We require land to be reclaimed. Why wouldn’t we require the water to be reclaimed?” Hollenbeck testified that the company’s process would take five years longer if it had to begin a water restoration demonstration project at this time. He joked that the bill was the “Fire Mark Hollenbeck bill.” The former mayor of Edgemont, Hollenbeck noted that the permit process already has taken “twice as long as it took the U.S. to win World War II.” In 2011, after Powertech failed two times to gain state Department of Environment and Natural Resources approval for the project, Hollenbeck successfully lobbied to “toll”, or suspend, the agency’s oversight. “Those rules are gone,” King argued. The bill “has to be put into law because it’s not in the rules, because we tolled those rules.” Current Edgemont Mayor Carl Shaw testified: “The City Council, myself and 90 percent of the people of the town of Edgemont support the uranium mining.” He did not address the water issue. Likewise, Edgemont school administrator Lane Ostenson testified that the bill would be a “roadblock for the proposed mining.” He said that uranium mining’s trickle-down effects for the town of 400 would be “great for our area.” Hollenbeck noted that the Argentine Township located at the proposed project site and the Meade County Commission have endorsed the mining proposal. The Rapid City mayor and council, representing 60,000 residents dependent on the Madison Aquifer involved in the mining proposal, have passed a resolution against the mining proposal due to water concerns. Republican incumbent Dist. 28B incumbent Rep. Betty Olson, an EMT and rancher in Prairie City, who was elected from Butte, Harding and Perkins counties, seconded the motion to kill the bill, recalling friends and family who had suffered no harm from past uranium mining they conducted. “When I was a kid, my father was one of those evil uranium miners in Slim Buttes,” she said following the vote. She described helping him scrape overburden with heavy machinery to expose a lignite layer containing uranium ore. “We slept on the lignite bed at the richest part of the mining claim,” she reminisced. Siding with her in the vote to keep the bill from further consideration were: Dennis Feikert, Kyle Schoenfish, Charles B. Hoffman, Don Kopp, Herman Otten, Craig Qualm and James Schaefer. Criticizing their vote was Dakota Rural Action Board Director and Black Hills Chapter member Lilias Jarding, who said, “The state has missed a chance here. This bill would have protected us from the potentially harmful activities of foreign corporations.” Powertech (USA) Inc. is a subsidiary wholly owned by Powertech Uranium Corp., a holding company traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, with majority ownership held by Hong Kong-headquartered equity fund Azarga Resources Ltd., which is registered in the British West Indies. (Contact Talli Nauman, NSN Health and Environment Editor at talli.nauman@gmail.com)
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