By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Today
Health & Environment Editor
RAPID CITY – The
Western Mining Action Network is circulating a call that asks for help from tribal members and clean energy advocates to delay EPA water permit hearings over the proposed Dewey-Burdock Project, which aims to leach radioactive uranium from aquifers in the unceded treaty territory of the Black Hills for private production of nuclear power and weaponry.
The September 8 call went out to members of the network’s Uranium Caucus, among them people from at least six states and five native nations involved in the Inter-Mountain West Uranium and Water Summit held here for the first time in April 2016.
“We are facing a very short comment period for some updated draft water permits from the EPA for a proposed in situ leach uranium mine in the southwestern Black Hills, and we need your help,” said Lilias Jarding in the request on behalf of the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance.
The foreign company promoting the project, Azarga Uranium Corp., and its wholly owned U.S. subsidiary Powertech USA Inc., have known since at least February 7 that the EPA would act on this in late August, according to an agency document issued along with the updated
draft water permits released for public comment on August 26.
“The public found out in the last few days of August. So, the company has more than a six-month lead on us,” the S.O.S. points out.
Tribal members and
allies, pictured in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 2015, continue to express
opposition to licensing of proposed Dewey Burdock radioactive extraction
project, which regulators say could have a large impact on Lakota cultural
resources. Photo by Native
Sun News Today
The EPA has announced it will close the public comment period on October 10. However, the agency will consider timely appeals for extending the deadline.
“There are hundreds of pages of information to review,” the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance notes. “We are asking for an additional 90 days to consider the material and comment. Please join our request by e-mailing robinson.valois@epa.gov, addressing
Docket Number EPA-R08-OW-2019-0512, and asking for an additional 90 days to comment.”
The alliance also is concerned about the lack of tribal consultation during the permit process up to this point, it said in a separate mailing. “Hopefully, full and appropriate consultation will start soon.”
Like all the participants in the Intermountain West Uranium and Water Summit, the alliance is signatory to a declaration that states, among other things:
“We stand for the highest criteria attainable in public institutions’ mandatory oversight, monitoring, regulation, enforcement and disclosure of uranium and related nuclear operations, for the purpose of attaining congruence in standards implementation, punishing lawbreakers, halting current illegal dealings, improving corporate accountability, securing transparency, and providing community access to information.”
The declaration also states, “We defend international, treaty, traditional, tribal, state, local and case law that supports processes and decisions in the interest of subjugating the profit motive in uranium and nuclear development activities to the need to honor ancestral territorial claims and bolster cultural survival of all people.”
The Dewey Burdock Project is located in 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty territory, an area reserved by Constitutional law for the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe has been in federal court and administrative appeals over the project for nearly 10 years, arguing for protection of water and cultural resources threatened by what would be the first-ever mining of uranium in the aquifers of the state of South Dakota.
Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com
Copyright permission
Native Sun News Today
Join the Conversation
Related Stories
EPA
ignores tribal consultation requirement with plans for uranium mine (September 5, 2019)
