Critics challenge uranium exploration

By Bill Harlan, Journal staff | Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Previous Page

Share

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• NewsVine
• Fark

Print

Email

The first uranium-exploration permit in the Black Hills in decades has hit a couple of snags.

An Indian treaty rights group called Defenders of the Black Hills is suing the South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment, saying the board improperly granted the exploration permit to Powertech Uranium Corp.

Powertech plans to drill 155 exploration holes northwest of Edgemont, searching for an estimated 7.6 million pounds of uranium ore, or "yellowcake."

The second snag in the permit was revealed in part of the state's response to the lawsuit. Deputy Attorney General Roxanne Giedd wrote that an "administrative error" sent the state archeologist to the wrong location for a site evaluation. Giedd asked 7th Circuit Judge Jack Delaney to send the permit back to the state Board of Minerals and Environment.

Charmaine White Face of Defenders of the Black Hills said incomplete archeological data was one reason the group opposed the permit.

"We tried to bring it up at the permit hearing, but they wouldn't listen to us," White Face said Tuesday during a uranium summit in Rapid City.

The Defenders of the Black Hills sponsored the summit. About 50 people attended -- many of them opposed to resuming western South Dakota uranium mining, which boomed in the 1950s and then went bust.

Soaring prices and better mining techniques have started another uranium boom in the West. Powertech, for example, plans to use "solution mining" -- pumping a solution into deep holes to dissolve uranium, then pumping the "pregnant" solution out of another set of holes.

Bob Shimek, director of mining programs for the Indigenous Mining Action Network in Bemidji, Minn., warned against solution mining. "It is not an environmentally benign method," he said.

Powertech vice president Richard Blubaugh, who attended Tuesday's summit, disagreed, saying solution mining had a 30-year record of environmental safety. He also said it reduced the risk to uranium workers to "almost nil."

Blubaugh said he didn't think the lawsuit would significantly delay the company's exploration.

White Face argues that the minerals board approved Powertech's exploration permit too quickly.

The board issued the permit Jan. 17, after a one-day hearing in Pierre.

South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources spokesman Kim Smith said the state's request to re-open the permit hearing is only to let the Board of Minerals and Environment consider new archeological data. The exploration permit remains valid, Smith said.

Blubaugh said his company had voluntarily agreed to delay drilling until the state archeologist inspects the correct site. "We want to make sure it's right," he said.

But drilling could begin in two or three weeks, Blubaugh said.

The question of re-opening the hearing for new archeological data will get a hearing before 7th Circuit Judge Jack Delaney on April 6 at the Pennington County Courthouse in Rapid City.

The larger issue is whether Powertech's exploration permit was properly issued.

Powertech and the state Board of Minerals and Environment argue the board followed state laws and regulations.

White Face, who also is suing the Board of Minerals and Environment as an individual, disagrees. She is joined in the lawsuit by a Black Hills environmental group called ACTion for the Environment and half a dozen other individuals.

Among the reasons they cite for overturning the exploration permit:

- Opponents of the permit didn't get enough time before the hearing date to hire an attorney.

- Opponents didn't have time before the hearing to gather witnesses.

- The Board of Minerals and Environment didn't read all the documents submitted by opponents.

- The board approved "findings of fact" for the permit the next day, with no court reporter present.

- The board failed to find an interpreter for two plaintiffs whose first language is Lakota.

Ironically, the state Board of Minerals and Environment also cites the Defenders' lack of an attorney, saying the group should be dropped from the lawsuit because "associations" must have legal representation in such cases.

Blubaugh and Smith both said Tuesday they believed the uranium exploration would not be long delayed. The Board of Minerals and Environment meets April 17 and 18 in Pierre. Meanwhile, the current permit is valid.

After exploration, however, Powertech will need a mining permit from South Dakota, another permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the blessing of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In other words, the debate about solution mining for uranium in the Black Hills has just begun, and even the name is in doubt. White Face and other environmentalists call it "in situ leach mining." Blubaugh prefers "in situ recovery."

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com