July 27, 2001

The Honorable Heather Wilson

United States House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Wilson:

On behalf of Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC), I am writing to urge you to work to withdraw the proposed legislation that would provide up to $10 million per year for three years to domestic uranium producers "to identify, test, and develop improved in situ leaching mining technologies, including low-cost environmental restoration technologies. . ." For the reasons discussed below, this legislation is not needed for research and development purposes, would lead to unsound fiscal policy, and most important, could have the unintended consequence of facilitating new uranium mining in Navajo communities that continue to be negatively affected by the long-term impacts of past uranium development.

By way of introduction, I am an environmental health specialist with a background in earth sciences, public health and environmental epidemiology. I direct SRIC's Uranium Impact Assessment Program and have studied and observed the adverse effects of uranium development for the past 25 years. SRIC was instrumental in providing the scientific and policy rationales for enactment of the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978, participated in the development of NRC and EPA standards for uranium mill tailings in the 1980s, and conducted research in support of Navajo groups advocating for passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 and its 2000 amendments. Since 1994, SRIC has assisted a community organization, Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM), in its legal challenge of a uranium ISL license issued by the NRC to Hydro Resources, Inc. (HRI), for the proposed Crownpoint Uranium Solution Mining Project. This history of direct involvement in uranium recovery science, law and policy informs the following comments about the legislation.

First, uranium ISL mining has been conducted for nearly 30 years in both pilot-scale and commercial-scale applications in Wyoming, Texas, Nebraska and New Mexico. Our research, contributed to by scientists who evaluated the uranium ISL industry for the NRC in the 1970s and 1980s and who regulated the ISL industry in Wyoming in the 1980s and '90s, shows that no commercial-scale uranium ISL operation in Wyoming has been successful in restoring groundwater to its premining, baseline conditions, despite many years of restoration efforts. In Texas, restoration at two ISL mines was certified by Texas regulators as complete only after the agencies relaxed the restoration standards more than once to facilitate compliance. Those mines did not achieve compliance with several of the original baseline standards established for the sites. And in New Mexico, restoration to premining groundwater quality was not achieved at a pilot-scale ISL mine operated by Mobil Oil Co. for 11 months in 1979 and 1980.

I am not aware of any "low-cost restoration technologies" that have not already been tried by ISL operators. I would argue, in fact, that the industry has already received federal assistance for ISL technology development through the field-level research projects conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in the 1970s. You should have little confidence that the industry will be any more successful with an infusion of new federal funds than it was with previous federal support.

Second, your legislation could return our country to unsound fiscal policies of the past. Not since the Manhattan Project has the government directly funded uranium development. To spur uranium production, the old Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) offered production incentives, price supports and contract exclusivity to private mining companies — not direct grants. The consequences of AEC's policies are by now well known; when the government subsidies ended in the 1960s, production ceased or was curtailed, mine waste sites were abandoned, and the taxpayer eventually paid for much of the cleanup — with more yet to be done.

Your amendments could have the similar effects of artifically propping up uranium mining that, under normal market conditions, would not be economically feasible, and creating new environmental problems and increased exposures of the public. The domestic uranium industry is weak because it cannot compete in a world uranium market awash with ample supply of lower-cost uranium and because no new nuclear reactors have been ordered in the U.S. since 1978. By its own admission, HRI cannot justify mining at Church Rock until the price of uranium increases from its current level of just under $9 a pound to $15 a pound. Your legislation would enable a company to conduct solution mining — that is, chemically altering the groundwater to dissolve uranium and other toxic substances — when the cost of production outstrips the price for the product. When the grants run out and the recipient firm goes bankrupt because it can no longer produce at below-cost prices, will it have adequate surety to fund groundwater restoration and site decommissioning and decontamination, or will the taxpayers be billed for the cleanup? Taxpayers should not be asked to fund an industry that is not cost-competitive and has a long history of leaving rural Western communities and the taxpaying public with the enormous costs of environmental cleanup and diminished public health.

Third and most important, your legislation could have the unintended consequence of facilitating uranium ISL mining in the sole source of drinking water for an estimated 15,000 residents of the Eastern Navajo Agency. HRI's proposed Crownpoint Uranium Project is opposed by Church Rock and Crownpoint Chapters, virtually every major community institution in the Eastern Agency and by an overwhelming number of local residents because it involves a direct threat of contamination to the region's most precious resource — its high-quality groundwater. ENDAUM's and SRIC's consulting scientists identified significant technical defects in the groundwater protection and restoration components of the proposed project, including the mere fact that ISL mining has never been conducted in an aquifer as naturally clean as that which now serves the Crownpoint and Church Rock areas.

HRI's parent firm, Uranium Resources, Inc., of Dallas, would be one of only a handful of companies nationally that would qualify for the proposed grants. An infusion of millions in cash from the federal government could virtually assure HRI of raising the $13 million in capital it needs, but presently does not have, to construct and operate the Church Rock Section 8 portion of the project should it obtain all necessary approvals from NRC, EPA and the Navajo Nation. Your legislation, therefore, would fund a mining project that has not been demonstrated to be safe, has not received full approval from various regulatory agencies despite first being proposed in 1988, and is not wanted by the local communities where it is proposed.

Neither does your legislation make sense against the history of uranium development in the Four Corners Area over the past 50 years. I know you are well aware of the continuing need for compensation of uranium workers who have experienced excess rates of illnesses and mortality; indeed, one of my colleagues, Paul Robinson, worked with your office to estimate the number of post-1971 uranium workers who would be eligible for benefits if the current compensation program were expanded. We certainly applaud your interest and work in this important area.

While adverse health outcomes among uranium workers are well documented in the medical literature, little research has been done on the effects of exposure to mining-related toxicants among families of workers or among residents of mining communities. In the Navajo community of Church Rock northeast of Gallup — where uranium mining began in the early-1950s and 16 abandoned uranium sites exist in a relatively small 10-mile-diameter area — no systematic study of community health has ever been conducted despite a litany of documented impacts: high airborne radon levels, elevated levels of uranium in some unregulated water sources, and chronic exposures to mining wastes and effluents associated with 20 years of mine dewatering and the infamous July 1979 uranium mill tailings spill, in which nearly 100 million gallons of acidic tailings effluent was released into the Puerco River. Throughout the Navajo Nation, less than half of the more than 1,100 abandoned uranium mining sites have been remediated, leaving the local communities to shoulder the burden of potential adverse health risks from continuing environmental exposures.

Eastern Navajo Agency communities, like so many Navajo and Pueblo communities in the Southwest, have already paid — and are still paying — a high price for the adverse consequences of past uranium mining. It is not just for our society to subject the indigenous people of these communities to new risks to their health and limited water supplies when plenty of uranium exists in Russian and American nuclear warheads, in government inventories and from existing mines to meet reactor demands for the next decade and beyond.

In the current context, therefore, federal taxpayer support is more urgently needed for uranium-worker compensation, environmental restoration at abandoned uranium mining sites, health assessment programs in uranium-impacted communities, and feasibility studies for sustainable economic development initiatives in rural and Native American communities. It is not needed for direct funding of private businesses that intend to develop new mines for which no need has been demonstrated and in communities which do not want their water sources polluted.

Before pursuing your legislation any further, I encourage you to visit Church Rock and Crownpoint and to speak with the residents there who have experienced the adverse effects of previous uranium mining and to listen to their concerns about the proposed HRI project. As a resident of your congressional district, I request to meet with you to discuss our technical, economic and legal concerns about ISL mining in general, and the HRI project in particular. I believe that more study and reflection on this issue would convince you that federal funding of uranium mining is not justified for any reasonable social, fiscal or environmental purpose.

Sincerely,

Chris Shuey, MPH-candidate

Director, Uranium Impact Assessment Program

Southwest Research and Information Center

Office: 505-262-1862

Home: 505-877-1067

E-mail, office: sricchris@earthlink.net

xc: Senator Jeff Bingaman

Senator Pete Domenici

Representative Tom Udall

Navajo Nation President Kelsey Begaye

Navajo Nation Council Speaker Edward T. Begaye