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Drinking water threatened as EPA allows uranium miners to inject radioactive wastes into groundwater

Environmental groups say the EPA should not be letting mining companies write their own rules.

Similar disputes are erupting across the country.

“This is a health issue as much as a water supply issue,”

A Decades-Old Deal With Uranium Miners Is Causing Trouble For The EPA Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica | Dec. 26, 2012, GILLETTE, Wyo.“…….The problems and pressures the EPA is facing at Christensen Ranch are not unique.

With uranium mining booming, the agency has received a mounting number of requests for aquifer exemptions in recent years. So far, EPA records show, the agency has issued at least 40 exemptions for uranium mines across the country and is considering several more. Two mines are expanding operations near Christensen Ranch.

In several cases, the EPA has struggled to balance imposing water protections with accommodating the industry’s needs.

In South Dakota, where Powertech Uranium is seeking permits for a new mine in the Black Hills, state regulations bar the deep injection wells typically used to dispose of mining waste. The EPA is weighing whether to allow Powertech to use what’s called a Class 5 well u2014 a virtually unregulated and unmonitored shallow dumping system normally used for non-toxic waste u2014 instead…..

Environmental groups say the EPA should not be letting mining companies write their own rules.

“It’s disturbing that such a requirement would be so easy to get around,” said Jeff Parsons, a senior attorney for the Western Mining Action Project, which is representing the Oglala Sioux in a challenge to stop the Powertech mine. “There is a reasons that South Dakota prohibited Class 1 wells; it’s to protect the aquifers.”

Similar disputes are erupting across the country.

In Goliad County, Texas, a proposal for a new uranium mine has triggered a bitter fight between state officials and the EPA.

In 2010, Texas regulators gave a mining company preliminary permission to pollute a shallow aquifer even though 50 homes draw water from wells near the contamination zone.

EPA scientists were concerned by the mining area’s proximity to homes and believed the natural flow of water would send contaminants toward the water wells. At first, the agency notified Texas officials it would deny an exemption for the mine unless the state did further monitoring and analysis.

Texas regulators refused. “It appears the EPA may be swayed by the unsubstantiated allegations and fears of uranium mining opponents,” Zak Covar, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, wrote in a May 2012 letter to William Honker, acting director of the EPA’s local Water Protection Division.

As the case dragged on without a final determination, some within the agency worried that the EPA would go back on its initial decision and capitulate to appease Texas authorities, with whom it has clashed repeatedly.

“This aquifer exemption issue in Goliad County might become a sacrificial lamb that the federal government puts on the altar to try to repair some relations with the state,” said a former government official with knowledge of the case.

On Dec. 5, the EPA approved the exemption in Goliad County.

Many disputes over aquifer exemptions focus on water people might need years in the future, but in Goliad County the risk is imminent. People already rely on drinking water drawn from areas close to those that would be polluted.

“This is a health issue as much as a water supply issue,” said Art Dohmann, president of the Goliad County Groundwater Conservation District, a local agency that manages water resources.  http://www.propublica.org/article/on-a-wyoming-ranch-feds-sacrifice-tomorrows-water-to-mine-uranium-today/single#republish#ixzz2GHR2ajDH

December 27, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uranium, USA, water