Let’s put it this way: Public input was so limited that not one of the more than half-dozen environmental groups who send me e-mail action alerts on a variety of issues had an alert on this baby.
Here’s the USFS spin:
Barbara McCurry, the Kaibab National Forest’s spokeswoman on this issue, said her agency had little choice but to allow the drilling under the 1872 mining law that governs hard-rock mining claims. “The exploratory drilling is pretty minimal,” Ms. McCurry said, adding, “Our obligation is to make sure that any impacts are mitigated.”
To the degree this is true, which is a fair amount, but not as much as the USFS claims, then we need to reform the 1872 mining law; the House has already passed amendments to it.
5 comments:
I am reading a lot of horrified comments that the public was not notified of the permits to drill exploratory holes to see if there is uranium in these breccia pipes that exist all over the Colorado Plateau. The exploratory hole is the equivalent of drilling a well for water except that they end about 1500 feet above the water table.
Does this mean that anyone drilling a WATER WELL 3000 ft or more into the Plateau needs to do a full blown environmental impact statement and hold public hearings. After all, a water well could could connect a uranium deposit and the water table if it should happen to be drilled thru a uranium mineralized breccia pipe structure. How is the driller to KNOW!!
I wonder how much of this reaction is purely anti-nuclear and that the Grand Canyon being nearby is just a conveinient foil. There was a uranium mine "IN" the Grand Canyon for years and that worked out alright. The Orphan mine perched on the South rim not to far from the busiest lookouts and did not seem to get in the way. I wonder how many people know that.
Greg
Re your next to last sentence, Greg, this is uranium we're talking about. Whether the surface structure of the mine "got in the way" or not is irrelevant to issues of radioactivity.
My point is that the whole operation - radioactivity and all - was conducted safely. It is not my understanding that the south rim of the Grand Canyon is radioactively contaminated. Radiation exists naturally everywhere and every one gets exposed. Does it freak you out to know that cosmic radiation is ionizing and destroying cells in your body right now? If you live in Denver, you get more than twice the radiation exposure than in LA.
I am more worried about being killed or maimed in a car accident than from radiation exposure. It comes down to risk assessment.
I also am in favor of cleaning up the old uranium mines that were left to "blow in the wind" so to speak during the extensive mining during the cold war era. However, it should be the american people that should foot the bill and insist it should be done, as the american people were the prime beneficiaries. At the time, the hazzards accociated with uranium mining were not well understood, now they are.
I do favor oversight of uranium mining and nuclear power, but I am not in favor of banning nuclear power or uranium mining. Nuclear power has the near term ability to replace coal and fossil fuel and reduce green house emmissions.
I am a great supprter of alternative energy sources as well, but they will not create enough energy to supply our needs, it is just not possible.
Gregory
I agree that alt energy forms can't meet everything. OTOH, nuclear power gets about as much government subsidy as Big Oil. Let's put alt energy on the same fiscal playing page.
We are in total agreement on that point. I am hoping the next President will get a manhattan type program going to usher in new technologies to provide power in as many different forms from as many diff sources as prove economical.
Post a Comment