A new uranium boom is still a bust for South Dakotans

BLACK HILLS – It’s a new mining boom in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Traditional mining for gold and oil and gas has given way to new and sometimes untried extractive techniques designed to get at the resources that have been detected in the deeper recesses of the Black Hills. Political conditions favor the extractors who are also hoping that exploratory projects might find rare earth minerals.

Some of the oldest areas on earth exist right here in the Black Hills. Spearfish Canyon in the Northern Hills is a gorge carved by Spearfish Creek, which is a remnant of a sea that had covered the area some 600 million years ago (Precambrian period). The Southern Hills also share this rich and ancient history. Because of that, these areas are also rich in diverse minerals.

These minerals have attracted wealth seekers for more than a century hoping to mine their riches from the Black Hills. The landscape is pockmarked with every boom-and-bust cycle. The economic benefits of the booms are reaped by a few while residents are left with the cost of “clean up.” As long as business is good, corporations stay. But minerals are finite and market conditions change.

Market conditions have been looking more favorable, so activity has increased. The latest proposed uranium project in the Southern Black Hills is the Chord Project, a few miles east of another project, the Dewey-Burdock Project which is still referred to locally as Powertech. This multi-canyon area features Indigenous petroglyphs and pictographs – painting and rock art carved into the sandstone – as well as graffiti, the remains of campfires, signs of settler activity and modern activity. This site is thought to have been used for thousands of years by not only Indigenous tribes but many unrelated people across a span of thousands of years.

More than a decade ago, the Forest Service recommended this area for withdrawal from mining for 20 years to protect it. In their summary, the Forest Service said this area is significant not only for the range of human activity but because it is an Ethnographic Landscape, meaning it “contains a variety of natural and cultural resources that associated peoples define as heritage resources.” In fact, the Forest Service said the significance of this area “cannot be overstated.”

A more recent study, from 2001, looked at a total of 41 sites with prehistoric or historic Native American rock art, all located in Custer and Fall River counties. All but four were selected by the Black Hills National Forest to be assessed for their preservation status. Many of these locations at that time had not even been fully recorded for the State and three previously unknown sites were found during the process of locating other sites.

Some of the cultural resources are on state-controlled land and so are ineligible for mineral withdrawal. The current proposal on this portion of the Chord project would involve 50 drill pads and multiple drill holes per pad.

Companies hoping to prospect for uranium are expecting less regulation. Lilias Jarding from the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance (BHCWA) has said that with all the renewed interest in mining now is the time to improve regulations. “The 1872 Mining Law needs reform.” Now more than 150 years old, the Mining Law maintains that mining is prioritized over every land use. Under the 1872 Law, mining companies pay no royalties. Claimants who found valuable minerals on public lands have pocketed $300 billion dollars since 1872. The Law does not charge a fee for abandoned mine cleanup. The backlog for cleanup of these mines is estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to be between $20-$54 billion dollars which is more than the entire yearly Superfund budget.

The Mining Law should allow land managers to better balance other public land uses like recreation and wildlife habitat and prohibit mines that pollute water into perpetuity. Provide a fair return to the U.S. Treasury on the minerals taken from public lands and start polluters pay fund to collect the $50 billion dollar estimated cost to clean up the hundreds of thousands of mines on public lands.

Better regulation would provide for more transparency. When enCore Energy received its license in 2014 for the Dewey Burdock Project, the company was called Powertech. Powertech merged with Azarga Uranium Corporation and then Azarga merged with enCore Energy, not to be confused with Encore Energy. Uranium mining has been conducted in the vicinity for decades by various corporations.

The Chord Project is being conducted by Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation (CNEC) which is a subsidiary of Basin Uranium. CEO Mike Blady on the company’s website said their exploration program at Chord is a “de-risk,” “low-cost, ISR amenable project.” In-Situ Recovery, or ISR, uses an oxidizing agent injected underground which dissolves the uranium. The injection solution containing the dissolved uranium is pumped back to the surface to recover the uranium. Basin

Union Carbide was the original company to mine for uranium, after carnotite was discovered in this area in June of 1951. Carnotite is a radioactive mineral from which radium and uranium are obtained. Jarding said they probably weren’t the first to mine. “People went out with wheelbarrows, shovels and Geiger counters, to a lot of the areas of the southwestern hills and brought back uranium. It was like a Sunday afternoon activity, is what I’ve heard. People would take their children and grandchildren and look for uranium.” Jarding said Union Carbide came in the 1970’s and claimed up the area. “They asked the State for permission to mine and then mined without getting the permit. The local people notified Black Hills Alliance that there was heavy equipment going in there. Our attorneys got busy and stopped them from mining. The case went all the way to the state Supreme Court but then the boom became a bust and the price of uranium dropped. Union Carbide left the State along with the other companies.”

South Dakota has no shortage of stories of abandoned mines, stuck drills, punctured aquifers, contaminated creeks and Superfund Sites. After Spyglass Cedar Creek from Texas went bankrupt and abandoned the 40 wells it drilled near Buffalo more than 15 years ago, the governor and state legislature ponied up to cover the cost and plug the wells. As a part of the permitting process, the State required Spyglass to post a $30,000 dollar bond, or financial agreement, and then had to appropriate $430-thousand dollars to cover the cost of Spyglass’ abandonment.

The Gilt-Edge gold and silver mine became a Superfund Site after it was abandoned in the 1990s and sat for decades leaking acidic heavy-metal-laden water.

A recent study by School of Mines professor Dr. James Stone found contamination in sediments from the Cheyenne River all the way to Angostura Reservoir. “We know that there is some contamination there, but we don’t think there should be more,” said Jarding. We should be cleaning up the old mines, so it cleans up the contamination in the Cheyenne River.

Area ranchers, concerned about the amount of water that the company will need to use to extract the uranium feared they could be deprived of the water they need to feed their cattle, not to mention the quality. They called for an ordinance to state that “uranium mining is a nuisance in Fall River County.” They got the issue on the ballot and it passed. “It blocks uranium mining,” said Jarding, “but it’s expected to be challenged in court.”

Darrow Pits is a mile square dugout of an old uranium mine which is on the property that Powertech wants to remine. It was an open pit mine.

Even if ISR is less destructive, uranium mining still poses a risk. “If uranium is not disturbed it isn’t the same risk that it is once it is disturbed. When it’s mined or dug up in some form, milled and processed, flushed out of the aquifer it destroys the aquifer, said Jarding.

As the mining requests increase, the BHWA asks people to be intervenors, as the project go to the Board of Minerals and Environment. “Anyone can become an intervenor. Individuals can be intervenors. Groups, governments and organizations can be intervenors also, but they need an attorney to intervene. “So, several hundred people intervened with the Dewey-Burdock processes before state boards and only some of them ended up being active on a daily basis. But intervenors can call witnesses, enter evidence, questions other people’s witnesses, make motions, all those kinds of things. There will be some training for those interested in becoming intervenors in the next couple of months.” Visit Black Hills Clean Water Alliance for more information.

(Contact Marnie Cook at cookm8715@gmail.com)

 

 

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