Moab UMTRA Removal and Remediation Job May Be Larger Than Previously Thought - 2014

 

Moab UMTRA Removal and Remediation Job May Be Larger Than Previously Thought

Since May 2009, I have published eight articles regarding the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project (UMTRA). In 2005, radioactive and chemical laden soil from the former Atlas Minerals Corp. uranium mill towered ninety-feet high along the Colorado River at Moab. At that time, DOE announced that 11.9 million tons of radioactive tailings would move thirty miles to a secure burial site near Crescent Junction, Utah.

See Progress Removing Nuclear & Chemical Waste at the Moab Pile

In February 2014, DOE announced that contractors had removed and transported 6.5 million tons, or forty-one percent of the total tailings pile. If the 6.5 million tons removed equals forty-one percent of the tailings, then somehow the Moab Pile had expanded from 11.9 million to 16.2 million tons. With no new material added, and 6.5 million tons removed, the original size of the Moab Pile had somehow expanded by thirty-six percent.

Moab is a magical place, but since no one is creating new dirt, the growth of 4.3 million tons at the tailings pile is a Moab mystery. With such vagaries appearing in official DOE documents, there should be a better accounting of how much material there is yet to remove. At current rates of transport, the DOE expects a complete the removal of contaminated material by about 2025. If we take projected annual shutdowns of the federal government into account, the project timeline stretches out to Friday April 13, 2029.

Prior to the completion of its charter, Moab UMTRA expects to excavate and remove all contaminated material from the site. The problem with that scenario is that no one knows how deep or wide the plume of contaminated water and saturated soil actually is. If the weight of contaminated tailings grew by 4.3 million tons in the first nine years of the project, what is to keep it from growing an equal amount in the next nine years?

If we look at the underlying hydrology, there are two major influences on water flow and ground saturation at the UMTRA site. First is the once-mighty Colorado River. As the river swings through an arc at Moab Canyon, the tailings pile lies on the outside of that bend. During flood years, such as 2011 and to a lesser degree 2014, hydrological pressure pushes Colorado River water into the lower reaches of the Moab Pile. At the same time, the Moab Wash brings both surface flow and underground percolation downstream from the sand-filled canyon near the main entrance at Arches National Park.

In an ideal world, the hydrological pressure from the Colorado River would cancel out the subterranean flow from the Moab Wash watershed. In the real world, a well field located between the tailing pile and the river attempts to extract and purify groundwater before it enters the Colorado River. As of February 2014, the wells have extracted four hundred tons of ammonia and almost two tons of radioactive uranium. During low water periods, technicians inject fresh water into the wells in an attempt to maintain stasis between the two competing flows.

If the contaminated water and soil at the Moab Pile run deeper than current optimistic estimates, adding an additional 4.3 million tons to the excavation project is possible. If that turns out to be true, then the project is currently only one third complete, not the forty-one percent touted in recent DOE announcements. If scouring the Moab Wash watershed requires digging a huge hole where the waste tailings now stand, the entire character of the project might change.

Relying on the optimistic DOE projections, Moab and Grand County have created what they call a Community Vision Plan for the site. The Community Vision Plan, as currently formulated, includes a railroad station, transit center, bicycle and walking trails, a community park, federal offices, an ice rink, an event center and undetermined commercial uses.

Although the UMTRA site comprises 474 acres, 171 of those acres are in the floodplain. The contaminated tailings currently take up 104 acres. Highway and other easements remove 102 acres from potential development, as do twenty-nine additional acres of steep slopes. If the 104 acre Moab Pile becomes the new Moab Pit, that would leave 65 acres of developable land.

Despite local government resolutions to the contrary, the DOE is not obligated to cede even one acre of the UMTRA site to Grand County. With the uncertainties over long-term federal funding, the amount of remediation required and the tendency for such programs to balloon in both size and cost, alternatives to the “Community Myopia Plan” seem prudent.

As of 2014, we have at least eleven or more years until site remediation is completed. Even at that, there may be a 104-acre pit where the Moab Pile now stands. Assuming that 4.3 million tons of clean fill-dirt does not become available at the site, planners for the DOE, Moab and Grand County should include the potential for a new Moab Pit in their visionary plans.

From the beginning of the UMTRA project, it was my contention that flood protection at the site should take precedence over removal of contaminated material. Ignoring my pleas and the paleoflood studies that substantiated them, DOE continued full speed ahead with their waste removal project. In the spring of 2011, DOE suffered public embarrassment when Colorado River floodwater penetrated part of the Moab Pile. After the 2011 flood, DOE took measures to lessen the potential for flooding at the site. Today, it still relies on simple pumping of groundwater through easily flooded wells to keep ammonia and uranium laden waste out of the Colorado River.

Upon final removal of the waste tailings, DOE has no announced plans for protecting the UMTRA site. Protection for the new Moab Pit and the proposed public amenities are absent from the clouded Visionary Plan, as well. Rather than rushing headlong to completion of waste removal, the DOE should shift its focus to the long-term protection and potential uses of this unique recreational resource.

If left to the devices of nature, the new Moab Pit might fill itself with a mixture of contaminated groundwater and floodwater from the river. In order to prevent such an ecological disaster, DOE should create a cofferdam along the Colorado River. If properly constructed, the new cofferdam could hold back the river and allow complete removal of contaminated materials from behind the dam.

If architects of the cofferdam think ahead, they could design a floodgate into the structure. In 2029 or beyond, DOE could then transfer the UMTRA site to Grand County. Although I will be over eighty years old at the time, when the Moab Pit becomes the new 104-acre Grand County Marina, I hope to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Previous Moab Pile articles, in chronological order, or see them all at MoabPile.com:

2009 - A Happy Ending for the Moab Pile?

2009 - Moab, Utah - The Potash Road

2011 - Moab Pile - Here Comes the Flood

2011 - Moab Pile - The Mill Tailings Train

2011 - Moab Pile - Countdown to Disaster

2011 - Nuclear Dust Storm Hits Moab, UT

2011 - Toxic Purple Dust Covers Moab, UT

2013 - The True Cost of Mineral Extraction

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 11:39 AM | | Comments (0) | Link

The True Cost of Mineral Extraction in Grand County, Utah - 2013

 

"A billion here, a billion there... Pretty soon you have some real money." - Senator Everett Dirksen

While living in Los Angeles in the 1980s, I first became aware of “The Moab Pile”. Near Moab, Utah, on the right bank of the Colorado River, stood an eighty-foot tall mountain of uranium tailings saturated with acid, ammonia and radio nucleotides. In newspaper articles of that time, I discovered that seasonal flooding of the Colorado River threatened to sluice 16 million tons of tailings into the drinking water supply of fifteen million people downstream.

When I started traveling to Moab on a regular basis in 2006, the Moab Pile once again entered into my thoughts and dreams. Although the subject did not receive much press coverage, that year floods of a size not seen since 1984 again cut into the Moab Pile. Throughout its term of office, the George W. Busch administration was slow to commit funds to the cleanup of the imminent hazard.

Once the Obama administration took over, it allocated federal stimulus funds to the project. Now, four years later, the Moab Pile is smaller by almost one-third. With current funding curtailed to pre-stimulus levels, the twenty-five million people now living downstream will have to wait another six to twelve years for the complete removal of the Moab Pile. If ever there was a good case for increased federal funding, the Moab UMTRA Project is that case.

Following is a timeline for the creation and demise of the Moab Pile:

• 1952 – Near Moab, Utah, prospector Charlie Steen discovered and claimed the largest uranium deposit in United States history.

• 1954 – Steen approached the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about building the first large, independent uranium mill in the United States.

• 1957 – Near Moab, on an outside bend of the Colorado River, Uranium Reduction Company (URC) dedicated its $11 million uranium mill.

• 1962 – Charlie Steen sold URC and its uranium mill to Atlas Corp.

• 1962 – Licensed and regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Atlas Corp. continued the operation of the uranium mill.

• 1970 – The Atlas Corp. mill converted from producing uranium concentrate (yellowcake) to producing fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

• 1984 – Spring floods on the Colorado River blasted up to 66,000 cubic feet [1,870 cubic meters] per second directly into the Moab Pile, causing an undocumented release of contaminated material into the Colorado River.

• 1984 – Atlas Corp. ceased operations at Moab, leaving both the mill and up to 16 million tons of uranium tailings and contaminated soil at the site.

• 1988 – When it became obvious that the mill would not operate again, Atlas Corp. began on-site remediation of the mill and tailings pile.

• 1995 – Atlas Corp. crushed the mill and then placed an interim cover of soil over its remnants and the tailings pile.

• 1998 – Atlas Corp. declared bankruptcy, relinquished its license and forfeited its reclamation bond.

• 1998 – The NRC appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as the trustee of the Moab Mill Reclamation Trust, licensing that company to initiate site reclamation.

• 2000 – Congress and President Bill Clinton approved transfer of responsibility for the Moab Pile to the Department of Energy (DOE).

• 2001 – The DOE accepted transfer of title for the site, with direct responsibility going to their office in Grand Junction, Colorado.

• 2003 – In order to slow the migration of ammonia and other contaminants into the Colorado River, DOE contractors constructed eight extraction and more than thirty freshwater injection wells at the site.

• 2004 – The DOE Moab Project Team published a draft plan that called for moving the contaminated tailings and decommissioned mill to an offsite location.

• 2005 – DOE announced its preferred disposal site, thirty miles away in the desert, near Crescent Junction, Utah.

• 2006 – Flash flooding cut through layers of sand that covered the pile, washed out a containment berm and left a large puddle on top of the 130-acre Moab Pile.

• 2007 – EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City, Utah received a $98 million contract for removal and disposal of tailings through 2011.

• 2008 – In preparation for removal of material, DOE began infrastructure improvements at both the Moab Pile and the Crescent Junction disposal site.

• 2008 – The DOE announced that transportation of tailings to the disposal site would be by rail, rather than by truck.

• 2009 – In April, after upgrades to the roadbed of an existing rail line, DOE and its contractor began removing tailings by rail, disposing of them near Crescent Junction.

• 2009 – Stimulus Funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act increased removal activity to two trains per day, six days each week.

• 2010 – In March, the Moab UMTRA project reached a milestone, with over one million tons of tailings removed from the site.

• 2010 – In August, the Moab UMTRA project reaches another milestone, with over two million tons removed from the site.

• 2011 – Just as stimulus-funding dried up, the Moab UMTRA project reached another milestone, with over four million tons removed from the site.

• 2011 – The Colorado River overflowed its banks at the Moab UMTRA site, causing damage to earthworks and a riverside bicycle path, but sparing the river from direct contact with the Moab Pile.

• 2012 – In a competitive bidding process, Portage, Inc. of Idaho Falls, Idaho displaced EnergySolutions as the prime contractor for removal of tailings from the Moab UMTRA site.

• 2012 – In February, the Moab UMTRA project reached another milestone, with over five million tons removed from the site.

• 2012 – With commencement of reduced federal funding, Portage, Inc. announced a new concept, whereby the annual contract for removal would switch to a nine-month schedule, with a three-month hiatus each winter.

Now, more than sixty years after Charlie Steen discovered uranium near Moab, the estimated completion date for the Moab UMTRA project ranges from 2019–2025. In 1957, the original Uranium Reduction Company mill cost $11 million to build. The current estimated cost to remove and dispose of the mill and its contaminated tailings is $1 billion. For that honor, U.S. taxpayers will shell out almost one hundred times the original cost of construction.

This week, the two top stories in the Moab Times Independent newspaper concern the future of mineral extraction and processing in that area. In one story, “A controversial oil sands mining operation proposed for the Book Cliffs northeast of Moab has cleared its final state regulation hurdle, allowing it to become the nation’s first such project.” In another, “The Grand County Council voted unanimously to send a letter to President Barack Obama opposing creation of national monument status for 1.4 million acres surrounding Canyonlands National Park.”

If the president were to grant national monument status to unprotected landforms, wildlife and viewscapes around Moab, Utah, large-scale mineral extraction projects there would at last receive increased scrutiny. In the sixty years since Charlie Steen discovered uranium near Moab, have we learned anything about the true cost of mineral extraction and processing on our most sensitive public lands?

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 08:49 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

Toxic and Nuclear-Contaminated Dust Plague UMTRA Superfund Site at Moab, Utah - 2011

 

Toxic and Nuclear-Contaminated Dust Plague UMTRA Superfund Site at Moab, Utah

   

On October 11, 2011, I drove from Moab, Utah to Grand Junction, Colorado. As I approached the Highway 191 Colorado River Bridge, I swung my camera to the left, and out the side window of my truck. Having refocused my digital camera, I started taking a series of “point and shoot” images. Most of my shots were of the Moab UMTRA nuclear cleanup site, better known as the Moab Pile.

After crossing the river, the highway swings south and then parallels the uranium mill tailing Superfund site. The Moab UMTRA site is a well-known emitter of nuclear radiation. Unknown to many in the area, it is also the largest dust-hazard in Grand County, Utah. Nowhere else will you find both nuclear and chemical waste exposed to the regional dust storms that now plague the Four Corners states.

If I remember correctly, the wind was relatively calm on October 11, 2011. Having studied the issue for years, little that I learn about the cleanup of the old Atlas Uranium Mill site surprises me. Still, I did not expect to see the event that unfolded right outside my window. There, on the top of the Moab Pile, a dust devil swirled and lifted a vortex of dust into the air.

  Watch the video "Moab Pile Nuclear Dust Devil"

As I drove closer, my camera angle came closer to the sun. As it did, it captured an image of finer dust particles expanding above the twister. If you watch the YouTube video, you will see one frame in which that larger dust cloud shows itself in shades of lavender and violet. Just because something is not visible to the unaided eye does not mean that it may not be there. The Carl Zeiss lens on my Sony camera sometimes picks up light in unexpected ways, especially when it involves new energy.

Dust rising up from the Moab Pile, only to dump on the nearby Colorado River and on Moab is a common occurrence. During both my August and October 2011 visits to Moab, I have photographed large amounts of radioactive dust escaping from the UMTRA site. If I remember correctly, the Department of Energy (DOE) should be setting reasonable safety standards for the cleanup. However, toxic, nuclear dust clouds continue to emanate from the Moab UMTRA site on a regular basis. Does DOE or Moab UMTRA care about that?

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 12:19 AM | | Comments (0) | Link

 

Moab, Utah - U.S. Highway 191 in 2011

   

On October 11, 2011, I departed the Moab Rim Campark on South U.S. Highway 191. From there, I drove north toward Moab, Utah. As I approached Downtown, I watched a motorcycle enter the highway and proceed ahead of me, traveling in my direction. Although the bike looked like an overgrown café racer, something about the rider caught my eye. As I accelerated to catch up, I realized that it was a young woman riding the motorcycle. Wearing no safety helmet, and with her hair flowing in the wind, I took a deep breath and backed off the throttle. With no adult mandatory helmet law in Utah, even young women motorcyclists are free to risk head injury with impunity. Of course, impunity from prosecution and impunity from fate are two different issues.

After passing Center & Main Streets in Downtown, I saw temporary road signs indicating highway construction ahead. Day and night, there is often heavy traffic on U.S. Highway 191 between Downtown and the new Colorado River Bridge. Even so, most of that section has long remained a substandard two-lane highway. As I drove through the construction zone, I could see that crews had widened and were now repaving the road. Still, most of the new pavement looked too narrow for four traffic lanes. On the positive side, I noticed that there were new traffic signals at either end of the new pavement. If properly synchronized, those signals could help organize southbound traffic before it reached Downtown.

Looking at the ongoing roadwork on that short section of highway, I marveled at how that substandard gateway to the City of Moab had so long endured. As I soon read in the local newspaper, resolution of highway drainage issues near the Matheson Wetlands had long stalled the project’s completion. Although final widening and alignment are still in question, the stretch of new pavement is indeed an improvement over the old situation.

On the next section of my drive, I headed north across the Colorado River Highway Bridge and then past the ever-present Moab Pile. I will write more about conditions there in my next article.

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 09:55 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

Nuclear Dust Storm Hits Moab, Utah - 2011

 

Nuclear Dust Storm Hits Moab, Utah

     

From August 14 – 19, 2011 I was in my favorite town of Moab, Utah. With several of eight local Moablive.com webcams in need of service and one new webcam to install, I had a busy week in Moab. Other than two brief thunderstorms, it was either warm or hot during my entire visit. When I left Moab at 3:00 AM on Friday morning, it was 76 degrees. Each day, downtown temperatures topped one hundred degrees . At the Moab Rim Campark, away from all of the concrete and asphalt, it was a bit cooler . 

On Tuesday, I visited Andy Nettell, proprietor at the back of the Back of Beyond Bookstore. A month earlier, our bookstore webcam server had failed. Luckily, the spare unit that I sent to Andy via UPS plugged right in and has worked flawlessly ever since. Next time you visit the bookstore, visit Andy’s antiquarian section at the back of the store. There you will see a red light flashing on our live webcam.

After retrieving the broken server from the bookstore, I headed over to Best Western Canyonlands Inn, intent upon getting wireless service connected to their webcam. With help from the friendly staff at the hotel, I was able to bypass their log-in screen and reconnect the Moab Canyonlands Inn “Center and Main” webcam. The webcam is located above the Peace Tree Café, in the new Main St. Suites at Canyonlands Inn. Now that their webcam is working properly, you can watch vehicular and foot traffic any time in Downtown Moab. The best place to watch is on our website.

Next, I headed twelve miles north of town on U.S. Highway 191. My destination was Canyonlands Field, also known as the Moab Airport. There, at Redtail Aviation, we have a live webcam pointing out the window of their hanger. Its field of view includes the arrival/departure area for Great Lakes Airlines, as well as the parking area for visiting private jets. Mr. Chris Bracken, pilot and mechanic for Redtail Aviation was working in the hanger that afternoon. He offered moral support as I taped the webcam back on to its designated window. Using different types of tape, we are still baffled by why the camera will not stay firmly attached to the hanger window. Chris believes it is a combination of cool air from their swamp cooler and high heat on the outside of the window glass. After I left town, the camera fell from the window, but Chris got it back in business the next day.

Thursday, August 18 was my last day in Moab, and I had one new webcam to install. An associate broker at Arches Realty in Downtown Moab had asked me to come in. After quickly deciding on the best view, I began installation of their new webcam. Six hours later, I had the webcam tested and showing a great image of Moab and the Redrocks from their first story window. Alas, a year later, the company asked me to remove their webcam. The image below is the last surviving image from that webcam.

Before I left her office, an associate broker invited me to review all of the MoabLive.com webcams on her computer screen. On the screen we could see a thunderstorm raging at Canyonlands Field, about fifteen files north of our location. A quick glance at our several Spanish Valley webcams showed increased weather activity all around. The Slickrock had clouds, thunder storms cloaked the La Sal Range and the flag flew almost straight up near the Moab Rim. From our vantage point at the computer, we could see thunder storms coming and thunder storms blowing away. Looking at that spectacular sight, we were awed by the breadth and power of nature in and around Moab.

Approaching as it did, from the north; the storm first hit Canyonlands Field, and then moved on towards Moab. As the airport-thunderstorm collapsed, it sent a torrent of cold air south, along the Moab Rim and down the U.S. Highway 191 canyon. There, the venturi effect created by narrow canyon walls accelerated the wind. At the Potash Road, the canyon widens again, thus allowing the wind to fan out over the top and sides of the Moab UMTRA site. The rounded shape of the Moab Pile allowed a low pressure zone to develop over its top. Behaving like a giant airplane wing, wind gusts entering that low pressure zone launched tons of radioactive and toxic soils into the air.

The heavier particles (and presumably the heavier radio-nucleotides) quickly fell back to earth. With the UMTRA's direct adjacency to the Colorado River, I am sad to report that the river received a heavy dose of radioactive dust and chemical toxins, as released by the ensuing dust storm. It is always good to remember our downstream neighbors. In this case fourteen million American and Mexican citizens living downstream rely on the Colorado River for drinking water, manufacturing and crop irrigation. As sad as these facts may be, The Dust Storm of August 19, 2011 did not end there.

Writing later to a Moab friend, I said, “By the time I got to a gas station on the south side of town, a gale of dust and trash swept over me. When I arrived home at the Moab Rim RV Campark, farther south, I went down to the rail fence and took some pictures. From there, I could see wind ravaging the Moab Pile and sending tons of radioactive dust toward Downtown Moab.

From the pictures I took, it is obvious that the UMTRA site is highly vulnerable to winds streaming down-canyon past the Arches National Park entrance. Near that location, the canyon both narrows and deepens. The resultant squeezing of the air creates a venturi effect that is focused on to the northwest side of the pile. Since the UMTRA removal efforts expose more raw soil daily, it easily went airborne and precipitated out as dust throughout the City of Moab and the Spanish Valley.

Simultaneously, a similar, but larger dust storm was tearing up the land in Phoenix, Arizona and all of Maricopa County. Was that mere coincidence, or is there a definable connection between those two dust storms? Only if the DOE and the National Weather Service (NWS) cooperate and share data on such events will we begin to predict their occurrence. In this case, I suspect a weather front that stretched from Canyon Country, Utah to Tucson, Arizona. Perhaps someone of knowledge could check and correlate the timing of regional dust storms throughout the Four Corners Region.

Despite the absence of region-wide information sharing, any actions taken at the Moab UMTRA project on August 18, 2011 were inadequate. Transporting the Moab Pile by rail to Brendel and Crescent Junction, Utah appeared to be their focus. A distant second in importance is the physical integrity of the pile, as it exists today. A local resident told me that telephone complaints about UMTRA's dust bring a canned response from the contractor’s public relations office. Callers, who may be choking on UMTRA’s toxic dust, are told that ‘wind over a certain speed results in immediate suspension of grading and hauling at the site’.”

Even without coordinated dust storm alerts, UMTRA contractors can now monitor nine public webcams situated around Moab and the Spanish Valley. If they were to monitor only one screen provided me as the Moab Live Public Service Webcam Page, UMTRA contractors could see a windstorm coming long before they felt it. Greater Moab has many micro-environments and each has its own unique micro-weather. If Uranium King, Charles (Charlie) Steen (1919-2006) had foreseen the long-term threat that his company created, I doubt that he would have situated his Atlas Uranium Mill (now UMTRA) at its current location. With the ongoing threat from flooding and wind storms, old Cold War fears still haunt the area around his creation. 

The drill rig shown abandoned below the Moab Rim is of the type borrowed by Charlie Steen to make his Mi Vida Mine discovery. In fact it may be the exact same rig. In those days, and for many years thereafter, mining trucks and equipment were often abandoned around Moab. Those who brought this piece of Moab memorabilia to its current location carefully jacked it up on to several railroad ties, removed the wheels and drove away. Now, forty or more years after its derelict arrival, the machine slowly rusts away. At the rate of current decomposition, I estimate its half-life to be about 704 million years, which coincides nicely with the half-life of uranium-235 which it was used to discover. 

I have not read the Department of Energy’s (DOE) charter of the UMTRA Moab Project, but there must be something in there about using every reasonable and cost-effective method of protecting the Moab Pile from flooding downstream or blowing away in the wind. We know from previous studies that deep beneath the Moab Pile there is a large reservoir of contaminated water. In fact, the center of the pile is so wet that the latest Google Earth view of the UMTRA site shows a recently uncovered stream bed.

Water beneath the Moab Pile has only two places it can go. If allowed to, it will migrate downstream towards the Colorado River. In fact, a well-field along the riverside attempts to extract contaminated ground water and spread it atop the pile. As the water slowly dries on undisturbed parts of the pile, it forms a tough crust. With so much of the site under recent excavation, very little of the ground stays undisturbed for long. As a result, much of the UMTRA site is unprotected from another big “blow off”. 

The DOE should require the contractor to take immediate action to design and deploy a far larger array of sprinklers at the site. Ideally, an onsite reservoir would feed the sprinkler system, which could quickly cover the entire pile. With better weather monitoring and forecasting, the contractor could start deploying large volumes of sprinkled water ahead of the next dust storm, rather than afterwards, or as on August 18, 2011, “not at all”.  Whoever monitors the weather and calls for future halts in work at the site should be an employee of the NWS, not the DOE or the contractor. When danger lurks for the Moab Pile, no one should second-guess an early weather-shutdown, rather than a late one. In the current situation, shutting down “on time” is often too late.

Many in Moab grew up with or within the nuclear industry. Despite the toll it took on mine workers and processors, Moab is tolerant to the point of nostalgia about its ranching and mining past. That familiarity may breed complacency, which Moab can ill afford. Even if many residents consider a nuclear dust-bath to be an acceptable occurrence in town, most tourists and visitors do not. The only way to assure the safety of all in Moab is to take immediate measures to change the Moab UMTRA charter, making environmental protection at least as important as removal and transportation of contaminated material.

Email James McGillis

Moab UMTRA Plays Russian Roulette With Nuclear Waste - 2011

 

 

Moab UMTRA Plays Russian Roulette With Nuclear Waste 

Late May 2011 found me in Moab, Utah once again. While there, one of my projects was to monitor potential flooding along the Colorado River. Previous research and scientific findings indicate that a Colorado River flood at Moab is more likely now than in any recent time.

 

As temperatures swing, drought prevails and dust storms roam the Four Corners, a heavy spring snowpack, and a quick thaw could create catastrophic flooding at Moab. To be sure, most of the town lies on higher ground, well above the paleo-floodplain. Other than a few commercial buildings and several campgrounds, the greatest risk is flooding at the Moab Pile.

 

During the Cold War years, uranium mines near Moab fed radioactive ore to the Atlas Uranium Mill. Using large quantities of highly corrosive acid, the mill concentrated the ore and then shipped it to the federal government, which had a monopoly on all things radioactive. Since all Americans hypothetically benefited from the nuclear deterrent known as “assured mutual destruction”, so too should we all pay to cleanup the mess abandoned by the nuclear industry.

 

Remnants of the Atlas Uranium Mill and a colossal mountain of radioactive tailings together make up the Moab Pile. Since 2009, excavators have filled and sealed steel containers with vast amounts of the pile’s radioactive earth. From Moab to Crescent Junction, the material takes a free ride via the Union Pacific Railroad's "Train of Pain". Actually, the ride is not free. Through our federal tax dollars, all U.S. Persons pay for its removal.

 

By late May 2011, the Colorado River approached flood-stage in Grand Junction, Colorado. As the flood surged downstream, I wanted to see if the Moab Pile was as vulnerable as paleo-flood surveys indicated. Over a two-day period, I visited several sites on each side of the river and also stood above the flow on the bicycle bridge. Viewed from any angle, water reached higher on the riverbanks than I had ever seen. According to some reports, flow rates have not been this high since 1983, when Lake Powell filled to capacity and forced operators to open the Glen Canyon Dam spill gates for the first time.

 

From the bicycle bridge, looking downstream, the U.S. 191 Highway Bridge appeared to skim low over the water. With its gracefully arched concrete supports, there was still some headroom for the water to flow. Just south of the highway bridge, the Canyonlands by Night buildings looked vulnerable to me. The riverbanks there were high enough to allay imminent fears, but their lack of reinforcement made for inadequate protection in the event of a larger flow. In any event, I would not want to own their flood insurance company.

 

I stopped at Canyonlands by Night to see if they needed a live webcam. A representative said, “No, we already have one”. To myself, I thought, “Maybe you do, but it is not easy to find on the internet”. There was an excursion boat tethered to the floating dock, but otherwise the grounds appeared deserted. Standing close to the river, I could picture two alternate scenarios. In the local version, the flood subsided and life in Moab went on as usual. In the Hollywood version, the snowpack in the high country melted in days, not months. The silent power of the Colorado River flood then enveloped the Canyonlands by Night property and swept it away.

 

Continuing my river tour, I turned off U.S. 191 at Utah State Route 279, better known as the Potash Road. After skirting the now diminished Moab Pile, I headed downstream. Despite nearly a decade of attempted extermination using the Tamarisk Beetle, large, half-dead tamarisk shielded every river view. Soon, I turned around and drove back to where I could see the Moab Pile, the Colorado River and the Scott Matheson Wetlands, all in one panorama. From a distance of about one half mile, the churning brown, river appeared to lap at the base of the Moab Pile. The following day, I drove downriver on the opposite bank, along the Kane Creek Road. With the Matheson Wetlands then to my right, the Moab Pile stood out on the horizon, along the far riverbank. Although the river was turgid and brown, its wide channel in that area kept the river in check.

 

Writing now from California in late June 2011, I must rely on news reports and internet searches to keep up with the story. While Googling variations of, “Colorado River Flood Moab 2011”, I found a number of articles that touched upon the subject. None, however, told what I considered to be a complete story. As I have pieced it together, here is what transpired since I left Moab in early June. 

 

Both the Green River and the Colorado River continued to rise until at least mid-June. Grand Junction, Colorado experienced significant flooding and bank-erosion, although the river made a long, slow peak there. Downstream, near Moab, the Red Cliffs Lodge experienced bank erosion and flooding of temporary structures in what they call their “gravel area”. According to on-scene reports, the river never approached the hotel or its guest rooms. The Colorado River bicycle and highway bridges at Moab stood firmly above the river. Canyonlands by Night remained dry, if not high above the river crest. The Moab Pile still sits sedately in its old place, although water backed-up into adjacent drainage channels.

 

In the spring of 2011, what saved the Moab Pile? The answer may lie in the Matheson Wetlands, which were a softer target than the Moab Pile. Wildfires swept hundreds of acres near the river in 2009, with another sixty acres burned in June 2011. By late June, the river flooded the Matheson Wetlands, submerging much of the recent burn area. Root structures weakened in the 2009 fire now let go altogether. Without further human intervention, the latest fire became the lucky break that we needed. If two separate fires caused by human carelessness had not weakened the plant structures along the river, the wetlands might have held their banks. As it was, they absorbed the flood over a wide flood plain. If they had not accepted the flood as they did, a rampaging Colorado River might have projected its hydraulic power toward the reeking hulk of the Moab Pile.

 

In order to protect the Moab Pile, UMTRA crews have removed some material from its leading edge. UMTRA has constructed several small protective berms, as well. However, the paleo-history of floods along the Colorado River at Moab indicates that the Moab Pile remains vulnerable to the "three hundred year flood", if it should happen during the next decade. During that decade of tailings removal, there is a one-in-thirty chance that a flood of up to ten times the current 32,000 cfs flow rate will hit Moab. Picture a wall of water forty or fifty feet higher than the new highway bridge as it sweeps out of the Colorado Riverway Canyon, and then on towards the Moab Pile.

 

Had the Upper Colorado Basin snowpack been deeper last winter or had it melted faster, the 2011 story might have ended quite differently. We who live downstream and depend on the Colorado River for our water supply were lucky this time. Just as easily, it could have gone the other way. In a Fukushima-like, scenario, some or all of the Moab Pile could now lie as radioactive mud on the bottom of Lake Powell. If a mega flood were to fill Lake Powell, operators at Glen Canyon Dam would open the flood gates and sweep that cloud of radioactive mud on towards Lake Meade. Such an event would likely rank as the number one human caused disaster in all of recorded history. For lack of uncontaminated water, the Desert Southwest would face a human out-migration fifteen to thirty times greater than what occurred during the disappearance of the Anasazi.

 

Recent news reports stated that by 2019, the Moab Pile could be moved. The engineers and workers at the Moab UMTRA project are so efficient that they haul more radioactive-waste more quickly than ever before. among other things, they have learned to fill huge rectangular containers almost to the brim. Even though an initial infusion of federal stimulus money is now gone, the original twenty-year plan could culminate in less than fifteen years. Despite the lucrative contracts to remove it, no one wants to hang around a pile of radioactive waste any longer than necessary.

 

The “speed is of the essence” mentality at Moab UMTRA increases our collective risk. The highest priority should be to protect the pile from flood damage and dispersal. Recent flood mitigation at the site proved sufficient for this year's 30-year flood. Once sufficient flood mitigation is in place to protect against the 300-year flood, removal could again become the top priority. Otherwise, the unprotected status of the Moab Pile will require that we, in the Southwestern United States dodge the “nuclear bullet” each spring until at least 2019.

 

Check back here in 2020 to see if disaster struck. If we are writing our articles from upstream of the current Moab Pile, you will know that current plans did not go well. If we are then writing from downstream in sunny Southern California, you will know that we all won the game of “Nuclear Waste Roulette” now playing out along the Colorado River at Moab.

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 06:48 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

The "Train of Pain" Travels Thirty Miles from Moab to Crescent Junction - 2011

 

 

The "Train of Pain" Travels Thirty Miles from Moab to Crescent Junction  

In April 2009, I was in Moab, Utah when the first mill tailings train departed the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) site. The train departed from a track running high along a ridge that overlooks the Moab Pile. Five days each week, a trainload of radioactive soil headed north on the Cane Creek Subdivision, better known as the Potash Branch. The destination is a disposal site, northeast of Brendel and Crescent Junction, Utah. In those early days of rail transport, there was no published train schedule. Before I could locate a schedule, it was time for me to leave Moab.

 

In October 2010, I returned to Moab, traveling south along U.S. Highway 191. As the road descended towards the entrance at Arches National Park, I looked ahead towards the ridge. There I saw two Union Pacific Railroad locomotives pulling a trainload of containers to the north. After noting the time, I made plans to return and photograph the train as it traveled toward the UMTRA disposal site in the desert.

 

Two afternoons later, I waited near Milepost 134 on Highway 191. From there, I could see the lead engine, a 2004 GE C44AC-CTE approaching from over a mile away. As it pulled the hill, the entire train disappeared behind the Redrock. Reappearing a minute later, the lead engine entered an “S” curve. If this were the old days, I would say that the engines appeared to be “building steam”. As I stood and shot photos, the engines rapidly approached.

 

 

While standing near the edge of the railroad right of way, an unexpected plume of sound, heat and pollution blew me back from my position. After receiving that 8800-horsepower blast of old energy from the twin GE Evolution Series diesel locomotives, almost a minute passed before I could catch my breath. Still, as the parade of nuclear waste bins passed my position, I reflexively snapped more photos.

 

Each of the thirty-six flatcars carried four steel-lidded bins. The two bins at the center of each car held up to thirty-five cubic yards and two outboard bins were larger still. Bringing up the rear were two ancient, exhaust encrusted locomotives. After fifteen years of service in the Rockies, the old diesel-electric engines could still share the load with the newer, equally powerful engines at head-end. Because of the extreme weight of the mill tailing trains, pushers are needed to help climb the initial grade. If an average container held forty cubic yards, the entire train carried almost 5000 cubic yards of contaminated soil. When dumped at the disposal site, a single trainload of contaminated soil would fill an American football field to a depth of about one meter.

 

To put the cleanup process into perspective, consider that it will take ten to fifteen years to complete the removal project. That timeline assumes two trainloads per day, at least five days per week. What might happen if a Colorado River flood were to hit the UMTRA site before the Moab Pile is gone? Only time will tell.

 

After the train passed my position, I jumped into my truck and headed towards the grade crossing at Utah Highway 313. When I reached that spot, the lead locomotives had already passed. I fastened my seatbelt and took off for a spot where the tracks come close to the highway. While taking pictures from a small hill adjacent to the tracks, the big diesel engines soon provided me with another blast of hot diesel exhaust.

 

Traveling farther north, I stopped at an arroyo and shot pictures of the engines as they passed over a low bridge. My final stop was north of Canyonlands Field, where the unmarked Rock Corral Road crosses the tracks. This time I arrived well before of the train. After passing under the highway near Canyonlands Field, the train made wide left turn across my field of view. As it did, I could see each car in the thirty-nine car train. As the big diesel electric engines approached, I moved back form the tracks the tracks and continued shooting pictures. The train passed my position; it was heading down a slight grade, gaining speed on the straightaway.

 

Thinking that I was smarter than the train this time, I had positioned myself upwind from the exhaust blast. Sounding like an earthquake on wheels, I watched as the mighty engines roared toward me. What I had forgotten was the several horn-blasts required at a rail crossing, even in the middle of nowhere. This time, rather than an exhaust blast I endured several deafening blasts from the horns.

 

Covered with diesel soot and near deaf from the horn blasts, I stopped chasing the "Train of Pain". Instead, I stood between the tracks and watched as the two 1996 GE C44AC pusher engines disappeared down the tracks.

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 05:45 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link