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?

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

A Giant Navajo/Hopi Sipapu Awaits Its Time at the Base of Glen Canyon Dam - 2013

 

A Giant Navajo/Hopi Sipapu Awaits Its Time at the Base of Glen Canyon Dam

Disappearance and Reemergence:

The historical and scientific consensus is that the last pre-Puebloan Indians (Anasazi) migrated away from the Four Corners around 1300 CE. Later, they “reemerged” as the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes. The Hopi Creation Myth centers on the “sipapu”, a hole in the earth from which all of creation arose. Every ancient ceremonial kiva in the Four Corners includes a symbolic sipapu in its floor.

The great kivas provided communal warmth and shelter to the pre-Puebloan. Since an earthquake could collapse their roof beams, kivas also carried with them the risk of sudden death. After a swarm of catastrophic earthquakes around 1250 CE, the pre-Puebloan survivors reemerged from the metaphorical sipapu of their collapsed kivas, only then to leave the land that had long sustained them.

In order to escape the ongoing desertification of their homelands on the Colorado Plateau, many of the lost tribes traveled downriver from the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. To this day, many of caches of their food and tools remain hidden in alcoves high among those canyons. As the climate dried, timber became scarce, crops failed and game animals retreated to well-watered places like Glen Canyon. Using the river as a pathway, they headed south toward new lands and new lives.

In the wilds of Glen Canyon, they found sustenance for their long trek. Nuts, berries and small game were abundant along the shoreline. Those who understood the weather cycle travelled south in summer or fall, often wintering-over in the lower, warmer reaches of the canyon. Still, the canyon was no place to dally. With the warmth of spring would come annual flooding along the Colorado River.

If the pre-Puebloan episode of climate change was similar to our own, enormous spring floods may have swept the canyon. From wall to wall, the flood would roar, erasing sandbars and banks that had so recently provided shelter for their journey. If the people upstream waited too long, their own supplies of food might be exhausted. If they traveled the river too soon, they risked an unexpected cleansing in the mighty flood.

In its February 1961 issue, Arizona Highways Magazine devoted the inside cover to a photograph of Glen Canyon Dam, then in its early stages of construction. Many of us grew up thinking that the 710 ft. (220 m) high arch of Glen Canyon Dam had always been there. Seeing photos of dam construction in the early 1960s, reminds us how recently the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation placed a plug of concrete and steel into that enormous gap.

It was then, still several years before the filling of Lake Powell, that Edward Abbey and a few brave or foolhardy souls rafted down the Colorado River. Less than one hundred years after its discovery by the expedition of Major John Wesley Powell, Abbey and his inveterate river runners were among the last humans to see Glen Canyon as it always was. In 1869, Powell wrote, “...we have a curious ensemble of wonderful features - carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds, and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon.” For his part, Edward Abbey wrote almost one hundred years later, “In fact I saw only a part of (Glen Canyon) but enough to realize that here was an Eden, a portion of the earth’s original paradise.”

Edward Abbey and many others were incensed that the U.S. Congress funded the building of Glen Canyon Dam. In his 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey waxed rhapsodic on the possibility of toppling the dam, thus releasing the waters that covered all traces of Abbey’s “Eden in the Desert”. In 1981, Abbey and the group known as Earth First converged on the dam. While Abbey spoke to a small group gathered nearby, members of Earth First unfurled a banner designed to look like a huge crack on the face of Glen Canyon Dam. Throughout the protest, there was no violence, sabotage or destruction of property. The symbolic cracking of the dam, it seemed, was protest enough.

Even those who accept the human causes of climate change tend to see it as a recent phenomenon. Outsized events, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 or Superstorm Sandy in 2011 are not enough to convince many that humans play a role in our own meteorological environment. In the spring of 1983, two years after the symbolic cracking of the dam, Edward Abbey and his fellow travelers almost saw their wish come true. Heavy winter snows across the Colorado Plateau, followed by drenching rains and unseasonably warm temperatures brought a flood of unexpected proportions into Lake Powell.

The Bureau of Reclamation was unprepared for the onslaught of water. By July of 1983, Lake Powell reached its highest recorded elevation. In order to increase the carrying capacity of the lake, engineers hastily erected plywood barricades atop the dam. A month earlier, dam operators had opened the left diversion tunnel, sending 10,000 cubic feet per second (280 m3/s), just 7.2% of capacity, down the tunnel into the river below. Meanwhile over 120,000 cubic feet per second (3,400 m3/s) was pouring into the upper reaches of the reservoir.

In this lopsided scenario, something had to give. For a few weeks, it appeared that erosion in the spillway tunnels might cause catastrophic failure of the system. Cavitation-caused erosion was backtracking from the tunnel outlets. If erosion had loosened the enormous concrete plugs that held back lake water from the diversion tunnels (used during initial construction), the dam could have failed. Although the dam rumbled ominously while the spillways were in operation, luck alone saved the day. Just as options were running out, inflow from the upper Colorado River began to slow, allowing the reservoir to subside. Perhaps warm weather caused sufficient evaporation from the lake to save the dam from destruction.

While the “outlet works” received emergency repairs, the ancient power of the river had reemerged from beneath placid Lake Powell. In deference to the facts of global warming, dam operators never allowed Lake Powell to approach full capacity (3708 ft. elevation) again. Since 1983, they have kept lake levels low enough (3640 ft. max. elevation) to capture a flood at least that large. To this day, the “bathtub ring of 1983” stands as a high water mark on the walls of Glen Canyon. Had the public known that Glen Canyon Dam would never live up to its original design criteria, would the dam have received initial approval?

Hoover Dam, built into hard granite at the Black Canyon of the Colorado River many miles downstream will probably outlast Glen Canyon Dam by centuries. Wedged as it is into the soft sandstone walls of Lower Glen Canyon, the Glen Canyon Dam may have received irreparable damage during the vibrational drubbing it took in 1983. Those who controlled the dam during the harrowing days of summer 1983 are retired now, or dead. Despite several engineering surveys intended to allay public fears about permanent damage, we must wait for time to tell.

In what we now call the Four Corner States, it is likely that a swarm of earthquakes marked the end of the pre-Puebloan era. With their kivas in ruins, the ancients could not live through the winter without communal shelter and warmth. With the last of their timber beams burned for warmth, they soon departed for warmer climes. Just as likely, it will be a series of earthquakes near Page, Arizona that will release the plugs from the diversion tunnels beneath Glen Canyon Dam. When one of those plugs pops into the Colorado River like a cork from a Champagne bottle, the scouring effects of the water will bring Glen Canyon, the “Eden in the Desert” back to the surface of the Earth, where it belongs.

Today the Navajo Nation borders Lake Powell and the Colorado River along its northern and western reaches. Coal from Black Mesa, to the north fuels the Navajo Generating Station, which is visible from Lake Powell. Several centuries after disappearance of the pre-Puebloan culture, Indians from current day Western Canada repopulated the Colorado Plateau. Centuries later, those Dine' or Naabeeho people became known as the Navajo. In his 1975 book, “My Heart Soars”, Chief Dan George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada said this:

“Of all the teachings we receive,
this one is the most important:
Nothing belongs to you
of what there is,
of what you take,
you must share.”

In his lament for the hunting and gathering days of his youth, Chief Dan George summed up all that had been lost:

“No longer
can I give you a handful of berries as a gift,
No longer
are the roots I dig used as medicine,
No longer
Can I sing a song to please the salmon,
No longer
does the pipe I smoke make others sit with me in friendship.
No longer”

As we focus on the 1961 image of Glen Canyon, without the dam, perhaps we can decommission it before it blows its concrete plugs. Otherwise, it behooves us to prepare now for the opening of a grand sipapu there, in Glen Canyon, at a future date uncertain.

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By James McGillis at 05:59 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

In 1981, Edward Abbey and "Earth First!" Monkey Wrenched Glen Canyon Dam - 2012

 

In 1981, Edward Abbey and "Earth First!" Monkey Wrenched Glen Canyon Dam

In 1965, my father and I visited the Four Corners States. Three years later, Edward Abbey enjoyed the publishing of his first non-fiction book, titled Desert Solitaire. Abbey’s words help give geographical and historical context to many places I visited in 1965. Quoting from Abbey’s book, I wrote about my visits to Moab, Utah, Lake Powell and Rainbow Bridge National Monument.

In 1975, at the age of 48, Edward Abbey experienced widespread notoriety when his novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang received mixed reviews. Although many readers and reviewers enjoyed his queasily exciting adventures in incipient eco-activism (some say eco-terrorism), others abhorred the sabotage Abbey’s motley band of characters perpetrated in San Juan County, Utah.

In Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey wrote with eloquence about his personal history and the natural history of his favorite places in Southeastern Utah and Northern Arizona. By the time he wrote The Monkey Wrench Gang, the same places served mainly as a backdrop for the nefarious activities of his fictional characters. Following are Abbey’s words of fiction and my photos of reality at several places mentioned in The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Monument Valley–

Page 235, “Hayduke rushed back, breathing hard, scowling with ill-suppressed delight. He jumped in, jumped the clutch and burned away, turned left at the highway and drove north toward Kayenta, Monument Valley, Mexican Hat, the trackless canyons of Utah – escape.”

Page 243, “She sat on the iron flange of an overturned mining car and gazed far out toward the south, through the veils of the evening, for a hundred miles as thought can sail, over Muley Point and the Gooseneck meanders of the San Juan River, past Monument Valley, over the Monument Upwarp and beyond the rim of the visible world to Kayenta, the Holiday Inn and the battered blue jeep still waiting there.

San Juan River –

Page 88, “Instead of destroying the survey crew’s signs, she suggested, why not relocate them all in such a manner as to lead the right-of-way in a grand loop back to the starting point? Or lead it to the brink of, say, Muley Point, where the contractors would confront a twelve-hundred-foot vertical drop-off down to the Goosenecks of the San Juan River.

Glen Canyon Dam –

Page 11, “Four hundred feet long, it spans a gorge seven hundred feet deep: Glen Canyon. Flowing through the bottom of the gorge is the tame and domesticated Colorado River, released from the bowels of the adjacent Glen Canyon Dam. Formerly a golden-red, as the name implies, the river now runs cold, clear and green, the color of glacier water.”

Page 16, “Not the dam.”
“Yes sir, we have reason to think so.”
“Not Glen Canyon Dam.”
“I know it sounds crazy. But that’s what they’re after.”
Meanwhile, up in the sky, the lone visible vulture spirals…

Page 31, “He hadn’t remembered so many power lines. They stride across the horizon in multicolumn grandeur, looped together by the swoop and gleam of high-voltage cables charged with energy from Glen Canyon Dam, from the Navajo Power Plant, from the Four Corners and Shiprock plants, bound south and westward to the burgeoning Southwest and California. The blazing cities feed on the defenseless interior.

Page 37, “Now they came, amidst an increasing flow of automobile and truck traffic, to the bridge and Glen Canyon Dam. Smith parked his truck in front of the Senator Carl Hayden Memorial Building. He and his friend got out and walked along the rail to the center of the bridge.

Page 66, “Hayduke had been complaining about the new power lines he’d seen the day before on the desert. Smith had been moaning about the dam again, that dam which had plugged up Glen Canyon, the heart of his river, the river of his heart.

Page 103, “The old jeep, loaded with all of his valuables, had been left a week earlier in a parking lot at Wahweap Marina near Page, close to the ultimate, final, unspoken goal, impossible objective, Smith’s favorite fantasy, the dam. Glen Canyon Dam. The dam.

Page 108, “When Glen Canyon Dam plugged the Colorado, the waters backed up over Hite, over the ferry and into thirty miles of…”

Page 117, “Smith took a long and studious look at the east-northeast, above the humpback rock, straight toward that lovely bridge which rose, like an arc of silver, like a rainbow of steel, above Narrow Canyon and the temporarily plugged Colorado River.”

Page 330, “Or down in Arizona for the glorious finale to the campaign, the rupturing removal and obliteration of, of course, that Glen Canyon National Sewage Lagoon Dam. We never did get all together on that one. Smith wakes slowly, taking his time.”

In an introduction to the 1982 film, “The Cracking of Glen Canyon Damn”, Edward Abbey stood cliff-side, with the dam behind him. Gesturing toward the object of his derision he said, “I think we are morally justified to resort to whatever means are necessary to defend our land from destruction… invasion. I see this as an invasion. I feel no kinship with that fantastic structure over there. No sympathy with it whatsoever.”

The brief film chronicled the March 21, 1981 event that some called the birth of the radical environmental movement in America. In the film, members of the environmental group Earth First! unfurled a 300-foot tapered black sheet of plastic down the face of the dam, making it appear as if a gigantic crack had appeared in the structure.

To a small group of people who stood nearby, Edward Abbey made a speech from the back of a flatbed truck. “Surely no manmade structure in history has been hated so much by so many, for so long with such good reason as Glen Canyon Dam. Earth First! The domination of nature leads to the domination of human beings. And if opposition is not enough, we must resist. And if resistance is not enough, then subvert. The empire is striking back, so we must continue to strike back at the empire by whatever means available to us.

Win or lose, it is a matter of honor. Oppose, resist, subvert, delay until the empire itself begins to fall apart. And until that happens, enjoy… enjoy the great American West, what is left of it. Climb those mountains, run those rivers, hike those canyons, explore those forests, and share in the beauty of wilderness, friendship, love and common effort to save what we love. Do this and we will be strong and bold and happy. We will outlive our enemies, and as my good old grandmother used to say, we will live to piss on their graves. (Applause) Thank you.”

During Abbey’s speech, which he timed to coincide with the unfurling of the banner, National Park Rangers arrived at the scene. Despite their investigation, authorities were unable to identify the individuals responsible for the draping of Glen Canyon Dam. Looking somewhat puzzled at the gathering, rangers cited neither Edward Abbey nor anyone else in the crowd.

To read the first article in this series, click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 05:18 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

A 1965 Visit to Edward Abbey's old Glen Canyon and Rainbow Bridge National Monument - 2012

 

A 1965 Visit to Edward Abbey's old Glen Canyon and Rainbow Bridge National Monument

In 1965, when I was seventeen years old, my father and I embarked on a Four Corners States Grand Circle Tour. After our visit to Moab, Utah, including old Arches National Monument, the Book Cliffs and Dead Horse Point, we traveled south. I shall save our stops at the Goosenecks of the San Juan River and Monument Valley for later. First, I shall discuss our visit to Lake Powell and Rainbow Bridge National Monument.

Although Edward Abbey’s seminal book, Desert Solitaire did not appear in print until 1968, I shall quote from that book regarding Glen Canyon and Rainbow Bridge. Construction of the Glen Canyon Dam topped out in late 1963. When we visited in 1965, the lake appeared to be about half full. Years earlier, Edward Abbey and his friend, Ralph Newcomb, had rafted down the yet untamed Colorado River through Glen Canyon. Leaving Newcomb at the river, Abbey had hiked to Rainbow Bridge. Abbey’s visit there was an early 1960’s whitewater, wilderness experience. Ours visit was a mid-1960’s powerboat cruise on a placid lake.

Glen Canyon – Like no other occurrence in Edward Abbey’s life, the inundation of Glen Canyon created a psychic scar in the man. He knew that Glen Canyon Dam was the first of three new dams then planned for the Lower Colorado Basin. His determination not to let another Colorado River dam arise became the meta-theme of his book, The Monkey Wrench Gang. Using various characters in that book as a thinly veiled foil, Abbey expressed his own latent desire to eradicate Glen Canyon Dam.

Years before, in Desert Solitaire, Abbey wrote eloquently about a wilderness now submerged, hundreds of feet below the Lake Powell we know today. Following are his words.

Page 122, “We were exploring a deep dungeonlike defile off Glen Canyon one time (before the dam). The defile turned and twisted like a snake under overhangs and interlocking walls so high, so close, that for most of the way I could not see the sky.”

Page 152, “I know, because I was one of the lucky few (there could have been thousands more) who saw Glen Canyon before it was drowned, In fact I saw only a part of it but enough to realize that here was an Eden, a portion of the earth’s original paradise.”

Page 156, “That must be where Trachyte Creek comes in,” I explain; “if we had life jackets with us it might be a good idea to put them on now.” Actually our ignorance and carelessness are more deliberate than accidental; we are entering Glen Canyon…”

Page 157, “If this is the worst Glen Canyon has to offer, we agree, give us more of the same. In a few minutes the river obliges; a second group of rapids appears, wild as the first. Forewarned and overcautious this time, despite ourselves, we paddle too far…”

Page 185, “Farther still into the visionary world of Glen Canyon, talking somewhat less than before - for what is there to say? I think we have said it all – we communicate less in words and more in direct denotations, the glance, the pointing hand, the subtle nuances of pipe smoke, the tilt of a wilted hat brim.”

Page 188, “The sun, close to the horizon, shines through the clear air beneath the cloud layers, illuminating the soft variations of rose, vermilion, umber, slate blue, the complex features and details, defined sharply by shadow, of the Glen Canyon Landscape.”

Rainbow Bridge – By definition, a “natural arch” spans an area of dry land. In contrast, a “natural bridge” spans a watercourse. At remote Rainbow Bridge National Monument, a stone torus known as Rainbow Bridge is the most celebrated landform. Before Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, the only way to see Rainbow Bridge was on a river raft expedition. A visit there involved a long wet trip up or down the Colorado River, followed by a tedious, uphill hike at the end. Located almost fifty water-miles upstream from Glen Canyon Dam, Rainbow Bridge now resides in a short side canyon, off Lake Powell.

After our long boat ride from Wahweap Marina, near Page, Arizona, our skipper tied up at a floating dock. When the lake was full, the story went; lake water would rise almost to the base of Rainbow Bridge. In 1965, however, we had over two miles of hiking before cresting a ridge and seeing the immutable stone arch called Rainbow Bridge.

Other than a flood in the summer of 1983, Lake Powell has never been full. There are few 1983 photos showing lake water lapping near the base of Rainbow Bridge. Today, perennially lower lake levels call into question the dam’s main reason for being, which is to generate electricity. In late 2012, the U.S. Department of the Interior admitted what longtime observers of the Glen Canyon Dam have known for decades – that drought, climate change and over-subscription of available water will result in permanently lower water levels in Lake Powell and throughout the Colorado River Basin.

In 1965, when I asked our skipper if he preferred the ease of lake travel to a rafting trip, he tactfully said that each method of conveyance had its advantages. He went on to say, he would have preferred that Glen Canyon stay as it had been before the dam. As it was, on our visit, we hiked to Rainbow Bridge over hot, dry land, just as Edward Abbey had done years before. Following are passages from Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, describing his raft trip down the Colorado River to Rainbow Bridge.

Page 186, “We pass the mouth of a large river entering the Colorado River from the east – the San Juan River. Somewhere not far beyond this confluence, if I recall my Powell rightly, is the opening to what he named Music Temple. “When ‘Old Shady’ sings us a song at night,” wrote Powell in 1869, “we are pleased to find that this hollow in the rock is filled with sweet sounds”.”

Page 188, “The river carries us past more side canyons, each of which I inspect for signs of a trail, a clue to Rainbow Bridge. But I find nothing, so far, though we know we are getting close.

Page 192, “Rainbow Bridge seems neither less nor greater than what I had foreseen. My second sensation is the feeling of guilt. Newcomb. Why had I not insisted on his coming? Why did I not grab him by the long strands of his savage beard and haul him up the trail, bearing him when necessary like Christopher would across the stream, stumbling from stone to stone, and dump him finally under the bridge, leaving him…

Page 193, “But I am diverted by a faint pathway which looks as if it might lead up out of the canyon, above Rainbow Bridge. Late afternoon, the canyon filling with shadows – I should not try it. I take it anyway, climbing a talus slope.

Page 193, “From up here Rainbow Bridge, a thousand feet below, is only a curving ridge of sandstone of no undue importance, a tiny object lost in the vastness and intricacy of the canyon systems which radiate from the base of Navajo Mountain.

Page 239, “Through twilight and moonlight I climb down to the rope, down to the ledge, down to the canyon floor below Rainbow Bridge. Bats flicker through the air. Fireflies sparkle by the water-seeps and miniature toads with enormous voices clank and grunt and chant at me as I tramp past their ponds down the long trail back to the river, back to the campfire and companionship and a midnight supper.

From Wahweap Marina, near Glen Canyon Dam, to Rainbow Bridge is about sixteen miles, as the crow flies. On the lake, our circuitous canyon route was nearly three times as long. As we drank Cokes from steel cans along the way, the cognoscenti told us that we should punch a hole in the bottom of each can before throwing it in the lake. That way, the cans could sink, rather than bobbing half-full on the surface for years to come. Although a nationwide ethic of recycling was still decades away, I pictured snags of drowned trees far below, each festooned with Coke and beer can ornaments.

From 1965, it would be over a decade before Abbey’s motley cast of fictional characters wreaked havoc with infrastructure and land development throughout San Juan County, Utah. To read about those queasily exciting adventures in incipient eco-activism (some say eco-terrorism), please watch for my upcoming treatise on Edward Abbey's book, The Monkey Wrench Gang. When posted, you will find it HERE.

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By James McGillis at 05:27 PM | Colorado River | Comments (0) | Link

"Moab Native" and Moab Jim Debate the Moab Potash Conundrum - 2012

 

"Moab Native" and Moab Jim Debate the Moab Potash Conundrum

Near Moab, Utah, the Intrepid Potash Cane Creek Facility overlooks the Colorado River. With its in-situ mine and settling ponds resting so close to the river, I wondered about safety. If the earthen dams that impound so much brine were to fail, what environmental damage might ensue? In August 2009, I began writing about potash production near Moab and later regarding newly planned mines near Holbrook, Arizona.

With over two hundred thirty-five articles on this website, I am always happy to see a reader comment on my work. Before publishing, I always research my articles to the best of my ability. Even so, I enjoy constructive criticism and do my best to correct errors in fact. By putting my name on every article, I put my own integrity on the line every day.

It was with a spirit of enthusiasm that I read a comment by one “Moab Native” regarding my August 21, 2009 article titled, “A Place Called Potash”. Although I did not agree with everything Moab Native wrote, until his final sentence I was encouraged by his thoughts. In his parting words, Moab Native elected to call me “ignorant”. Here are “Moab Native’s” comments, typos and all, followed by my responses to his supposed “facts”.

Moab Native – “There are actually numerous errors in this blog. Potash is not calcium carbonate, not potassium carbonate, but potassium chloride (KCl).”

Moab Jim – According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the definition of potash is “Various potassium compounds, chiefly crude potassium carbonate”. According to Wikipedia, “potash refers to potassium compounds and potassium-bearing materials, the most common being potassium chloride (KCl).” I cannot say which website is correct, but these two authoritative sources disagree on the chemical formula for potash.

Moab Native – “Also, the Moab facility does not produce "industrial grade fertilizer" that can spoil the Colorado, but farm grade fertilizer.”

Moab Jim – According to the “Industrial Products” page on the Intrepid Potash website, the company sells eleven different industrial products. How many of these come from the Cane Creek Facility is not mentioned. On the Moab, Utah page of the same website, the only product listed is “Muriate of Potash”, an archaic or technical reference to potassium chloride (KCL). According to the same webpage, “The potash and salt are then dried, sorted, and processed into various agricultural, feed, and industrial products”.

Moab Native – Also, the reason the facility is categorized as low risk, is that NaCl and KCl are naturally occuring minerals in the Colorado river watershed.

Moab Jim – According the Salt Lake Tribune article titled, “Dam Safety in Utah”, the Moab Salt (now Intrepid Potash) Stockpile Dam has a “hazard level” of “significant”. That dam has a height of seventy feet, can retain up to 1200-acre-feet of brine and drains an area of three square miles. The safety rating of any facility is only as strong as its weakest link. Since the predecessors to Intrepid Potash completed the Stockpile Dam prior to the requirement for environmental impact statements (EIS), no one knows if local precipitation could fill, over-top or breach the stockpile dam.

Moab Native – “The actual amount of dissolved salts in the system at any given time is dependent upon the runoff up stream. If all of the ponds were to breach at one time (only an act of sabotage could cause this) the amount of salts introduced would still be negligible.”

Moab Jim – If the “Monkey Wrench Gang” were to ride again, breaching of some or all the retention ponds would be possible. Moab Native claims that even a catastrophic failure of all the dams would produce "negligible impact" on the Colorado River. In his comment, he produces no evidence to back his assertion.

Moab Native – In the more likely case of a single breach, the cause woud be excess precepitation. The precipitation would act to dissolve the KCl and NaCl to bring the event to a null introduction to the river. Also, to a common sense viewer, it can be seen that the ponds depths do not exceed 6".

Moab Jim – Moab Native's assumption that only precipitation could cause a single dam breach is disingenuous. If sabotage could breach all of the dams, could it not breach one or two? Without a cleansing rainstorm to help neutralize the salts, concentrated brine could easily reach the river. The Salt Lake City Tribune article shows retention dam heights of twelve feet. The Intrepid Potash website mentions that “400 acres of shallow evaporation ponds”, but gives no depths. I consider myself a “common sense viewer”, but only someone with access to the retention ponds would know that each twelve-foot high dam retains only six inches of brine.

Moab Native – Regarding seismic activity. The canyonlands region has never recorded any seismic activity (allowing the existence of arches). The reason for this is due to the plastic flow tendency of the 7000 foot thick salt deposits underfoot. The layer of potash mined has already been filled in with plastic flow.”

Moab Jim – "Never" is a long time. When popular Wall Arch collapsed in August 2008, no one could say why. The USGS database shows that there is a 1.062% chance of a 5.0 or greater magnitude earthquake within 50 kilometers of Moab, Utah within the next 50 years. The largest recorded earthquake within 100 miles of Moab was a 5.3 magnitude e3vent in 1988. Even if Moab Native’s theory of "plastic flow" is correct, an earthquake originating outside of the immediate area could still affect the facility. Although excess precipitation or sabotage is more likely than an earthquake, there is no EIS to tell us what the various dams could withstand.

Moab Native – Regarding state inspection: inspections are conducted on a regular basis by the state. This includes runoff water testing and inspection of all the liquid holding earthen damns.

Moab Jim – The state may be conducting inspections of the ongoing operations at the Cane Creek Facility, but that does not mean that the facility is benign. Since the current retention ponds went into operation in 1970, they were and are exempt from ongoing environmental scrutiny. In the event of a future disaster, Intrepid Potash would surely use the “Moab Native” defense. I can hear them saying, “We did everything that we were required to do by law. If the dams broke, it was an Act of God” The term, “Act of God” is an insurance industry invention. It means, “We are not responsible for this disaster, God is”.

Moab Native – “Because ignorance is not bliss, ignorance is just ignorance.”

Moab Jim – Ignorance is a state of being uninformed (lack of knowledge). If any one of us has knowledge that others may require, it is our duty to share that knowledge. Having learned several new facts from Moab Native, I thank him and share his thoughts here. I agree that ignorance is not bliss. However, denigrating and denying the research and reporting of others can lead to a self-imposed, ignorant form of bliss known as self-righteousness.

Regardless of whether any dams at Potash break or not, a drive through the Cane Creek Facility is an environmental revelation. In recent years, Intrepid Potash has taken many environmental shortcuts, including uncontrolled flooding from the in-situ mining sites to their retention ponds. The only life that can survive in such a degraded environment is bacteria. Just because it is technically legal to inundate natural creek beds within the facility does not make it right. If state or federal regulators conducted an independent EIS at the Cane Creek Facility today, major changes in environmental management would surely be required.

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 01:30 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

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