Potash Salt Tailings Threaten Colorado River Water Resources - 2011

 

Potash Salt Tailings Threaten Colorado River Water Resources 

 

In October 2010, I had an opportunity to view the Intrepid Potash Cane Creek Facility from the air. After a Redtail Aviation scenic flight over Canyonlands National Park, we turned back towards the Moab airport at Canyonlands Field. As we flew north along the Colorado River, our pilot banked the airplane around the place called Potash. Since the sky was hazy, my near-vertical shots turned out the best. If my earlier ground-level views had been disturbing, they did not prepare me for what I saw from the air.

 

Disclaimer - Aerial photos are often difficult to interpret. From the distortion of the window glass, to the interplay of light and shadow, the viewer might mistake one thing for another. The following conclusions are mine alone, and are based on the various visits and perspective views that I have experienced at Potash. If Intrepid Potash, Inc., the State of Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining or the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (Moab Field Office) disagrees with my conclusions, they might still want to verify the facts for themselves.

 

When viewed as a unit, an in-situ recovery (ISR) potash mine, the evaporation ponds and the processing and storage structures comprise the Cane Creek Facility. Sitting on what looks like the central bulge of the ancient Cane Creek Anticline, the facility encompasses hundreds of acres. At its highest elevation are the injection sites. While many in-situ mines require both injection and pumping, the salt structures beneath Potash appear to spontaneously eject brine at the surface. From there, wet potash salt tailings run freely to the evaporation ponds. Terraced across the bench land is a set of eighteen large ponds. A smaller set of six ponds extends almost to the edge of a precipice. Surrounding those ponds on both sides are side canyons that empty into the Colorado River.

 

If all goes well, the produced water and fine tailings are retained by the evaporation ponds. A plastic lining on the bottom of each pond is designed to prevent groundwater seepage. However, several of my photos showed what appeared to be brine running down from the evaporation ponds. It was most clearly visible in the stream beds leading to the Colorado River. My first thought was that concentrated brine was somehow leaking from the evaporation ponds. As likely as that scenario might be, I quickly thought of an alternative. Perhaps forty years of hydraulic injection mining in this complex of fractured rock had created springs that flow with brine-laden water. If water has interpenetrated subsurface rock formations, it could undermine the ponds or cause a sinkhole. If the underlying structure of the rock is compromised, a large seismic or weather event could destroy the integrity of the earthen dikes that retain the concentrated brine within the ponds. Could the current seepage of brine re-manifest as a salt and fertilizer flood? Directly below that mesa, unprotected by any catch basin lies the Colorado River.

 

Looking down at the processing and storage structures from the airplane, I saw potash spilled around it like recent snowfall. Along the roadways surrounding the structures and at the loading area, finished potash and salt spill freely. From there, wind, water and gravity move it down toward the river. When properly applied, potash is an excellent fertilizer. If millions of gallons of concentrated salt and potash were to enter the Colorado river, it could threaten the agricultural and drinking water supply for over fourteen million people.

 

If the Intrepid Potash Cane Creek Facility represents the current state of the art in potash mining, what can we expect from the upcoming Passport Potash, Inc. mine in Arizona's Holbrook Basin? If the proposed Holbrook Basin ISR potash mine goes into operation, it would immediately become one of the top ten water users within the Little Colorado River Basin. Today, it is rare to find wind-powered water wells anywhere in the Four Corners. Historical use of wind-driven pumps for cattle watering and cattle fodder was pumping enough to dry out most Four Corners aquifers. With regional water tables at historical lows, most water sources are now too deep to tap with wind power. No one knows exactly how much the Holbrook Basin aquifer may hold. One can only hope that it is enough.

 

Most of the water used at the Cane Creek Facility soaks into the ground as brine-laden slurry or evaporates from the settling ponds. In this desert-style solution mining, there appears to be little recycling or reuse of produced water. If not for a steady supply of Colorado River water, the Cane Creek Facility would not be sustainable. If the proposed Passport Potash Holbrook, Arizona Project utilizes solar energy to dry fine tailings, there will be little remaining surface water there to recycle. A gallon pumped from the Holbrook Basin aquifers could be a gallon gone forever.

 

Before potash mining is approved at the Holbrook Basin play, the public deserves straightforward, honest and complete answers regarding the intentions of Passport Potash and its partners. Here are my questions:

• Is Passport Potash proposing a conventional mine or an in-situ recovery (ISR) mine in the Holbrook Basin?
• If it is to be a solution mine, what water sources do they plan to tap?
• How much water will their one-to-two million tons per year (1-2 mtpy) mine require?
• If produced brine is injected back into rock strata below, could it raise the salinity of the aquifer?
• Is there sufficient seasonal inflow to the aquifer, or will the mine require a net annual withdrawal from the aquifer?
• If there will be a water deficit, what environmental impact will there be on the Holbrook Basin and the Little Colorado River Basin at large?
• Is the economic development created by ISR potash mines in the Holbrook Basin worth the risk of environmental degradation?

 

Before full-scale ISR mining accelerates all over the Four Corners, we need an honest and independent appraisal of its environmental impact. Not bothering to conduct an environmental impact study, the Utah BLM Office recently downplayed the impact of potash mining in the Sevier Valley, Utah. In fact, they published a statement that mining there would have "no impact". With solution mining in the Four Corners, there is always an impact, not the least of which is a trade-off between mineral yield and water usage. Plans are currently underway by both Ringbolt Ventures and Mesa Exploration for ISR potash mines in the Lisbon Valley, Utah. Uranium Resources, Inc. has approval for an ISR uranium mine on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Although still contested in court, plans go forward for extraction of oil sands from the Uintah Basin, Utah. With so many plans underway to divert or pump water into mineral processing, we can no longer ignore the issue of regional water usage. There is not, after all, an unlimited supply. 

 

As a child, I would often share a milkshake with a friend. From the word, “Go”, we would each suck on our straw as fast as we could until the glass was empty. Shall we now stand by and watch as the quest for oil sands, uranium and potash production dries every aquifer in the Colorado River Basin? Continuing on our current heedless path guarantees a future with water shortages for all.

Author's Note: Article updated 9/2/2017.

 

Read Chapter One – The Little Colorado River Basin

Read Chapter Two – Holbrook, Arizona Basin - Potash

Read Chapter Three - Holbrook Basin Water Crisis

Read a conversation with a Potash Investor

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By James McGillis at 01:16 PM | Colorado River | Comments (1) | Link 

 

 

Utah's SITLA/BLM Land Swap Does Not Benefit the People or the Land

This section Courtesy KCPW News,  July 09, 2009

"U.S. House Unanimously Approves SITLA Land Swap", by Elizabeth Ziegler

(KCPW News)  The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approved a land swap with the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) yesterday.  If approved by the Senate, it will authorize a patchwork assortment of more than 40,000 acres of SITLA lands to be transferred to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in exchange for a similar amount of land in the oil and gas-rich Uintah Basin.  However, Congressman Jim Matheson, who sponsored the legislation, says it does more than that.

 

"It acknowledged that there's recreational value to this area right along the Colorado River corridor and taking that out of potential development had value," Matheson says.  "And in return, the state got some oil and gas properties for that type of development instead."

SITLA believes oil and gas development on the Uintah Basin land could add tens of millions of dollars to the school trust fund.  A portion of the interest from the fund is distributed to Utah schools each year.

 

Matheson says this is the first time that recreational value was taken into consideration for such a federal land swap.  The value of public land has traditionally been based on the value of potential development or resource extraction.  He believes the bill will set a precedent for future legislation.  Liz Thomas with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in Moab hopes it will.

 

"We do hope it can serve as a model because this land exchange bill, honestly, it's been years in the making and it was in the end supported by pretty much all sides," Thomas says.  "And that's pretty unheard of."

Thomas says the land swap would represent a significant step toward protecting many scenic areas around Moab, including one of the largest red rock formations in the region, Corona Arch. - (End of KCPW Story)

 

July 2009 Author's Note: On a higher level, it is sad to see that we shall concentrate our destructive and extractive forces in one area.  If we were Uintah Basin Native Americans, we might think that this is not such a good idea.

 

Look south to Black Mesa, Arizona, near Navajo National Monument and you will find the best-hidden strip mine in the West.  Utilizing the Black Mesa and Lake Powell (Electric) Railroad, the aptly named Black Mesa provides relatively dirty western coal to the Navajo Generating Station, which overlooks Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam.  

 

Today, there is a growing consensus that the dam itself was an unnecessary environmental tragedy.  During the increasingly hot summers, the oversubscribed Colorado River cannot supply enough water to spin a sufficient number of turbines at Glen Canyon Dam to meet peak electric power demand.  At such times, additional coal-smoke haze issues forth from the tall stacks of the Navajo Generating Station.  These smoke signals send a message of environmental degradation to each of the Four Corners states.  Fickle winds roundabout the canyons of the Colorado Plateau may contribute to such far-flung phenomena as Uintah Basin’s summer haze

 

Compromising our environment in favor of increased old-energy extraction and production will only hasten the day of our demise.  Each new scar that we place upon the land has local, regional and worldwide environmental consequences.  With this knowledge to guide us, can we still afford to create new environmental ghettos; overdeveloped, over-extracted, overgrazed and prone to 1930s-style dust storms? 

 

Ask the current residents of Giza, Egypt if they would support a new round of pyramid building in their once-lush valley.  In ancient times, over-development there initiated what we now call the Sahara Desert.  Yes, current dwellers of the desert southwest, it can happen here.

 

January 2012 Author's Note: According to The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper, "Utah is weary of waiting for federal funds to complete a heralded swap of recreational lands near Moab in exchange for energy swaths in the Uintah Basin, so state school trust officials plan to start paying appraisers themselves to seal the deal."

 

(Some) Environmentalists like the swap, and worked for its passage in Congress, because it protects “remarkable places along the Colorado River,” said Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust.

“The schoolkids come out ahead and the natural places come out ahead,” Hedden said. “It’s a great exchange.”

 

I wonder if the Native American school kids living among natural gas wells and breathing polluted air in the Uintah Basin will be as sanguine.

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By James McGillis at 11:44 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link