The Once-Great Colorado River Rises on the Colorado Plateau - 2015

 

A Once-Great River Rises on the Colorado Plateau

The Upper Colorado River Basin -

By the time the Colorado River passes Moab, Utah, it already carries a heavy load of minerals, trash and sewage. By mid-summer, water levels drop, exposing driftwood, sewage and trash along the shore. Only the next spring flood will loosen these stinking mixtures of organic material and plastic from the shoreline. In 2014, when I saw methane bubbles rising from one such stinking mass, it opened my eyes wide to the damage already done to this once great river.

A Place Called Potash, Utah -

After skirting the Matheson Wetlands along one bank and the Moab Pile on the other, the Colorado River descends through the Portal and on to a place called Potash, Utah. To make potash sound more interesting, the owners of the Cane Creek Potash Plant named themselves "Intrepid" Potash-Moab, LLC. Using dubious and undocumented Colorado River water rights, Intrepid Potash-Moab infuses millions of gallons of river water annually into the Cane Creek Anticline.

After injection, the anticline collapses ever so slightly. This subsidence burps out untold acre-feet of a brine solution, which is rich in potash salts. After drying and processing, Intrepid-Moab ships the resulting product out via rail and interstate highway. Later, agents and retailers resell the packaged product to farmers and home gardeners. The success of the corporate farming, as we know it today depends on finished potash and other synthetic fertilizers for its success.

Intrepid-Moab uses solar power to dry its potash brine in shallow, lined ponds. These ponds cover many colorful acres of bench land overlooking the Colorado River. From the Potash Road, four-wheelers access the Shafer Trail by traversing through the Cane Creek Plant. If terrestrial scenes of chemical degradation and poor stewardship of the land are not enough for you, I suggest an air tour of the area. On a Redtail Aviation flight out of Moab’s Canyonlands Field several years ago, our pilot banked the plane sufficiently for me to capture some revealing photos of the Cane Creek Plant.

Gushing from injection well sites that are high up on the bench land, the upwelling brine cascades unchecked until it reaches the settling ponds below. Any miscalculation of volume could result in overflow of the settling ponds. From the air, you can see a white crust that has dried upon the walls of small canyons leading down to the Colorado River. This tells me that Intrepid Potash-Moab has experienced both overflow and leakage at the settling ponds. Dwarfing any inputs upstream in Utah and Colorado, Intrepid Potash-Moab could be the largest contributor of organic solids anywhere in the Upper Colorado River Basin. After potash spills into the river, it goes back into solution, adding to the salinity of the water and turning the river into an organic time bomb.

Mudflats and Methane Volcanoes -

After its confluence with the Green River, the first full stop for the Colorado River is at the upper reaches of Lake Powell in Southeastern Utah. Soon after the lake reached its full potential size in the early 1980s, its water level began to fluctuate and then decline. During the past fourteen years of persistent drought, Lake Powell lost nearly half of its peak volume. Today, optimists might say that Lake Powell is “half full”. Almost unanimously, climate scientists agree that the reservoir is “half empty” and will continue to decline.

With many miles of former lakebed exposed to sunlight at the upper end of Lake Powell, the environment on those mudflats has deteriorated significantly. As water laden with heavy metals and organic material arrives at the upper end of the lake, it mixes with silt and sand. The result is a phenomenon known as methane volcanoes. Methane gas can be a byproduct of flatulence in cattle, coal mining or the baking of organic mud. Most people are familiar with carbon dioxide as our most ubiquitous “greenhouse gas”. Fewer people might know that methane is fifteen times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide puts the effervescent fizz in our soft drinks. Methane smells bad, is flammable and if contained, may explode.

The Navajo Reservation is Coal Country -

First, the stinking, organic mudflats at the upper end of Lake Powell create and release untold amounts of methane gas. Usually, warm air and light gases like methane rise from the surface and dissipate in the upper atmosphere. Often methane from Lake Powell remains in the lower atmosphere, trapped near the ground by an atmospheric inversion layer. If an atmospheric inversion is present, warm air aloft traps hot and volatile gasses below, thus creating a bubble of noxious air at or near ground level.

Not ironically, a huge methane gas bubble now floats above the Four Corners region. Is this unprecedented bubble of volatile gas the result of Navajo Nation coal mining, cattle flatulence or the stinking mudflats and methane volcanoes at the upper reaches of Lake Powell? Personally, I am betting on a combination of coal mining and fertilized mudflats. Thank you for your fertile potash input, Intrepid Potash-Moab, LLC.

Glen Canyon Damned -

After flowing over and sifting through the mudflats, the Colorado River enters many miles of forced confinement between sandstone canyon walls. There it drops its remaining sediment to the bottom of what once was a desert garden of legendary beauty. Known as Glen Canyon, living humans who saw it in its untrammeled glory are now few and elderly. Only through old black and white photographs and essays by such writers as John Wesley Powell and Edward Abbey do we know about a place once visited only by dory boat or river raft.

Once the water in Lake Powell reaches the penstocks and electrical turbines at Glen Canyon Dam, it is cold, dark and nearly devoid of oxygen. The portion of lake water that rests below the deepest intake on the dam, we call the “dead pool”. The lake water in the dead pool is as near to dead as fresh water can be. Once released downstream, dam water is clear, cold and capable of supporting no life higher than green fronded algae. Such algae grow wherever the water flow is slow enough to support life. If Colorado means, “colored red” or “Red River”, immediately below Glen Canyon Dam, that name does not apply. Running clear, cold and fringed with green algae, its name should revert to “Green River”.

This is Part 1 of a three-part article. To read Part 2, please click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 02:56 PM | Colorado River | Comments (0) | Link

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

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

"Wrenched - A Feature Documentary" Ms. Kristi Frazier, Producer - 2013

 

"Wrenched - A Feature Documentary"

Ms. Kristi Frazier, Producer

On May 14, 2013, I drove from Kingman, Arizona to Winslow, via Interstate I-40 and a few back roads. Along the way, I stopped in Flagstaff to visit with Ms. Kristi Frazier, the Producer of ML Lincoln Films’ “Wrenched – The Movie”, subtitled “How Edward Abbey lit the flame of environmental activism and gave the movement its soul”.

In late 2012, when Kristi Frazier first contacted me about my writing and the movie, I became interested in the project. Having written about Edward Abbey in various articles over the years, I wondered how ML Lincoln planned to treat Abbey’s legacy. Even twenty-four years after his passing, a documentary about Edward Abbey and the environmental activist movement he helped to found invited controversy.

When the original trailer for the movie hinted at the need for Monkey Wrench Gang-style physical intervention against “the machine”, I was concerned. Blowing up a coal train or pouring Karo Syrup in the fuel tank of a bulldozer made for good fiction, but not for responsible environmentalism or good politics in the 2010’s.

In my own way, I set about subverting the movie’s apparent promotion of environmental insurrection. To me, there was already too much violence and meaningless destruction of property in this world. No responsible person or film should advocate for more of the same. My way of attempting to turn that tide, if only in the film, was to write. My subject was Edward Abbey, as I saw him in life and channeled him in his current non-physical state.

Almost before I knew it, I had published four new articles about Edward Abbey. In life, he was famous for his passions, including an unbridled desire to blow up Glen Canyon Dam, thus releasing its water into the Colorado River. Years ago, I had walked with the Spirit of Edward Abbey at Navajo National Monument, Arizona. At the end of our walk, I realized that death had released the Spirit of Edward Abbey from his famous crankiness.

Who knows if my new articles had any influence on the filmmakers or the film? During my meeting with Kristi Frazier, she indicated that all of the environmental fervor was still in the film, but that it would not be a call to arms against developers or mineral extraction. I was pleased to hear that a new trailer for “Wrenched – The Movie” was coming in late May 2013.

I just finished watching that new trailer and afterward, breathed a sigh of relief. None other than Robert Redford makes a brief appearance in the trailer, saying, “It was the very beginning of an environmental movement, but it belonged to a certain caste of people that the other people saw as threatening”. Activism always threatens some people, but it is often necessary in order to enhance public awareness. I do not know if Robert Redford’s appearance in the movie trailer indicates that there will be a place for “Wrenched – The Movie” at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, but I hope so.

Over the years, in this blog I have singled out only three people for a “World Citizen Award”. In 2008, I praised Tom Moody and his wife, the late Joan Moody, who together protected Namenalala Island in Fiji from fishing and over-development. In 2011, I praised Kathy Hemenway for being first to identify the environmental risks of potash mining in the Holbrook Basin, Arizona.

In conjunction with ML Lincoln of ML Lincoln Films, Kristi Frazier has spent over three years of her professional life shepherding “Wrenched – The Movie” toward its expected release in early 2014. When we think of a movie producer, we often think of some bigwig mogul smoking a cigar at a Hollywood studio. Instead, Kristi Frazier, a married mother of three balances work and family in Flagstaff, Arizona. Without her tireless dedication to a complex task, I doubt that ML Lincoln’s vision of the Spirit of Edward Abbey would ever make it to the screen.

In anticipation that “Wrenched – The Movie” will soon receive widespread theatrical release and critical acclaim, Plush Kokopelli and I recognize Ms. Kristi Frazier as recipient of only the third ever “World Citizen Award”. Congratulations to Kristi Frazier.

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By James McGillis at 11:51 AM | Environment | Comments (1) | Link

Kathy Hemenway - World Citizen & Resident of Snowflake, Arizona - 2011

 

Kathy Hemenway - World Citizen & Resident of Snowflake, Arizona

After leaving Needles, California, my next stop was at Homolovi State Park, near Winslow, Arizona. While staying there, I visited my friend and fellow environmentalist, Kathy Hemenway at her home in nearby Snowflake, Arizona. Some might think that the Holbrook Basin and Snowflake in particular is a remote location for a former software engineer from Menlo Park, Californian to live, and they are right. When she built there in 1998, remoteness from sources of electromagnetic radiation and other sources of environmental sensitivity were her main goal.

 

Although sensitive to volatile organic compounds all of her life, Kathy became severely ill after unexpected exposure to pesticide pollution. When an exterminator accidentally sprayed her yard in Menlo Park, it precipitated a debilitating illness. From that time on, Kathy was hypersensitive to both chemical pollution and electromagnetic radiation. Exposure to cleaning solutions or electronic equipment was more than she could take on most days.

 

Although she admits that the design of her home might be “overkill” for the problems she then faced, she designed a state-of-the-art “safe house” for herself. From its concrete-block construction, steel roof and steel panels inside all interior walls, to ceramic tile floors and walls, she attempted to eliminate all sources of chemical and electromagnetic pollution. If there was a logical theory on how to ameliorate any of those issues, she employed it in the construction of her home.

 

In 2009, Kathy Hemenway’s pioneering work in “safe house” design and construction caught the interest of the Los Angeles Times. The result of that association was a landmark article on “environmental illness” and ways to avoid its most deleterious effects.

 

Although she does not consider herself a radical environmentalist, Kathy does monitor potential threats to her sanctuary. Over the years, she has helped keep giant wind turbines away from residential areas in Snowflake. From a atop her tiny travel trailer,she allowed the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to facilitate air quality monitoring on her property. When the subject of emissions from nearby Arizona Public Service (APS) coal-fired power plants in the area comes up, Kathy attends every meeting. When she and I met, it was to discuss the possible impact of in-situ potash mining planned near Holbrook, Arizona. As of this writing, she was in Tucson, Arizona for a meeting of the Arizona Legislative Mining Caucus. She hoped to meet the potash fellows, as well as the state geologist, state oil and gas administrator, and others.

 

Over a decade after her departure from the rigors of software engineering in Silicon Valley, I am pleased to report that Kathy Hemenway is well, safe and happy in Snowflake Arizona. If you contact her, please be aware that she lives in two worlds. One of her worlds connects to all via telephone, the internet and visits with friends and neighbors. Yet, the address of her house does not appear on Google Maps, MapQuest, Yahoo or Bing. If you follow any of their directions, you will end up on a dirt road to nowhere. All of that is acceptable to Kathy Hemenway. Visits to her unique world are by invitation only.

 

Obituary: Dr. Kathleen Hemenway passed away at home in Snowflake, Arizona June 9, 2016. She was 61 years old.

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By James McGillis at 05:47 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

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 

Holbrook Basin, Arizona Water Creation Myth - 2011

 

 

Holbrook Basin, Arizona

Water Creation Myth 

 

A broad range of historical studies indicate that the aquifers of Northeastern Arizona may be over-subscribed. Still other studies predict long-term, persistent drought throughout the area. Sparse winter rains and the thunderstorms of summer are the only replenishment sources for aquifers in the Little Colorado River Basin. Most of the available moisture will either evaporate or runoff into the Colorado River. Long-term drought in the Four Corners states places stress on ecosystems throughout the High Southwest.

 

An easy way to gauge dryness in a desert environment is the frequency and intensity of regional dust storms. By that standard, the Four Corners states are now drier than at any time since the Great Disappearance, around 1300 CE. Even so, we are now on a fast-track to pump large amounts of water from these irreplaceable sources. A recent news report suggests that Passport Potash, Inc. plans an in-situ recovery (ISR), hydraulic-injection mine on their Twin Buttes Ranch property near Holbrook, Arizona. In March 2011, a Passport Potash mining engineer told the press that Passport Potash, Inc. hopes to pump up to 2000 gallons per minute from wells within the Holbrook Basin aquifer.

 

At first, 2000 gallons per minute does not sound like a large amount of water. However, pumping at that rate for one full year would produce over one billion gallons of water. One billion gallons equals over 3000 acre feet of water. If each three-person household used one quarter of an acre foot per year, Passport Potash water requirements would be equivalent to over 38,000 domestic water users. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Navajo County, of which the City of Holbrook is the county seat, had a 2016 population of 110,026. Thus, if Passport Potash reaches full production, it alone will pump water equal to one third of all domestic water use within Navajo County.

 

Through their creation myth, the Hopi people tell us that all water is both sacred and connected. In what could be a lapse of ancestral memory, the Hopi new lands trust appears to have granted eighteen sections of their Holbrook Basin water rights to Passport Potash. If the southern aquifers of the Holbrook Basin are pumped dry, it will be only a matter of time before the drought worsens in both Navajo and Hopi reservations. The elders within the Hopi new lands trust might want to check their pre ancestral memories regarding drought and its consequences. For decades, scientists have known that around 1300 CE, drought brought an end to Pre-Puebloan cultures within the Colorado River Basin. The Hopi creation myth was founded in fact, not fantasy. If they have the fortitude to retain, rather than to sell their hard-won water rights, the Hopi people may yet avoid watching their ancient and venerable culture dry up and blow away.

 

Potential potash producers now lure the Hopi, Navajo, Zuni and other tribes with prospects of employment. Touting well-paying jobs and generations of employment for local citizens, they predict that ISR mines will still produce potash and jobs a century from now. One hundred years of operations at the proposed Holbrook Basin mines would require 100,000,000,000 gallons of water. Does anyone seriously believe that the Holbrook Basin aquifers hold one hundred billion gallons of water, free for the taking?

 

I wonder what has happened to the Arizona State and federal agencies who are stakeholders in the Little Colorado River Basin. Other than the mining authorities, I could find no published position statement on behalf of any agency. Do the Department of Interior, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Geological Survey have no opinion at all regarding this issue? Unless someone or some agency steps in and demands a region-wide approach to water use planning, continued depletion of the Little Colorado River aquifers is a near certainty.

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 Four - Colorado River Watershed At Risk

Read Comment - Holbrook Basin Potash, Sinkholes and 'Nutjob Math'

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By James McGillis at 12:02 AM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

Holbrook Basin, Arizona The Environmental Cost of Mineral Exploitation - 2011

 

 

Holbrook Basin, Arizona

The Environmental Cost of Mineral Exploitation

   

Located south of the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona, the Holbrook Basin is wholly contained within the larger Little Colorado River Watershed. The heart of the Holbrook Basin rests in a triangle of land created by the confluence of the Little Colorado River and its main tributary, the Rio Puerco. On its eastern flank, the Holbrook Basin overlaps the fragile environment of Petrified Forest National Park. Over the years, the Holbrook Basin has been a hotbed of mineral exploration, if not major exploitation. Oil, natural gas and uranium ore are but a few of the resources prospected or extracted from the Holbrook Basin.

 

The City of Holbrook is the County Seat for Navajo County, Arizona. Interstate I-40, Historic Route 66 and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) all pass through Holbrook. In addition, Holbrook hosts the only golf course along I-40 between Gallup, New Mexico and Flagstaff, Arizona. Water from the adjacent Little Colorado River makes that amenity possible.

 

Upstream and to the east of Holbrook, the confluence of the Rio Puerco and the Little Colorado River creates a larger, seasonal flow. Radiochemical contamination is present in the alluvial aquifer along the Puerco River. The elevated levels of gross alpha and gross beta are caused by the movement of uranium-, radium-, and thorium-rich sediments from the 1979 Church Rock uranium mine tailing pond spill in New Mexico (Webb and others, 1988) and discharges of mine dewatering effluent, which ceased in 1986 (U.S. Geological Survey, 1991b).

 

Movement of existing radionuclides is due to discharges from the sewage-treatment plant in Gallup, New Mexico (U.S. Geological Survey, 1991b). This area is considered one of the principal water-quality problem areas in the state (Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, 1990). After learning late about prior nuclear contamination along the Rio Puerco, the Navajo Nation outlawed uranium mining on its reservation in 2005. In 2010, despite Navajo objections, Uranium Resources, Inc. (URI) received approval to restart uranium mining within the contamination zone created by the 1979 spill.

 

Strathmore Minerals Corp. (purchased by Energy Fuels Corp. in 2013) is also listed as controlling 640 acres adjacent to the URI site. The ninety-four million gallon Church Rock Spill was the largest release of low-level nuclear radiation in U.S. history. Despite that, in-situ recovery (ISR) mines are now being planned for the area. With the use of hydraulic injection and subsequent pumping, both groundwater depletion and produced water are of concern to the Navajo Nation. Subsequent to the 1979 spill, the Navajo were not told that surface flow along the Rio Puerco was caused largely by uranium mine dewatering. Pre-ancestral memories run deep. To this day, cattle and domestic animals rely on the alluvial aquifer of the Rio Puerco to quench their thirst.

 

According to mining industry sources, the Holbrook Basin is located in an area with excellent infrastructure and is known to contain a 600 square mile potash bed in its Permian Supai Formation (Arizona Geological Survey Open File Report 08-07). The potash bed was drilled and delineated in the 1960s and 1970s by Duvall Corporation and Arkla Exploration. Due to low potash prices in the 1970's the Holbrook Basin potash bed saw no development since its discovery.

 

A recent AZJournal article quotes the Arizona Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (AZOGCC) as saying, "There are now 38 core holes permitted in the Holbrook Basin. While Passport Potash holds the permits to 19 of those holes, HNZ Potash, also known as HNZ Holding, LLC, a joint venture of Hunt Oil and NZ Legacy Resources, holds the other 19 permits. Efforts to contact the company have gone without response, but according to its now defunct website, HNZ Potash is the largest private owner of the Holbrook Basin deposit with a reported land position of 74,000 acres." The former HNZ website was so secretive that it required the visitor to defeat a log-in request before accessing their Home Page. Drilling applications filed with the state indicate that HNZ now controls the old Arkla Exploration properties, first explored over fifty years ago.

 

In March 2011, Ringbolt Ventures entered into agreement with Passport Potash, Inc. for the exploration and development of Ringbolt Holbrook Basin potash property. Ringbolt Ventures (and now Passport Potash) has been granted fifteen State mineral exploration permits in the Holbrook Basin. On their website, they say, "If compared to the Saskatchewan, Canada mines that operate at far greater depths, the relatively shallow depths of these occurrences should lend its self towards a much larger recovery of the potash ore”. At the time of this writing, Passport was continuing negotiations with the Karlsson Group Inc. on the terms of a Definitive Cooperative Agreement (the "DCA") in which Passport and Karlsson outline plans to jointly develop their potash resources. By combining holdings, Passport and Karlsson control over 120 sections of state and private lands which total nearly 80,000 acres.

 

Under the terms of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute Settlement Act of 1996, the Hopi Tribe purchased up to 500,000 acres of former Arizona state lands, mostly within the Holbrook Basin. Recently, Ringbolt/Passport/Karlsson sought and obtained agreement from the Hopi new lands trust to conduct mining operations on some or all of their Holbrook Basin properties. Through that agreement, Passport Potash will have access to some or all Hopi water rights in the Holbrook Basin.

 

On the Passport Potash website, they once displayed an image of conventional (shaft mining) and a diagram of in-situ recovery (solution) mining. There they say, “Potash deposits in the Holbrook Basin are considered shallow by industry standards, with deposits ranging at depths of between 800 and 1300 ft., which is a major advantage for Passport.” Nowhere on the website do they indicate a preference for one mining technique over the other.

 

To what extent Passport Potash will pump ground water from the aquifer adjacent the Little Colorado River remains to be seen. In discussing their recent exploratory drilling program, Passport said, “This hole represents the first exploration for potash within the boundaries of the Twin Buttes Ranch (on their Holbrook Basin property) in more than forty-five years. Potash was intercepted in this hole and has been confirmed by both visual inspection and by downhole geophysical logging”.

Further, they said, “Upon completion of drilling and logging, the hole has been converted into a producing water well. Water is present in the well and will be used in the ongoing drill program at a considerable cost saving to the company. The company has also set up a field office at the well site and this area will now serve as a base of operations from this point forward.” Although water wells are necessary to explore the location and extent of potash reserves, the public is left to believe that Passport Potash might use conventional shaft mining for their Holbrook Basin project. Was their “producing well” intended only for exploration, or did it foreshadow full-scale hydraulic injection mining throughout the basin? If not, why does the current Arizona Geological Survey map show forty-five wells permitted in the Holbrook Basin by the state since 2009?

 

With her Pulitzer Prize-worthy reporting, Linda Kor was first to break the story that Passport Potash plans an in-situ recovery (ISR) mine on their Holbrook Holdings. In a March 18, 2011 AZJournal article, Kor interviewed Passport Potash mine engineer Allen Wells. Wells was quick to point out that while other types of mining use cyanide or acids to flush out minerals, in mining potash, the only solution that will be used is salt and water. When asked where the water would come from for the project, Wells referred to the aquifer that runs beneath the earth’s surface. “With the current drilling that we’re doing the aquifer is pumping 200 gallons per minute. We would be pumping 2,000 gallons per minute to provide the solution for the mine,” he stated.

 

Prior to the granting of a full mining permit, the public has a right to know, once and for all, if Passport Potash plans to operate a conventional mine or a solution mine in the Holbrook Basin. If Passport Potash plans a conventional mine, then I say, “Bravo”. A conventional mine at Twin Buttes Ranch should not place significant additional burden on the water table of an already overstressed regional aquifer. Their stated intention to pump up to 2,000 gallons of water per minute in support of an in-situ potash mine does not bode well for the indigenous cultures of the Little Colorado River Basin. Only by retaining a steady state in the regional aquifers can the Navajo and the Hopi avoid seeing their wells go dry, thus ending over 4200 years of continuous cultivation on their sacred tribal lands.

 

Author's Note: Comment by Carla Padilla on July 30, 2016 12:25 PM.
My great grandfather was Juan Padilla. He was the first to settle by the confluence of the Lift Colorado River & the Rio Puerco. My father told me he had Spanish land grants & he settled this area because there was plenty of water and the grass was as tall as his chest. It is so very sad to see that this precious commodity has now been contaminated by human negligence.

  

Read Chapter One – The Little Colorado River Basin

Read Chapter Three - Holbrook Basin Water Crisis

Read Chapter Four - Colorado River Watershed At Risk

 

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By James McGillis at 03:48 PM | Environment | Comments (1) | Link