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

 

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

   

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

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

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

  Watch the video "Moab Pile Nuclear Dust Devil"

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

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

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

   

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

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

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

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

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Can A New Tablet Computer Change Your Life? - 2011

 

Can A New Tablet Computer Change Your Life?

For the holiday season 2011, there were two computer tablets vying for supremacy. They were the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook. Key issues, other than cost are that neither tablet has a 3G/4G connection. That means you need a Wi-Fi connection to go online. Also, the flat screen means that women with longer fingernails may have difficulty when typing on the glass. Barnes & Noble is a book store that needed to compete with Amazon’s Kindle or go out of business. Amazon is an internet juggernaut, as Wal-Mart is to the brick & mortar sector. Either tablet device will work, but I would spend some unhurried time in a retail store demoing both devices prior to purchase.
  
Of course, there is always Apple's iPad. I am not a big fan of closed systems, and Apple is as closed as it gets. In the future, open architecture platforms (ex. Android) will have superior opportunity for innovation. There is only one Apple and everyone in Cupertino headquarters is walking the halls and thinking, “What would Steve Jobs do?” It is a natural part of the mourning process, but in a personality-driven company like Apple, forcing the issue either way limits innovation. Looking back at the history of Walt Disney Company, only when Michael Eisner stopped asking, "What would Walt do?" did the company move on to new ventures. Not that Apple wants an Eisner, but conducting a séance or a wake in order to get a few last words out of Steve Jobs is not a good bet.
 
The previous point is about the future. This is NOW and the iPad gets strong reviews from anyone open-minded enough to spend some time with it. Cost is high, for you are paying for cache’ as much as utility. Be sure to figure the cost of exclusivity into your equation. The top-of-line iPad has 3G connectivity, so if you are willing to pay Apple's price, you can use it almost anywhere. Availability of 4G is still so limited that it is a virtual unknown, except in a few select blocks around a few select clients in major cities. Has the 4G icon ever lit up on your mobile telephone? If it even exists, neither has mine. By the way, Samsung is also a strong player in the tablet computer market. Showing how strong a competitor that they are, Samsung is now Apple’s #2 target for patent litigation, second only to Google, itself.
  
As a tablet alternative, a small laptop (13-14 inch screen), or even an “obsolete” netbook will give you the keyboard, the Wi-Fi and the option for 3G/4G. If it were me, I’d be over at Fry’s looking for closeouts on Sony Vaio S Series Intel I-7 laptops. Such a notebook is more expensive than any tablet and you cannot hug it in bed, but it will outperform the tablets on text and data related activities for years to come. If you just want to watch movies in bed, get the iPad.
  
When I type, I like to hear my keys click when they hit bottom. To me a touchy screen is a smudgy screen, so I’ll take a keyboard and a mouse any day. My Android smart phone provides me plenty of touch-screen interface time. On the other hand, I did just install MS Windows speech recognition software on my laptop, so soon I will be dictating these articles. Ha!

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The Farmer and the Cowboy Should Be Friends (of the Environment) - 2011

 

The Farmer and the Cowboy Should Be Friends (of the Environment)

   

In early October 2011, I made my annual fall pilgrimage to Moab, Utah. Having lived there for three months in the fall of 2005, I knew that October weather in Moab was unpredictable. After the first cold front of the season blew in with me, I was surprised at how quickly weather in the Spanish Valley returned to its default position, which is Indian summer.

 

On October 6, 2011, it was sunny in the valley, yet storm clouds still hung on the peaks of the La Sal Range. What better day could I find to visit Ken’s Lake, out on Poverty Flat, near the head of the Spanish Valley?

 

When I arrived, I saw a few campers in the campground, yet on only one boat floating upon the lake. As I watched, I could see the oarsman rowing his pontoon-style fishing boat towards shore. Although I stood no further than thirty feet from where he made landfall, the old angler never looked up or acknowledged my presence.

 

Only when I asked him why the lake was so high this year did he speak. He gave me a few matter-of-fact sentences, telling me all that I needed to know. “It was a good snow year. There was still snow on the north-facing slopes until August. The slower snowmelt this year kept filling the lake, even as irrigation water flowed from the dam. Still, it hasn’t rained much lately and the lake is a lot lower than it was just a few weeks ago.” After I thanked him for the information, he returned to his silent mode, placed his boat on a small trailer and drove away without another word.

 

After he departed, I marveled at the differences I could see from just one year earlier, in October 2010. When I wrote an article about that visit, I called it “Ken’s Puddle”, which is what it looked like to me. At that time, I suggested that farmers and others who shared in Ken’s Lake water might want to look towards conservation of this resource, rather than exploitation. Did my words and wishes have some positive effect on water levels in the lake? On the other hand, did fewer regional dust storms this year keep more snow in the higher reaches of the La Sal Range watershed until later in the season?

 

Cynics would say that those entitled to shares of Ken’s Lake Water took every drop that they could get this year. Redemption came only when Mother Nature replenished the water faster than the outfall pipe carried it away to crops and cattle. I prefer to think that even those who are “entitled” are conserving more and using less of those sacred waters. By his demeanor, I would guess that the lone angler I saw that day was a longtime Moab rancher or farmer. By not drawing his full share of Ken’s Lake water this year; did he help Ken’s Lake to remain one of the few cold-water fisheries in Southeastern Utah?

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Future Stars of Cycling Race in the 24-Minutes of Moab - 2011

 

Future Stars of Cycling Race in the 24-Minutes of Moab

   

The 24-Hours of Moab off-road bicycle race was only four hours old, with twenty hours of racing yet to go. I was there, Behind the Rocks in Moab, Utah on October 8, 2011. With so many families in attendance this year, there was great interest in the kids’ races, better known as the “24-Minutes of Moab”. Once I had the Moab24Live.com webcam working properly, it was a pleasure to stop and watch the future stars of the cycling sport.

As I said to promoter Laird Knight after the event, “I have never seen so many kids have so much good, clean fun in the dirt.” Having kids himself, Laird paid particular attention to starting each race safely, but with some fun. Varying his starting count from race to race, Laird allowed no false starts at all. There were no reported injuries or off-course maneuvers, so his strategy must have worked.

Each race featured a “Lemans Start”, similar to the 24-HOM start, earlier that day. For the kids, there was a one-lap foot race and then a multi-lap bicycle race around the vendor tents. If you take a minute and view the video, you will see the athletes of the future racing like the wind. Performing in front of cheering fans and family, what better way is there for a kid to spend a fall afternoon in Moab?

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Final Sunset at the 24-Hours of Moab? - 2011

 

Final Sunset at the 24-Hours of Moab?  

As off-road mountain bike racing aficionados know, Laird Knight, the race director and promoter of the 24-Hours of Moab may have run his last Moab bicycle racing event. After seventeen successful years conducting the 24-HOM, Laird may be ready to absorb his 2011 losses and move on to other events. This year, team entries at the fabled race fell by almost one-third. Some blame the current economy. I believe otherwise.

In 2008, when I discovered the event, pro teams abounded at 24HOM. Talking to old-timers, I discovered that Honda Motors previewed their snazzy Element vehicle at the race in 2002. In 2008, the race was dubbed the “Suzuki 24 Hours of Moab”, in honor of their sponsorship and participation in the success of the event. In 2009, Rebecca Tomaszewski and Dax Massey teamed up to win the Mixed Duo Championship, completing seventeen laps and placing 30^th overall in the race. In 2010, Shimano, Specialized, Mavic and Baja Designs all had big booths at the venue. In 2011, Dale’s Pale Ale had their beer-bus parked in a prime location, but rumor has it that they paid no sponsorship fee for that honor.

Heading into 2011, sponsors and racers alike looked at their calendars and said, “Maybe next year… There is always a ‘next year’ at the 24-Hours of Moab”. Now, only months later, a 2012 race is unlikely. Searching my race photos from 2011, I found banners or booths sponsored by Baja Designs, Camelbak, Ellsworth, IMBA, Nutro, Serfas, Specialized and Yakima. Perhaps there were others, but suffice to say, in 2011 there was plenty of safety fencing empty of advertising logos and signs. Sponsors, both old and new can help offset costs at the event, but Laird has said that too few sponsors is not what would cause him to cancel the 2012 Moab event.

Laird recently said, "My take on the team drop is simply the shift in demographics that is taking place in the sport. Many former Moab racers are getting older, having families and not riding as much, let alone racing. The economy might be 10% or 15% but I think the demographic shift accounts for the vast majority of the no-shows."  While that may be true, the number of needed participants in the race is not all that large . An increase of 100-200 new riders in 2012 might tip the scales in favor of staging the event. If I am interested enough to attend the 24-HOM each October, how many others might be likewise interested? Whether they write about it, post a YouTube video or sponsor a race team (real or phantom), it would help. Sponsoring a youth team would create new energy now and boost future-year attendance.

On October 8-9, 2011, where were most of the stars of U.S. mountain bike racing? Finishing twenty-one grueling laps between them, Colin Osborn, John & Pete Gaston and Len Zanni of the Honey Stingers Bee Team were the only Men’s Pro Team in attendance. In 2010, there were nine Men’s Pro teams and three in the race. Honey Stinger Bee Team, Rebecca, Dax and all you other hot pros; we need you now to express your interest in racing at the 2012 24_HOM.

Below is an animated GIF image of the 2011, and what may be the final sunset at the 24-Hours of Moab. Using our back-up webcam, MoabLive.com was able to capture thirty-five images at the venue. Our old Logitech “Cue ball Cam” could not color-balance the darkness of the scoring tent and the brightness of the setting sun. As the sequence begins, it is midafternoon on Saturday, October 8, 2011. On frame 27, the disk of the sun appears in the gap between the tent roof and the bluff to the southwest. Over the following five frames, the sun, which appears dark blue, shrinks until it sets Behind the Rocks.

Also visible in the five sun-slides is a bubble of new energy light, emanating from the sun’s corona. Behind the Rocks, new energy flowed to the racers on the course, the scorekeepers, fans and the sponsors in attendance. For a moment, all who were present at the race were of one family, and bathed in new energy. Through the lens of a failing webcam, we can see that new energy showering from the sun. Although rarely documented, plasma-flow events are “real”, meaning that charged particles may strike the Earth in any given location. Present that day, but undetected in the bright light was the 2011 Draconid Meteor Outburst. Less than two hours after the race start, our unknown neighbors in the western sky were lobbing as many as 680 meteorites per hour into the Earth’s atmosphere. If I am not mistaken, stardust fell widely Behind the Rocks near Moab that day and night.

Naysayers will tell you that the 24_HOM is an unmitigated disaster, carving up and destroying a fragile desert environment. Before racing started there in the 1990s, the history of the place included the overgrazing of cattle for almost a century. In addition, four-wheel drive or social roads carved up the high plateau. By connecting several existing desert tracks, Granny Gear Productions created a racecourse that has stood the test of time. Yes, someracers ignore or misinterpret the course markers. Few racers, however, wish to exchange the singletrack for an uncertain fate in the sagebrush. Those who go off course, do so mainly at night, when fatigue or poor lighting take their toll.

Environmentalist that I am, I believe that Moab’s annual gathering of gearheads and their greater family is too precious to let fade into the western sunset. If you care about the 24-Hours of Moab in any positive way, now is the time to take action.  Rebecca & Dax, Honey Stinger Bee Team and all you other racers, your fans are waiting to hear that you will be in Moab on October 6-7, 2012. Only if you respond, will there be yet another sunset at the 24-Hours of Moab.

It is time for me to publish these thoughts and let this story go. The outcome notwithstanding, I will be there, Behind the Rocks at sundown on Saturday, October 6, 2012 beaming a live webcast of the sunset to the world. I only hope that the madcap mayhem of a 24-hour bike race will be going on all around me. Until then, I will see you at Moab24Live.com. Happy trails.

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Seventeen Years of Classic Off-Road Bike Racing - Is the 24-Hours of Moab Gone Forever? - 2011

 

Seventeen Years of Classic Off-Road Bike Racing - Is the 24-Hours of Moab Gone Forever?

     

Sweeping across the roof of my coach, the rain sounded like brushes on a snare drum. Slow to awaken, I realized that I was in Moab, Utah on Saturday, October 8, 2011. As the rain became a steady drone in my consciousness, I thought about the upcoming 24-Hours of Moab (24HOM) off-road bike race, scheduled to start at noon that day. My plan was to create a twenty-four hour internet webcam feed at the race venue, Behind the Rocks. Heavy rainfall could make that task difficult, if not impossible.

By nine that morning, after traversing several miles of Moab mud, I arrived at the race venue. Under light rain and a threatening sky, I unpacked computers, cables and cameras. Using onsite generator power and a wireless internet connection provided by race promoter Granny Gear Productions, I was soon up and running. Then, a new obstacle arose. For reasons unknown, there was no response from the MoabLive.com servers, collocated in Los Angeles, California. For the next hour, our file transfer protocol (FTP) requests went unanswered. Without cooperation from our servers, there would be no “live feed” that day by Moab Live.

By 11 AM, the rain had stopped and the Moab Live servers began accepting FTP requests. Then, every three seconds, like clockwork, our ancient Dell Windows-XP computer began firing out a new .JPG image to the world. Was anybody watching? Just before race-start at noon on Saturday, the servers again went dark. Rather than fretting about events that I could not control, I headed out to photograph the Le Mans style, running start of the 24 Hours of Moab 2011.

If you have not yet seen it, this may have been your last chance to do so, but more about that later. At noon, a blast from the race gun was so loud that it echoed off the redrocks, half a mile away. Before that echo had returned, hundreds of self-designed athletes began a two-hundred yard foot race. Their goal was to run clockwise around the most famous bush in all of off-road racing, and then back to their bikes, waiting in the racks. Like a lightning bolt of new energy, that lone juniper was point-focus for racer and spectator alike. All had come to experience the universal adrenaline-pump known to the cognoscenti as the 24-HOM.

Sixty-three year old Ray Alters of Team Curly watched as his son, Steve Alters ran in honor of his brother, taken by death in a pedestrian-car accident eighteen months ago. Father Ray would go on later to take his fallen son’s place for two laps of exciting action. With assist from a cane that supported his immobilized left leg, fifty-four year old, separately-abled Frank Garduno completed the run. Understandably, he was last to mount up and ride. Over the next twenty-four hours, Frank completed three 14.93 mile laps, averaging six hours and twenty minutes per lap. With a course elevation between 5,000 and 5,774 feet, Garduno gained 4,080 feet in elevation, all powered by hope, heart and one good leg.

At the morning prerace meeting, Race Director, Laird Knight spoke the words that no one interested in off-road bicycle racing wanted to hear. Registration numbers were down for 2011, resulting in a $50,000 shortfall at the bottom line. Without a quick addition of sponsorship revenue, this would likely be the seventeenth and final 24-Hours of Moab. At Behind the Rocks, stunned silence hung in the cold, damp air. Then, with a shift of energy that lasted for the next full day, Laird Knight encouraged everyone to go out, have fun and to ride this race as if it were his or her last one.

Outside of a few U.S. mountain biking enclaves, like Santa Cruz, California and the Front Range in Colorado, traditional U.S. media has largely ignored the sport. Skateboarding gets more live airtime. Soon, I was heartened to see British TV presenter and adventurer Ben Fogle, with his BBC Worldwide. All weekend, they taped footage for a segment of their upcoming, “A Year of Adventures” reality series. Ironically, the Moab segment will not air until after the decision to keep or cancel the 24-Hours of Moab 2012. What the mountain biking sport and the 24-Hours of Moab need is immediate sponsorship by a U.S. television network or other caring sponsor. Although the BBC focus as mainly on Fogle, their upcoming episode might go down in history as the only mass-market television presentation of this fabled event. Either way, everyone knew that this race was history – in the making.

While I ruminated on the economic pressures surrounding this classic race, the gun sounded and the race was on. Spencer Lacy, lead racer on the “Rise of the Penguins” team was first to complete the run and mount his bike. He was also first to veer off course, coming almost wiping out the BBC soundman. Maybe that mad penguin atop Spencer's helmet wanted some attention. With physical disaster averted, the Moab-style nuclear dust storm created by one thousand feet pounding the desert ebbed, flowed and then vanished. With their own Ben Fogle already on the course, the BBC team finished their scene with tight focus on photogenic Men’s Solo Rider Nick Ybarra. Famous for winning slow races, Nick exhibited perfect form as he entered the first of his nine laps around the fourteen-mile course. The smile on Nick’s face seemed to say, “Look, Mom, I’m on TV”. Nick’s mother will be proud to know that he did not say. “Look, Ma, no hands!”

In October 2012, what the world needs is a live video-feed from the 24-Hours of Moab. With our limited resources, all that Moab Live could do this year is provide a proof-of-concept, employing a live webcam at race central. From noon until one PM Saturday, I felt like a high school audio-visual monitor who could not get his 16-millimeter film projector to work. During that break, I snapped a picture of then second-place, but eventual Men's Solo winner, Andy Jacques Maynes as he entered the scoring tent. After an hour of racing, the Moab Live internet servers must have heard our plea. Around that time, our servers came back on-line and then stayed up for the remainder of the race.Our thanks go out to Mark Williams of TheHostPros.com. His all-night effort got Moab24Live.com webcam feed online again. Such are the unsung heroes and volunteers who make the 24-Hours of Moab the unique event that it is. 

 

On Sunday morning, after eighteen hours of racing, the Granny Gear wireless connection failed, leaving our webcam offline for over an hour. Checking status on my new LG Thrill smart phone from AT&T, I saw four-bars lit up on the signal indicator. Turning on its Wi-Fi hotspot function, I reconnected to the Moab Live servers. From then until the end of the race, my cobbled-together wireless connection provided an uninterrupted webcam feed at Moab24Live.com. 

After the race was over, the whole experience left me pondering the subject of macroeconomics. If I can put together a live internet broadcast for less than two hundred dollars, why cannot ESPN.com, GoDaddy.com or FoxSports.com fork over $100K for broadcast rights. That is all the money it would take to keep this original, classic race where it should be, Behind the Rocks at Moab, Utah in October 2012.

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