At the Thursday night Aug. 13 public comment meeting at Nucla High School the Montrose County Commissioners listened patiently to the crowd against placing a uranium mill in Paradox Valley.
I was astounded by the number of people from the Bedrock/Paradox area of our county who stood up and made fools of themselves by not knowing the history of their own area.
Didn’t the real estate agent tell you that you bought property in a mining district? Didn’t they realize that on all four sides of your little area is one of the largest mining districts in the state of Colorado? And it’s not a former mining district, it’s an existing mining district.
One poor woman, apparently knowing nothing about the valley, mentioned the pending cellular mutation of the Redd cattle and the destruction of the Swain Ranch as instances of what was to come if the mill was allowed to get any dust in the air.
Uh, excuse me, but your living in a mining district. There is radioactive dust in the air currently and has been since you set foot in the valley. I recently read a great book about Charlie Redd who, without investing in the boom, profited from the era and even rented his LaSal home to the manager of Homestake Mining Company.
He shared the BLM property with the miners and grazed his cows right beside their mine dumps along LaSal creek and fed them hay from Paradox. The low grade waste dumps are all around you.
And also there is the age old story repeated often in our local paper about Thomas Swain who, in 1895, sent specimens of yellow carnotite to the British Museum. In 1906 Madam Curie sent a buyer to Paradox from France. The realtor didn’t tell you that? It’s one of our best stories.
To the southwest of your area is the Big Indian mining district where Charlie Steen hit his mother lode. Do you think he and all the 500 mines in your immediate area picked up every granule of ore. Of course not and still today the wind hurls it right down into your front yard.
To the northwest of Paradox Polar Mesa in the Uravan mining belt where hundreds of low grade mine dumps dot the surface. It’s our history. When the price is down our people practically starve. When the price is up, we get busy and mine it.
As you drive the valley from Naturita, look to your left to see the road to the Nil Mine at the base of on Monogram Mesa. It’s one of several hundred. It is no longer in operation, but it could be, if the water was pumped out.
Not too many years ago, the waste water from the mines in that area, were pumped into ponds for cattle to drink. No one told you that? Water is constantly moving through that strata and has been for 20 million years. You should ask Energy Fuels if they could use that water in their mill. It would aleviate them drilling wells.
Another lady at Thursday’s meeting was sure earthquakes were going to erupt under the mill. Does she and her rude clapping followers not understand that 600 earthquakes were noted in the valley last year?
The shaking of the earth certainly opens up tiny cracks in all the formations for surface water to penetrate the ground after it leaches through the 1,500 low grade waste piles from former mines that surround Paradox Valley.
Energy Fuels reports the new mill will require 500 tons of ore per day. That’s peanuts! The mill at Uravan operated at 200 tons per hour, twenty four hours per day. Understand also that only a small part of the yellow cake produced is radioactive. It has to be refined before it is dangerous. That is why it will be transported to Illinois.
All you fools holding your breath when you drive through the former Uravan, should think about the natural dust blowing off the former and existing mines in the surrounding mining districts. Mining uranium and vanadium is what we do here in Montrose County.
Building a vanadium / uranium processing mill in Uravan was not a good idea, but it was the only existing site where the U.S. Government could quickly get their hands on processed yellow cake during World War II. It is the primary reason the folks in Paradox Valley are not speaking Japanese today.
The tax money from uranium mining paid for building the schools in Nucla, Naturita and Paradox and it contributed to the Montrose high school. It was Western Colorado mining resources that built St. Mary’s hospital. Not farming and tourism. Grand Jucntion is a energy hub with rich history and great future potential.
Another fool at Thursday’s meeting stood up representing the Gateway Resort who is against the mill. That facility is smack dab in the middle of a uranium mining district. And he should advise visitors that their facility was constructed in the Uravan Mining Belt and the dust on the back roads, where they escort tourists is in a uranium mining district and where many hundreds of mines once existed and are in operation currently.
Didn’t anyone tell them there was radioactive mine dumps in the area before the developed the resort? I’m sure they knew some of the history. Their tourist attraction and museum has increased Gateway traffic in the narrow canyon as much as eight times. It alone has contributed to more deaths than any mining currently operating. They should put up a sign notifying everyone the surroundings are radioactive.
Lake Powell in southern Utah was constructed in a mining district and when it filled, the water covered up hundreds of high grade uranium mines, but people still love to go there and the fish are doing well. The people downstream are born have five fingers per hand.
I agree that mistakes have been made back when the U.S. government was the only authorized purchaser of yellow cake. But technology has drastically improved and we are now back under the free enterprise system and controls are in place.
The president of company submitting the applicant is George Glasier, and like Howard Hughes, he has been in the industry his entire career and has his whole life and reputation wrapped up in this project. The last recent catastrophic meltdown I can remember was on Wall Street and even though I don’t know George personally, I trust him more than the president of my own bank, who has virtually nothing to lose.
If the fanatic folks in Paradox Valley are really interested in clean air, they should concentrate their efforts to research large power plants back east that spew millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year along with thousands of tons of radioactive particles. You just can’t see them. And there is no clean coal technology other than pumping CO2 into the ground.
I don’t own mining stocks, I don’t own mining claims and I don’t need a job. I simply have studied good science and know the history of western Montrose County. I want to tell Paradox Valley residents not to be sorry you moved here. They can be part of the global solution.
Tom Kyle lives in Norwood. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
