Andrea J. Cook reports that as the EPA reviews permit applications for the Powertech plans for in situ uranium-recovery mining in southwestern South Dakota, the agency is poised to roll out new, more stringent water-quality standards.
But Powertech indicates that the proposed new standards will not affect the Powertech Dewey-Burdock permit application to any significant extent. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy signed a draft of the proposed rules on Dec. 31, 2014. A 90-day public-comment period on the new Health and Environmental Protection Standards for Uranium and Thorium Mill Tailings opens when the final draft is published in the Federal Register.
These new standards may not apply to the current application by Powertech, said David Ganje, an environmental attorney with offices in Rapid City and Albany, N.Y. He described the new rules as clearer, crisper, harder but tolerable. But he also added the proposed new rules would not affect any future in situ mining operations.
An EPA fact sheet on the new rules says that the original standards were issued 1983 and revised in 1995. Since that time, in situ recovery, which uses water injected into the ground to recover uranium, has become a prominent method of uranium extraction in the U.S. The standards do not address the alteration of groundwater that occurs during the in situ process, according to the fact sheet. In situ recovery has a greater potential to directly impact groundwater than does the conventional open-pit process for extracting uranium from ore, according to the EPA document. The proposed standards will regulate by-product materials above and below the ground, with a primary focus on groundwater protection, restoration and stability. Opponents of in situ mining welcome the pending rules changes.
The EPA Fact Sheet and EPA Draft of Proposed Rules are available on the website.
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