Move Moab uranium tailings

Simply put, the Moab uranium tailings pile has to go. A University of Utah report says if the tailings stay put, a big flood will eventually wash them into the Colorado River. The state's recent experience with river flooding in southern Utah gives added impetus to moving the tailings to a repository far from the Colorado River.

The southern Utah floods destroyed more than two dozen homes and damaged some 30 others. Add that to an estimated $145 million in damage to roads and bridges, and water and sewer systems. On Feb. 1, President Bush declared a federal disaster for Washington and Kane counties. The Utah Legislature established a $25 million loan fund for the restoration of critical infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the flooding.

As devastating as the southern Utah floods have been, a Colorado River flood could be catastrophic. The Colorado is a much larger river, and officials say a large flood upstream of Moab would disperse uranium mill tailings along the river banks and sandbars, possibly contaminating drinking water with ammonia, uranium, radium, lead and other toxins.

Already, chemical and radioactive contamination has leached from the 11.9-million ton tailings pile, which is waste generated from uranium mill operations between 1956 and 1984. Department of Energy studies found ammonia and uranium in gravel below the Matheson Preserve, which is located across the river from the tailings pile. That means the Colorado River is not acting as a barrier to the contaminants.

More compelling is the University of Utah research that used carbon dating to determine that twice within the past 1,000 years, floods have ripped through the river valley where the tailings pile is now located. A catastrophic flood could sweep a significant amount of the tailings into the Colorado River. Obviously, capping the tailings is not a viable solution.

"Good science and good sense tell us the tailings should be moved," Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., wrote in a recent letter to the DOE's Moab Federal Project Office in Grand Junction, Colo. Huntsman advocates moving the uranium tailings to a constructed repository at Klondike Flats, which is about 18 miles northwest of Moab.

Given research that demonstrates the existing leaching of the tailings pile, the potential for a catastrophic flood and the natural changing course of the river over time, there is but one solution to this problem: the tailings must be moved. The federal government needs to proceed with this project, which is critical to the health of the Colorado River and an estimated 25 million people downstream who reply upon it as their water supply.