On The Colorado River’s Banks, A Toxic Pile Continues To Shrink
Speaker 1: 00:00 [inaudible] communities throughout the American West have spent decades cleaning up what the mining industry leaves behind in Moab, Utah. Those leftovers are uranium tailings left on the banks of arguably the region's most important water source. The Colorado river cleanup efforts there hit a new milestone recently from KZ M U in Moab. Molly Marcello has more. Speaker 2: 00:25 There's a crowd gathered at a local park nestled in a red rock Canyon or the state highway into Moab crosses. The Colorado river. Elected officials and community members are here to celebrate a recent milestone, the removal of 10 million tons of toxic uranium tailings from the banks of the Colorado river. They're mingling, enjoying refreshments and eating yellow cake. A facetious nod to the party is purpose. You've never would have thought you would have all these people congratulating themselves in the community of moving 10 million tons. Sarah Fields is executive director of the nonprofit uranium watch and they seem to be really dedicated to getting this done. Fields as group advocates for the protection of public health and the environment from the impacts of uranium mining. She and many others gathered here have a long history with this project. The Moab uranium mill tailings remedial action site, better known to locals simply as the Moab pile is a leftover from the town's cold war. Speaker 2: 01:29 Uranium days when the towns uranium boom went bust in the early 1980s a 16 million ton scar of toxic tailings was left sitting next to the river just downstream from arches national park. It makes a difference to the community whether you have very hazardous waste sitting on the flood plain of a major river makes big difference because it's not going to be there. Before cleanup efforts began. Elevated levels of uranium and ammonia were showing up in the rivers water near Moab. The contamination was alarming to officials downstream in Nevada and California and they called for the department of energy to step in. Field says getting the pile out of the flood plain became a community rallying cry as well. The DOE pretty much from the beginning realize that if they decided to leave it in place, they would be standing alone because the town, the city, most of the members of the community, the state, the EPA all said move. Speaker 2: 02:32 The pile. Workers began moving that pile 10 years ago. The tailings are carefully loaded into train cars and sent 30 miles North where they're stored away from the river in the middle of the desert. With the 10 million ton moved over, 62% of the pile is gone, which means many Moabites could see completion in their lifetimes. We have a huge flood that's not good. Mary McGann is on the grand County. It's an environmental hazard and we need to remove it from the bank to the Colorado river. Since cleanup began, the site has partially flooded a couple times with no documented contamination. Still McGann and other local elected officials have year after year lobbied the DOE to allocate more funding to the project. Unlike some cleanup sites under the office of environmental management official save, the completion of the Mohad project is within reach, perhaps just over a decade away. Thank you, Sarah. Speaker 2: 03:29 Thank you. During her remarks at the celebration, McGann described growing up in Moab in the 1950s and sixties when grand County fully embraced the uranium industry. Every summer we celebrated you, rang him. Danny began his own father, was the superintendent of the uranium mill responsible for creating the Moab pile. Began says at the time most people in Moab were largely unaware of the health and environmental hazards of the uranium industry, and it was not long before my dad passed away. He was getting word that this was not safe. McGann even recalls her dad coming home with a Geiger counter and weaving it through the rooms of their house, feeling remorse that he'd exposed the whole family. So I think he realizes that without malice, they had made a mistake. When you make a mistake, you fix it. And that's what we're doing. Although her father helped build the pile, McGann told attendees that she, along with the help of many others, will continue tearing it down. I'm Molly Marcello in Moab, Utah. Speaker 1: 04:32 This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado river produced in partnership with KCM U and K U N C and is supported by the Walton family foundation. Speaker 3: 04:46 Uh.
