Steve Cone: US 'lapdogs' for corporate uranium

"We are sick and tired of government agencies such as the NRC acting as lapdogs for corporate interests to sanction and accelerate a culture of environmental degradation which threatens to transform the Southwestern United States into a National Energy Sacrifice Area." Steve Cone

Comment to: Chief, Rules Review and Directives Branch
Mail Stop T-6D59
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, D.C. 20555-0001
FROM: Steve Cone
"electors Concerned about Animas Water" -- CAW
1217 Chaco Avenue
Farmington, NM 87401

By Steve Cone

The "numerous license applications for in-situ leach uranium milling facilities" anticipated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ["NRC"] must be reviewed and assessed individually and separately by the NRC -- not severally, and superficially as outlined in your offensive Generic Environmental Impact Statement ["GEIS"] proposal.
We are sick and tired of government agencies such as the NRC acting as lapdogs for corporate interests to sanction and accelerate a culture of environmental degradation which threatens to transform the Southwestern United States into a National Energy Sacrifice Area. Streamlining and fast-tracking this GEIS process --specifically designed to poison our air, land, and water resources-- involves the NRC's out-and-out collusion with the uranium mining industry, portending an horrific assault on endangered species and a gross miscarriage of environmental justice for indigenous populations and their neighbors, who refuse to see their homes and health sacrificed to increase the profits of a government-favored special interest group.
NRC are considering blanket permitting of what -- a million square miles of proposed project area in this GEIS? You intend to discount the diversity of habitats by treating unique systems and communities generically, as opposed to individually, all in the name of bureaucratic "efficiency". If prepared as proposed, the NRC's GEIS would totally subvert safeguards in the Environmental Protection Act and systematically gut protections inherent in the National Environmental Policy Act.
NRC's track record for enforcing "required" restoration and/or "mitigation" of environmental damage associated with both in-situ and conventional uranium milling operations, is best characterized as dismal. How could you ever be so deluded as to think that the public would grant you additional discretion to wreak even greater havoc?
How dare the NRC presume to squelch public comment and suppress citizen participation in the NEPA process!
Reverse course now, adopt the no-action alternative, and get the hell out of dodge, or prepare to be tarred and feathered by those you seek to marginalize -- described on your website as the "lower population density" in "the western states".
[Federal Register: July 24, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 141)]
[Notices]
[Page 40344-40346]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr24jy07-139]

Photo: Top: Navajo uranium miners Second photo: BURNED BY THE ORE: Gilbert Badoni, Navajo, holds a poster showing his family, all cancer victims of uranium mining, after his father worked as a uranium miner. Badoni, shown in lower left of poster, lives in Cudei near Shiprock, NM on the Navajo Nation, where radioactive rocks remained in his backyard/Photo Brenda Norrell

New Mexico dignitaries to visit Dooda Desert Rock on Tuesday

New Mexico dignitaries who have spoken out against the proposed Desert Rock power plant will meet with Navajo resisters at the site near Shiprock, N.M., on Tuesday. Desert Rock power plant would be the third power plant on the Navajo Nation. Nearly all of the power goes to non-Indians in the Southwest, while many Navajos continue to haul water and live without electricity. Navajos live with the environmental degradation and disease from the pollution.

By Elouise Brown
Dooda Desert Rock
http://www.desert-rock-blog.com/


Dooda (NO) Desert Rock to Host New Mexico Dignitaries

Ram Springs, N.M. near Burnham, N.M.— Dooda (NO) Desert Rock (DDR) will host political dignitaries from New Mexico at 9:00 AM on Tuesday, September 4th, at the DDR resistance campsite in the area targeted for construction of the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project. Staff of Presidential candidate New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Secretary of the Environment Ron Curry will be attending to meet with local Navajo elders to discuss their concerns about violations of environmental justice orders and potential adverse health impacts of Desert Rock. Senator Pete Domenici and New Mexico Attorney General Gary King have been invited.
The meeting will include a tour of the Sithe Global, LLC drill site as well as the adjacent BHP Navajo Mine. During the meeting, the elders plan to request that the Governor write a letter to Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley proposing an alternative to construction of the Desert Rock plant.
"Now is the time to impress upon our elected leaders the severity of the threat we face," said
Pauline Gilmore, a Navajo elder with DDR. "Our health and homeland are at risk from a third massive coal-fired power plant in the Four Corners area."
Governor Richardson has expressed "grave concern" about the potential adverse environmental impacts of Desert Rock, and DDR members have voiced alarm that tons of airborne toxins will seriously jeopardize the health and futures of their families.
“Like old fashioned snake oil peddlers, promoters of Desert Rock claim these poisons will actually improve our air quality," said Elouise Brown, DDR President. "But, we know better, and we would rather be poor and healthy than financially well-off and sick in bed. Our health is far more valuable to us than any tainted profit or misbegotten financial gain."
Both Senator Domenici and Attorney General King have expressed an interest in objections to the Project and will learn more about the disproportionate adverse impacts befalling Navajo families in the area.
“Hearing about the severe threats we face is one thing," said Ken Quinn, "but witnessing these conditions first hand with their own two eyes will undoubtedly concentrate their attention on our worsening plight."
The Desert Rock Energy Project is a proposed 1500 megawatt power plant planned for the Navajo Nation in northwest New Mexico. Desert Rock would be the third major coal-fired facility within a 15 mile radius in the San Juan Basin. The Project would accelerate environmental degradation in the Four Corners, a National Sacrifice Area notorious for runaway energy development and lax environmental oversight.

(Photo Top) Dooda Desert Rock resistance camp/Indigenous Action (Photos 2 and 3 US EPA) The Navajo Generating Station near Page, Ariz., and the Four Corners Power Plant in the Four Corners area of Shiprock, NM, both on the Navajo Nation. Photo 4: Carlan Tapp/Navajos protest at Navajo President Joe Shirley's inauguration.

The Four Corners region is where unreclaimed uranium tailings are scattered from the Cold War uranium mining, resulting in widespread cancer and respiratory deaths for Navajos. Oil and gas wells are now widespread, creating a toxic soup for the air, water and land. The region of northwest New Mexico is also the place of Dinetah, the sacred place of origin for Navajos. --bn