Planning commission set to act on uranium mill

MONTROSE —  Further public comment could be allowed after all, as long as it is confined to new issues raised by Energy Fuels' uranium milling permit request.

The Montrose County Planning Commission will hear again from Energy Fuels at 6 p.m. Wednesday, at Friendship Hall. The commission could decide whether to forward the company's request for a special-use permit for the proposed Piñon Ridge Mill to the Montrose County Commissioners.

It could also decline the request, or table it for further consideration. The planning commission first opened the application hearing in Nucla, then continued it in Montrose, after which the public comment portion of the hearing was closed.

Wednesday's hearing is another continuance. Planning commission chair David Laursen said the parties will be going over the wording on four particular conditions: when Energy Fuels must have its facility completed; how the county might be able to close the mill if it is not in compliance, water monitoring and — the big one, Laursen said — what materials EF will be bringing in for processing.

Energy Fuels is seeking a change in wording of conditions that currently require the company to have built its facility within five years of receiving county commissioners' approval (if given). County staff also needs to discuss a new condition, which requires monitoring aquifer water to protect well users in the area. If the water quality or quantity decreases, EF is to stop using the aquifer water, and go to other water sources it has lined up through the town of Naturita and Reams Construction.

EF was originally going to mill uranium and vanadium from ore.

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The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said Monday that Energy Fuels will not seek to process municipal water filters for uranium at its proposed Pinon Ridge mill, which may remove one confusing issue from the Montrose County Planning Commission hearing Wednesday.

The filters had been a point of discussion between CDPHE and Energy Fuels as a potential feedstock that for the mill to convert to yellowcake uranium that could also reduce costs for municipalities with high levels of uranium in their water. 

The issue was raised at the end of the June 10 Montrose County Planning Commission hearing for a special use permit for the mill by EF CEO George Glasier who had previously requested only a permit to process ore. He also asked, that night, to process water treatment filters from EF mines.  The discussion resulted in some confusion and controversy.

 “The latest information we have is that Energy Fuels will not seek a license condition to process municipal drinking water treatment residues," CDPHE spokesman Warren Smith said in an e-mail.

"Energy Fuels has said they would likely need to treat water from their own mining operations, which may generate filters or resins containing uranium that could be recovered at the mill. Before they could do so, the state would require a separate license condition. Only resins or filters containing uranium would be considered to be processed at a uranium mill.  For example, radium- or thorium-bearing resin filters would not be candidates for processing or disposal at a uranium mill.”

 It would therefore appear that a county condition allowing filters from mines such as the Whirlwind mine may not have a great deal of meaning until the state can analyze the filters in preparation for a license condition of its own.

The state has not yet received a license application from Energy EF.

If a different request is submitted at the Wednesday hearing,  the Planning Commission may need more complex legal advice. The county has already been accused by the Energy and Mineral Law Center in Durango of “arbitrary and capricious behavior” if it provides a special use permit for the mill in an agricultural zone instead of commencing a rezoning process for the land in question on the grounds that the process and the waste left behind make it an industrial facility.

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