Dot Suppressing Dawn Data, Lawyer Says Environmental Group Dawn Watch Threatening Legal Action

The Washington Department of Transportation is illegally withholding data used to determine what Dawn Mining Co. should pay for safety improvements on an Eastern Washington highway, a Seattle attorney has charged.

David Mann, who represents the environmental group Dawn Watch, is threatening legal action.

Under state open records laws, the Department of Transportation must immediately produce data it used to evaluate the safety of Dawn’s plan to haul uranium waste through Spokane to an old mill pit near Ford, Mann said in an Aug. 13 letter to Jerry Lenzi, DOT regional administrator in Spokane.

“It is simply incomprehensible” that DOT hasn’t responded, Mann said.

Lenzi was out of town and unavailable for comment Monday, said Mark Rohwer, DOT’s planning manager.

Dawn’s transportation plans will be discussed starting Wednesday in a series of regional meetings organized by the Washington Department of Health, the agency that gave Dawn its license to import the mildly radioactive waste.

Under Dawn’s proposal, up to 30 million cubic feet of uranium discards from the East Coast would be shipped by rail to Spokane and hauled by truck to Ford.

U.S. taxpayers would pay for the proposed $20 million long-haul deal because Dawn’s parent company, Newmont Mining Co. of Denver, says Dawn is broke and can’t pay to clean up its Cold War uranium mill on the border of the Spokane Indian Reservation. Newmont is a major gold producer.

There are also significant costs to Washington taxpayers, according to two recent DOT reports.

In a study released in May, the department analyzed safety hazards along state Highway 231 from Reardan to Ford, Dawn’s preferred route. DOT concluded Dawn shouldn’t have to pay to fix all the highway’s hazards.

“We say they are not solely responsible,” Rohwer said.

In another report last August, DOT said Dawn should pay $4.2 million to fortify pavement along the route with an asphalt-concrete overlay.

But under the state plan, taxpayers also would pay - $920,000 for maintenance and additional roadway improvements over the life of the Dawn project.

“Our chief concern is the structural integrity of the roadway to handle additional truck traffic,” Rohwer said.

That’s because the project will bring up to 38 trucks a day, each weighing 68,500 pounds with their uranium loads. The trucks will travel Highway 231 for 260 days a year for five to seven years.

That represents “an increase of 338 percent, thus significantly impacting the roadway,” DOT’s Lenzi said in a letter last August to Bob Nelson, Dawn’s vice president and general manager.

In its most recent safety analysis, DOT didn’t specify how much of an estimated $3.9 to $4.8 million in additional road upgrades Dawn should pay for.

Although the highway is traveled by school buses and has dangerous slopes and curves, “we cannot directly attribute through our modeling process” that Dawn’s project will require all of them, the DOT noted in its May report.

In a June 30 letter, Dawn Watch asked DOT for the highway safety data. Under the state’s Open Records Act, a state agency must respond within five days.

It took DOT 22 days to respond - telling Dawn Watch it couldn’t produce the information for an additional three weeks, Mann said.

That means Dawn Watch won’t have the information in time for the mid-August transportation meetings, said Owen Berio of Springdale, a Dawn Watch activist.

“We’re very frustrated,” he said.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MEETINGS Four meetings are scheduled on Dawn’s transportation plan: Wednesday from 2 to 4 p.m. at Mary Walker High School in Springdale; Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Spokane Regional Health District auditorium in Spokane; Monday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Wellpinit School District gymnasium in Wellpinit; and Monday from 7 to 9 p.m. at Reardan Community Hall in Reardan.