Old Uranium Mine Is Leaking Open-Pit Mine Threatens Tribe, Rivers

The Midnite Mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation is an aging relic from the Cold War - and another reminder of its continuing costs.

The estimated cost of cleanup ranges from $40 million to $160 million, and could go far higher. Restoration won’t start for several years.

The defunct uranium mine is leaking, despite efforts to control and treat runoff contaminated with radiation, heavy metals and sulfuric acid.

Unusually heavy runoff this spring has sent pollutants from the mine into small streams that flow toward the Spokane River arm of Lake Roosevelt four miles away. The tribe is awaiting test results to see how far it’s spread.

Pollution from the mine poses “a major downstream threat,” said Fred Kirschner, a hydrogeologist for the tribe.

The 320-acre open-pit mine on Spokane Mountain once helped fuel the nuclear arms race.

In the 1950s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs negotiated a government license with the Dawn Mining Co. to extract the ore on the reservation.

The Spokanes “acted out of patriotism. But nobody told them what the real cost would be,” said tribal attorney Shannon Work during a visit to the mine last week. He said the tribe wants the mine cleaned up.

In 1981, the mine shut down. Government regulators terminated Dawn’s lease for failure to post bonds for cleanup and violations of its mining plan.

Now, the company’s new president says it’s time to move beyond lawsuits and bitterness over the mine.

Larry Kurlander recently told top Bureau of Land Management officials that Dawn will contribute $1 million toward an environmental impact study to determine the best way to clean up the site.

The offer is an olive branch to the Spokane Tribe, said Kurlander from his office in Denver.

“We are trying to begin to repair a relationship which over time had become strained,” he said.

“While it’s very expensive, I’d rather begin to fix the problems than continue to pay for lawyers, PR people and lobbyists.”

With the Soviet Union only a memory and the uranium market in decline, the Midnite Mine’s a defunct eyesore. Its 1,000-foot face, open to the elements, is crumbling. One of its vast open pits looks like a little Crater Lake, filling with bright blue water.

But this is no mountain-pure pool. It’s a toxic stew of radioactive uranium pumped from under the mine and mixed with heavy metals and iron pyrite compounds that react to form sulfuric acid.

The 500 million gallons of contaminated water in the mine pits is far too radioactive to release into the state’s waterways, Kirschner said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires treatment of water leaking from the mine.

Dawn Mining’s engineers collect the water oozing out of the mine and treat it with lime and barium chloride to remove the uranium and heavy metals. Toxic sludge from this process is trucked to Dawn’s mill site near Ford, about 10 miles away.

Treated water is sent down Blue Creek on the mine’s eastern side.

The pump-and-treat system can handle 500 gallons of water per minute. But heavy runoff overwhelmed the system this spring, allowing untreated water to escape.

Dawn notified EPA of the problems.

Scientists studying the mine are concerned about the long-term effects of the pollution.

“In the shallow aquifer, uranium concentrations are high,” said Barbara Williams, a civil engineer with the Idaho Water Resources Research Institute working under a Bureau of Indian Affairs grant.

The radioactive contamination is especially heavy in seeps on the mine’s western edge, where water oozes from under a 200-foot pile of mine waste.

Low-level radiation also emanates from the 2.5 million tons of low grade uranium ore stockpiled on the site, and from 33 million tons of waste rock, studies show.

Penetrating gamma radiation from the uranium ore ranges from slightly above normal background levels to nearly seven times higher, according to a 1996 U.S. Bureau of Mines summary report.

Radon, a radioactive gas that can cause lung cancer with prolonged exposure, has been measured at the mine at concentrations from three to 480 times higher than worldwide background levels.

There’s never been a health study of the 2,176 members of the Spokane Tribe to determine whether the mine has damaged anyone’s health, attorney Work said.

Despite the problems, the Midnite Mine isn’t getting as much attention as its cousin, Dawn’s mill site just outside the reservation boundary near Ford.

At that site, uranium-contaminated water is trickling into Chamokane Creek, which forms the eastern boundary of the Spokane reservation.

The radiation levels are lower than at the mine, but the Spokanes have joined in a legal appeal filed by a Seattle environmental group that’s arguing the Chamokane Creek discharges also should be subject to a federal discharge permit.

Dawn officials are trying to evaporate water collecting at the mill site to halt the contamination.

In recent months, there’s been heated debate over a controversial reclamation plan for the mill, where ore from the Midnite was refined.

Spokane’s county commissioners and City Council recently approved resolutions opposing Dawn’s plans to import up to 30 million cubic feet of mildly contaminated uranium rubble from the East Coast to fill the mill pit and permanently close it.

About 51 percent of Dawn is owned by Newmont Mining Co. of Denver, the nation’s wealthiest gold company.

But Dawn says it’s broke and needs the import deal to generate about $20 million to pay for the mill cleanup. Some of the money also would go to a trust fund for the Midnite Mine cleanup.

But that’s still far less than the mine’s estimated cleanup cost.

Cleanup options include simply continuing to pump and treat the water moving through the mine, or hauling away the mountain of wastes.

The tribe will insist on a thorough cleanup, Work said.

The Spokanes don’t like the pump and treat option, which would cost about $5.4 million a year after the Dawn mill site is closed and no longer available to dump the contaminated sludge from the mine.

“This is a huge problem. If the money’s not there, we’re stuck,” Work said. , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color); Map of mining areas