Tribe Protests Plan To Import More Waste Dawn Mining Accused Of ‘Environmental Racism’

Environmental racism and a taxpayer rip-off.

Those harsh words were lobbed Tuesday night at Dawn Mining Co.’s plan to import mildly radioactive waste from the East Coast to help close an old uranium mill near the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Dawn is seeking a renewal of a Washington state license that allows it to import U.S. government waste to pay for the reclamation of its uranium mill at Ford, Wash.

Dawn’s 51 percent shareholder is Newmont Inc. of Denver, the largest gold producer in North America and second largest in the world. But Dawn officials have consistently said Newmont has no obligation to help them clean up their mess at Ford.

U.S. taxpayers would bear the cost of the multimillion dollar import deal under Dawn’s plan.

But at a public hearing at the tribe’s longhouse in Wellpinit, Spokane tribal members said they’ll pay an even higher cost.

Radioactive runoff from the mill - on the boundaries of the Spokane reservation - has already leaked into Chamokane Creek, the Spokanes’ source of fish, plants and spiritual sustenance. It makes no sense to import more waste, they said.

“These waters belong to the tribe, not to the state of Washington,” tribal elder Robert Sherwood said. “When I look 50 years down the road, what will happen to our creek?” he asked.

Dozens of tribal members at the hearing seemed unconvinced by a state geohydrologist’s assurances that uranium levels in the creek are very low.

Most of the contamination that has seeped into the creek from the mill site has passed through the reservation, said Dorothy Stoffels of the Washington Department of Health.

However, ground water “seeps” that ooze into the creek southwest of the mill are still a concern; some measure more than half the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission radiation limit of 300 picoCuries per liter, Stoffels said.

The tribe has consistently fought Dawn’s plan to import more uranium-tainted rubble to the reservation’s edge, said tribal attorney Shannon Work of Coeur d’Alene.

In addition to the ground water worries, the Spokanes also will suffer from traffic disruptions along Highway 231 from Reardan to Ford, Work said.

In Dawn’s proposed plan, the Cold War-era wastes, called 11(e)2 materials, would be shipped by rail to Spokane from sites in New York and St. Louis, and then loaded onto trucks for the trip to Ford along Highway 2 and Highway 231.

That would mean up to 50,000 heavily laden trucks over five to seven years on a narrow, rural road that’s well-traveled by schoolchildren and tribal members going to Spokane, Work said. That’s approximately 38 Spokane-to-Ford roundtrip loads a day for roughly 260 days a year, state documents show.

“We think the shifting of the burden from Washington state taxpayers onto the tribe is environmental racism,” Work said.

“11(e)2 material is not needed for reclamation. It’s only needed to bail out Dawn Mining Co.,” Work said.

Dawn needs contracts with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to generate millions of dollars to pay for the old uranium mill’s closure, said David Delcour, Dawn’s executive vice president.

The company has spent $6 million on the site, has a $14.4 million reclamation bond in place and will post another $6 million transportation bond before any wastes are imported, Delcour said.

Bruce Miyahara, the former Washington Department of Health secretary who resigned in June, was strongly criticized for approving Dawn’s transportation plan on his final day in office.

“Shame on Bruce Miyahara for that,” Work said.

The tribe has made similar environmental racism charges in a new lawsuit against the state filed in August in U.S. District Court in Spokane.

Dawn was recently permitted to enter the case to defend itself against the charges.

The lawsuit could “seriously jeopardize” Dawn’s chances of getting competitive federal contracts to import waste, Delcour said.

State Sen. Bob Morton, R-Orient, protested the import plan, as he did at a similar hearing last week in Reardan.

In the last session of the Legislature, Morton introduced a bill to force Dawn to use clean, in-state dirt to fill its pit. The bill died in committee, but Morton has threatened to reintroduce it.

Morton’s action prompted Metropolitan Mortgage Co. of Spokane to offer Dawn clean dirt from the railroad berm at the company’s Summit property south of the county courthouse.

Dawn officials never talked to Metropolitan about the offer, Delcour said Tuesday night.

“We have adequate clean fill on site (at Ford). But clean fill doesn’t generate the cash to cover the costs of reclamation,” Delcour said. The company has no federal contracts so far.

The state’s deadline for Dawn to complete the work is 2019. After that, the responsibility of long-term monitoring will shift to the federal government, said Gary Robertson of Department of Health.