Dawn Reclamation License Granted Five-Year Renewal Ruling Allows Importation Of Radioactive Dirt To Reclaim Defunct Uranium Mill Pit

Washington state has renewed a license for Dawn Mining Co. to import tons of radioactive dirt to fill and reclaim a defunct uranium mill pit near Ford.

Dawn has had a radioactive waste import license since 1995 and the state is simply renewing it, said Mary Selecky, the Washington Department of Health’s acting secretary.

“We’re convinced that the company’s plan and our licensing conditions protect public health and safety and the environment,” Selecky said.

The import plan is bitterly opposed by the neighboring Spokane Tribe of Indians, which has filed an environmental racism lawsuit in an effort to stop it. An environmental group, Dawn Watch, is also fighting the proposal.

Dawn’s five-year license renewal allows the company to bid this month for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers disposal contracts for Manhattan Project wastes from several sites on the East Coast.

If Dawn’s proposal is accepted, the wastes could start rolling into Spokane and on to Ford later this year, Dawn Executive Vice President David Delcour said Monday.

“The corps has indicated it will award one or two contracts, each up to $300 million in value,” Delcour said.

Dawn only wants a fraction of the government’s Cold War wastes - 30 million cubic feet - to complete its reclamation work at Ford, Delcour said.

“All we want to do is close this site,” he said.

Dawn’s major competitor for the federal contracts is the EnviroCare site in Utah, which is much larger and is licensed to receive many kinds of nuclear and chemical garbage.

Dawn is limited to accepting uranium waste, mildly radioactive discards from manufacturing uranium fuel for the nation’s Cold War nuclear weapons program.

Last year, Dawn signed an agreement with US Ecology, managers of the low-level radioactive disposal site at Hanford, to handle the project.

“US Ecology will be our site operator,” Delcour said.

Meanwhile, Sens. Bob Morton, R-Orient, and Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, are trying to block the import deal in the Legislature with two bills.

The first would change state law to prohibit the company from using anything but clean, in-state dirt to fill the pit.

The other would allow Spokane County and other Eastern Washington counties through which the wastes would be trucked to collect fees to pay for damage to roads and other impacts.

With Dawn’s license renewed, those bills are now on hold, Morton said Monday. “We have asked our legal staffs to advise us on whether we can proceed,” he said.

Morton says no taxpayer dollars - state or federal - should be used to fulfill Dawn’s reclamation obligation.

Dawn opposes both bills, Delcour said. Dawn needs the federal contracts to pay for the mill reclamation and has promised to post a $6 million bond to pay for any road damage in Eastern Washington, he said.

Under Dawn’s plan, the uranium wastes would be shipped by rail to Spokane and offloaded onto trucks for the trip to Ford.

That would mean about 40 large trucks, each loaded with up to 60,000 pounds of uranium wastes, traveling 260 days a year for five years over the rural roads from Spokane to Ford via Reardan.

The renewed license limits the truck trips to times when school buses are off the roads. It also requires the truck drivers to be paid hourly rather than by the load to discourage speeding, and requires emergency crews to get additional safety training.

“If new facts come to light, we can impose additional requirements,” Selecky said.

Dawn is owned by Newmont Mining of Denver, the largest gold producer in North America. Dawn has posted a $14.4 million reclamation bond to assure the job will be completed and has spent more than $6 million on the mill site so far.

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