Company seeks looser cleanup standards at uranium-processing site near Spokane reservation

Dawn Mining Co. is asking the state of Washington to relax substantially the cleanup standards for groundwater at its long-shuttered uranium-processing mill in Ford, which processed about 58 million cubic feet of ore and produced 13 million pounds of “yellowcake” – a concentrated form of uranium that can be enriched and used in nuclear reactors and weapons.

In a lengthy application, the company makes the case for raising the standards for seven contaminants – or constituents of concern, as they are officially known – at on-site compliance wells located at the downgradient edge of waste contained at the site’s tailings disposal area and the site’s ore stockpile area.

Under Dawn’s plan:

The allowable picocuries per liter of uranium would increase from 4 to 758 in the tailings disposal area and to 46,036 in the ore stockpile area.

The allowable milligrams per liter of arsenic would increase from 0.05 to 0.14 at the tailings disposal area and to 0.06 in the ore stockpile area.

The allowable milligrams per liter of manganese would go from 0.01 to 6.2 and 0.36 at each area.

The allowable milligrams per liter of molybdenum would increase from 0.004 to 0.06 at the tailings disposal area and remain the same at the ore stockpile area.

The allowable milligrams per liter of nickel would increase from 0.004 to 0.03 at the tailings disposal area and remain the same at the ore stockpile area.

The allowable milligrams per liter of nitrate+nitrite-nitrogen would go from 1.2 to 56 and 5 at each area.

The allowable milligrams per liter of sulfate would increase from 14 to 3,300 and 422 at each area.

The company, a subsidiary of the multinational mining company Newmont Goldcorp Corp., also proposes replacing the existing ground- and surface-water monitoring program at the site with a semiannual sampling. Currently, the frequency of sampling “varies from quarterly to annually, depending on the well location and purpose,” according to Kristen Schwab, supervisor of the Office of Radiation Protection’s Waste Management Section, which oversees the site’s cleanup.

Dawn first submitted an initial application for alternate concentration limits in December 2018, but it did not meet state standards, so the company replaced that application with a new one filed in September.

Schwab said the Health Department has begun a “detailed review” of the company’s request. That review involves “subject matter experts (who) will review the technical components of the ACL (alternate concentration limits) application to ensure that it is technically correct and complies with our regulations.”

In order for the state to approve Dawn’s request, Schwab said the “company must demonstrate that there will be no substantial or potential hazard at points of exposure, where people and the environment could be exposed to the contaminants.”

To determine whether the changes proposed would be protective of human health and the environment, Schwab said licensees like Dawn “must provide the basis for any proposed limits including consideration of practicable corrective actions” and “that limits are as low as reasonably achievable.”

Dawn has concluded that compliance with the existing groundwater protection standards is not practically achievable using available technologies, according to its application.

The application also states that the proposed changes in the cleanup standards are “protective of human health and the environment and are as low as reasonably achievable.” The application says the company performed “many technical investigations” at the mill site to demonstrate the proposed changes will not pose a “substantial present or potential hazard at points of exposure where people and the environment could be exposed to the contaminants,” as state regulations require.

A key point of potential contamination exposure to both the environment and people is Chamokane Creek, which forms the boundary between the mill site and the Spokane Indian Reservation and which flows into the Spokane River.

As Dawn’s application states, “Chamokane Creek is a groundwater discharge area where groundwater ‘feeds’ the stream … . ”

The application also includes a lengthy human health risk assessment and identifies three “categories of human receptors” that were evaluated: local nontribal residents who use Chamokane Creek for recreational purposes, Spokane tribal residents “with modern subsistence habits” who have “a life-way that is a mixture of traditional Native American and modern,” and tribal residents with “traditional subsistence habits who live off the land.”

The application finds that even tribal residents “conducting traditional activities such as sweat lodge use, basket weaving, preparation/preservation of animals and plants, ceremonial activities and other activities which involve drinking water and eating fish from the 3-mile stretch of Chamokane Creek adjacent to the mill site as well as eating livestock and crops watered and irrigated with water from this 3-mile stretch of Chamokane Creek will not experience negative health effects from exposure to uranium.”

It also finds that “there are no significant cumulative effects in the environment.”

After the Health Department reviews Dawn’s application and makes a recommendation about whether to adjust the cleanup standards, it plans to present information to the public and seek input in accordance with the State Environmental Policy Act or SEPA. That input may alter the Health Department’s decision.

Carol Evans, chairwoman of the Spokane Tribal Business Council, the tribe’s main governmental body, said she thinks that step will be vital, “so we make sure the remedy or any type of remediation down there is done with a public process.”

Jerry White Jr., executive director of the nonprofit Spokane Riverkeeper, said his group is studying the proposed changes while it too waits for the “public process to open up.”

White also said Spokane Riverkeeper has lined up someone who is an expert in the field to go through the application.

“We will be putting some resources into understanding what this proposal means for the community and the environment,” White said, adding that it’s “safe to say that our office is always concerned when there’s pollution that’s moving from groundwater into surface water and putting ecosystems and people at risk.”

Deb Abrahamson, a longtime Spokane tribal activist and founder of the SHAWL Society, and Twa-le Swan, Abrahamson’s daughter and a community organizer for SHAWL, both said they were “shocked” to learn about Dawn’s request for looser cleanup standards and are deeply concerned about what it would mean if they are approved.

SHAWL – Sovereignty, Health, Air, Water, Land – is working to raise funds to hire its own experts to evaluate Dawn’s application.

In explaining their concerns, Abrahamson and Swan point to Dawn’s and Newmont’s long history of mining and processing uranium on and adjacent to the Spokane Indian reservation at the Midnite Mine, the Sherwood Mine and the mill site in Ford.

That history stretches back to the mid-1950s, when Dawn began mining uranium ore on the reservation and opened its processing facility in Ford. Those facilities stop operating in the early 1980s, but cleanup of the mill site didn’t begin until 1995 and cleanup of the Midnite site didn’t start until 2017.

Last year, Newmont asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to loosen cleanup standards at the mine site, which EPA oversees. EPA has declined that request and has no plans to relax radiation standards at Midnite, according to Mark A. MacIntyre, senior public information officer for U.S. EPA Region 10.

Referring to that earlier request for less stringent standards at Midnite, Abrahamson said Dawn’s application for looser standards at the mill site “is yet another request to deregulate and save themselves costs. But our community’s waterways, lands, wildlife all suffer as a result of all of the past ‘cost effective measures’ the mining company has gotten away with.”

Abrahamson also expressed dissatisfaction with the way the Department of Health has involved the public in the cleanup of the mill site.

“Bottom line, the most impacted are deliberately left out of the information loop, the decision making loops – yet we continue to live in these toxins and die due to those decisions which banned our voices,” said Abrahamson, who has long argued that uranium mining and processing on and around the Spokane reservation has led to high rates of deadly and disabling illnesses.

Asked about the Health Department’s plans to reach out to tribal members, Schwab said, “We meet with Spokane tribal members about twice a year to discuss closure activities at the mill site. If the tribe asks for more information or has concerns about the ACL application or process, we will meet with the tribe and listen to their concerns and explain our regulatory process.”

Swan echoed Abrahamson’s concerns and said she believes Dawn’s application to relax the groundwater cleanup standards at the mill site suggest a desire to finish the remediation work before it’s complete.

“It really feels like they’re just trying to walk away and say, ‘We’ve done it to the best of our abilities. And cost-wise, it doesn’t make sense to spend so much money for a very few of you,’ ” Swan said.

Omar Jabara, spokesman for Newmont, said, “The reason that we’re applying for this change is to comply with state regulations.” Doing so, he noted, “is required so the site can be closed and then transferred to the U.S. Department of Energy for care and maintenance.”