Ute Indians near a proposed waste disposal site say they were "tricked" into signing a resolution asking for a mediator in the dispute over what to do with radioactive tailings from an old uranium mill in Monticello.
The Utes from the White Mesa reservation in San Juan County believe they were misled at an Oct. 13 tribal council board meeting when representatives from Energy Fuels Nuclear Inc. pressured the board chairwoman into signing a resolution.That resolution was then apparently used by Energy Fuels to persuade U.S. Department of Energy officials to appoint a mediator in the dispute over whether to bury the radioactive tailings on-site in Monticello or truck them to the Energy Fuels facility south of Blanding.
Such a mediator could lead to the reversal of a DOE decision in early October that would have kept the tailings at the Monticello site, which is on the federal Superfund list of environmental cleanup priorities.
The 300 Utes who live on the White Mesa reservation, located about five miles south of the Energy Fuels site, oppose the trucking proposal and believe their rights have been trampled on long enough.
"We're still being taken advantage of, just like in the (Indian) treaty negotiations over 100 years ago," said Norman Begay, a White Mesa councilman.
Phone calls to Energy Fuels and DOE officials in Denver were not returned.
Begay and his tribe have been opposing Energy Fuels property as a disposal site since they learned about the proposal earlier this year. Begay had successfully persuaded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses Energy Fuels, to hold a hearing on the tribe's protests. That hearing has not yet been scheduled.
But on Oct. 12, the DOE's regional office, which oversees the cleanup of the Monticello site, notified the tribe that the tailings would not be brought to Energy Fuels but would be disposed of on-site.
So on Oct. 13, when Energy Fuels approached tribal board chairwoman Elaine Cantsee, she signed Energy Fuels' resolution, thinking it applied only to future proposals, not to the Monticello tailings question, Begay said.
In short, Energy Fuels pulled a lingual sleight-of-hand, Begay said.
"You need to remember that English is a second language to most of the (White Mesa) board's members. Let's see how Energy Fuels would like to sign an agreement we made up in Ute."
With the resolution signed by Cantsee, along with similar resolutions signed by the city councils of Monticello and Blanding, Energy Fuels representatives appealed to high-level DOE officials in Washington, D.C., who decided to revisit the question of on-site vs. off-site disposal.
The DOE chose Douglas Sarno, of Phoenix Environmental Corp., based in Alexandria, Va., as mediator. He and the DOE's "site-specific advisory board," which is comprised of 16 citizens from Monticello and Blanding, will gauge public opinion in San Juan County and report to the DOE by Dec. 20.
White Mesa Utes, along with the Navajo Indians of San Juan County, oppose the Energy Fuels site because of safety problems associated with increased truck traffic on narrow U.S. Highway 191. They also fear contamination of groundwater under the site, which is upgrade from White Mesa, and they believe the importation of radioactive waste will desecrate the sacred Indian land that surrounds the Energy Fuels property.
Bill Sinclair, director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control, said the DOE appears to be on the Indians' side - but for a different reason.
"It all boils down to money. As they looked at the cost, they found it probably would be more expensive to take it to (Energy Fuels)," Sinclair said.