WASHINGTON — President Bush's new budget says he has a formal goal to remove uranium tailings near Moab that leach radioactive waste into the Colorado River, as Congress ordered last year.
But the budget sets aside no specific amounts of money to make that happen any time soon.
That displeases Moab residents and many members of Congress, such as Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, who helped push the legislation that ordered the tailings removal.
"We understand it was just an oversight by the administration, and that it was not fully aware of what we're trying to do there," said Cannon's legislative director, Chris MacKay.
So Cannon and other House members have written members of the House Appropriations Committee seeking to add $10 million into the 2002 budget to begin efforts to remove tailings, which some estimate could eventually cost $300 million.
"I think that things are on line to obtain that money," MacKay said. "There is nobody who doesn't believe that we should not take care of this problem as soon as possible."
Groundwater leaching through the tailings dumps an estimated 16,000 gallons of water contaminated with radioactive uranium tailings from the old Atlas mill into the Colorado each day. The river provides drinking water to downstream areas in Utah, Nevada and southern California.
And residents are fearful that radioactive dust might be blowing into town. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the trustee of bankrupt Atlas Corp. and the party responsible for containing the uranium waste, has informed the Nuclear Regulatory Agency that it has run out of money and is resigning from the job.
So Moab residents are pinning their hopes on Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, the only Utah delegation member on an appropriations committee to include money needed to at least finish stabilizing the tailings pile.
"His people are saying now they think they have a strategy," said Bill Hedden of the Grand Canyon Trust.
Mary Jane Collipriest, press secretary to Bennett, said her office is not concerned about Bush not putting in a specific line item for the tailings removal yet.
"Actual movement of the pile is a couple of years out. We have at least a study and a report (on removal options) that has to occur before that. It must be conducted by the National Academy of Science and approved by the Department of Energy," she said.
Collipriest said that operations money for the Energy Department's office in Grand Junction, Colo., is expected to cover the beginnings of that study. Also, she said $1.9 million this fiscal year was reprogrammed in January to help those efforts.
Collipriest added that the Energy Department, which was ordered to remove the tailings, will not gain title to the uranium pile until Oct. 30 from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a step needed before removal. "So I think it is a little premature to have expected a line item of money in the budget this year" for removal, she said.
The Utah delegation, with assists from downriver lawmakers, last year included in the annual Defense Authorization Bill provisions ordering removal of the tailings. It transfers ownership of the tailings to the Energy Department from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which had planned to keep the tailings in place but cap them with clay and dirt. The Energy Department will move them far from the river.
The deal also gave the Ute Tribe title to a Naval Oil Shale Reserve Area, on the condition it would pay a 9 percent royalty on any natural gas it develops there to pay for moving the tailings. Return of the oil shale land to the tribe was also seen as a move to help Utes with economic development.
Contributing: Donna Kemp Spangler
E-MAIL: lee@desnews.com