I'm not the only one worked up at the prospect of a Canadian company slurping up all of our water to squirt uranium out of the Black Hills. The Fall River County Commission voted unanimously November 15 to file as an intervenor in Powertech's December 5 water permit hearing before the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources. It's not certain whether they'll file as pro or con intervenors, but if they don't speak up against Powertech's plan, the 15+ county residents who packed the last commission meeting will be torqued.
Hot Springs residents also raised a watery ruckus at the Hot Springs City Council meeting last night. I hear from a Facebook correspondent that the Council voted 5–2 to intervene and object to Powertech's water permit application.
The Clean Water Alliance has all sorts of information as to why letting Powertech consume all that water for uranium mining is a bad idea. The simplest is that Powertech could render billions of gallons of water a year unusable in a rather arid region.
Over on the east side of the state, Rep. Stace Nelson (R-19/Fulton) rallied his neighbors and helped block a mega-dairy in Hanson County. Rep. Nelson and his neighbors were motivated in part by their concern that the dairy would have sucked... and sucked 720,000 gallons of water a day from the local aquifer.
Powertech might use 8 to 16 times that amount of water. So we should expect Rep. Stace Nelson's good friend and fellow GOP caucus apostate Rep. Lance Russell (R-30/Hot Springs) to put his environmental law degree to use and help his Fall River County neighbors fight this threat to their water supply, right? If county and city officials can see the problem with sacrificing that much water to a potential source of radioactive pollution, maybe Rep. Russell can overlook his mom's mineral rights and stand with his neighbors and constituents to fight Powertech's water grab.
Related: Valentine Mining wants to punch more holes in the Northern Hills to look for gold. They've applied to the DENR to explore for more gold just over the rim of Spearfish Canyon. Good grief: haven't we dug ourselves enough holes out here?
Although I probably disagree with you on gold mining, thinking that if the state is smart it can be done to a standard that satisfies me. (not saying the state will do their part though) I agree with you 100% though on this Uranium mine proposal though. It uses too much water, that is problem number uno. But I have problems with water contamination as well, not a ton of water west river. If you screw up and contaminate most of it you could have affects that are quite problematic.
The two permits mentioned here are different. This application from the Deadwood Standard Project/Valentine seeks to do traditional digging. If I understand it correctly, it's just preliminary exploration to the big leech mining operation they want to do but which the county put on hold in August. This exploration thus does not pose the same magnitude of danger of contaminating the water in Spearfish Canyon as does the main project. But it's a step toward that danger, and opponents of the main project will be on alert.
Powertech's proposal throws a double whammy at our tight water supply, consuming lots of water and posing contamination risk. If I had to choose, I'd stop Powertech before I'd stop DSP. But both projects are examples of the need for serious weighing of economic benefits versus environmental and economic risks. In both cases, opposition comes not just from treehuggers, but from folks who see the potential of damage to the local economy. Both projects could harm the Black Hills tourist economy. Both projects could crimp the water supply (Powertech notably more so than DSP), raising costs for homeowners, farmers, and ranchers.
Alpena carnivore to pump even more water from critical aquifer:
http://www.prairiebizmag.com/event/article/id/13120/
Stace Nelson is retweeting Ellis' sovereign citizen hatespeak. Be very afraid.
http://www.americanclarion.com/14815/2012/11/26/thank-god-for-the-first-amendment/