Relaxed Groundwater Restoration Standards at In-Situ Uranium Leach Mines in South Texas

The above is a diagram of an in-situ uranium leach mine.

Before you read any further, I recommend that you download THIS report.

In 2008, I was retained by the law firm of Blackburn & Carter to conduct an evaluation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's record of granting relaxed standards for the restoration of groundwater at in-situ uranium mines in South Texas. Many people are not aware that Texas is a major producer of uranium. The uranium ore is not characteristically considered "high grade," but in-situ mining technology (which owes much of its development to work in Texas) has proved to be efficient enough to make medium-to-low-grade deposits profitable to exploit.

Texas' prominence as a producer of uranium is traceable to the widespread prevalence of uranium roll-front deposits in the formations of the Gulf Coastal Plain. All are exploited by in-situ mining technology. For an explanation of in-situ leach mining, read Chapter 2 of THIS report by Gavin Mudd. For a somewhat more positive description, read THIS web page by the World Nuclear Association.

Rather than describe the geology and geochemistry of roll-front deposits and the methods of in-situ leach mining, I will assume that the reader is sufficiently interested in the matter to peruse the above references carefully before proceeding with this blog post.

What did my client want to know?

My client commissioned the report to find out whether one of the principal environmental regulatory agencies of Texas was fair-minded in its consideration of requests by uranium mining companies with respect to petitions for relaxed (that is, less stringent) restoration standards of groundwater at in-situ mined sites in the uranium ore trend of South Texas.

The basis for the requested study was the client's concern that the Office of Underground Injection Control of TCEQ might be overly generous in its granting of requests for lower restoration standards.

What did I find? Try THIS web page for a reasonable summary of my report. I will let the reader make up his/her own mind, based on the report.

Allow me to point out here that I am not opposed to mining or to nuclear energy. Look around and then ask yourselves how much of what you see cannot be traced to mining? Not much, I assure you. That, however, does not give mining companies Carte Blanche to pollute groundwater, surface water, soil, air. And in this so-called " anthropogenic greenhouse world" (I have my doubts), nuclear energy can play a major role in reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

I know the geochemistry of uranium very well, thank you; and I am convinced that we can extract uranium from roll-front and other sandstone-hosted deposits without leaving a mess for others to clean up ... but you can't do it "on the cheap."


Best Regards,


aquadoc
Southwest Groundwater Consulting, LLC