SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- Moab-area residents applauded the U.S. Energy Department's decision Tuesday to have rail cars -- rather than trucks -- haul away the massive Atlas tailings pile.
But the news also dashed hopes that cleaning up the tailings will be done earlier than the 2028 completion date that the Energy Department projects.
Moab Mayor Dave Sakrison said the announcement cheered the community nonetheless. Now the uranium-processing waste will begin moving as soon as next spring from the edge of the Colorado River to a new disposal site 30 miles north at Crescent Junction.
"It's about time a decision was made," he said, "and now it's time to get to work."
The tailings are left over from a Cold War-era uranium boom, when the legendary Charlie Steen built the mill to turn southeastern Utah ore into concentrated yellowcake uranium. The Energy Department took over the chore of cleaning up the tailings from the defunct Atlas Corp. seven years ago, about three years after the company declared bankruptcy.
The agency already has extracted 487,000 pounds of ammonia and 2,100 pounds of uranium from the 130-acre pile, which many people worry might be washed into the Colorado, a source of drinking water for 50 million people. The estimated cleanup cost is $723 million to $951 million.
"We believe our decision will be most protective of the community over the long term," said James Rispoli, assistant energy secretary for environmental management, in a news release.
Last year, EnergySolutions Inc. of Salt Lake City won a 10-year, $98 million contract to start moving the 16 million tons of tailings to a newly constructed landfill at Crescent Junction.
EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said Tuesday: "We're prepared and ready to move forward with it."
The Energy Department had spent months looking at the safety, timing and cost of trucking the waste from Moab to Crescent Junction on two-lane U.S. 191.
But the cost of upgrading the highway to handle the trucks was pegged at $100 million. And using trucks would have added 139 trips a day on a road heavily used by tourists visiting Moab and Arches National Park, the entrance to which is across the road from the tailings pile.
By rail, there will be one shipment a day, with 17 cars carrying 68 containers for the first three years. The number of cars would double in 2012 to 136 containers a day.
The tailings will be dried, packed into hard-topped containers and delivered to the mesa top north of Potash Road. There, they will be picked up at an old rail spur.
U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson said he has lost confidence in the Energy Department to meet the congressional mandate to move the tailings by 2019. He said he hopes a new administration in January will be more responsive.
"Everyone in Utah wants to get this done," the 2nd District Democrat said.
Moab resident and real estate broker Julianne Fitzgerald said she was pleased about the decision to use the railroad spur but also disappointed about the later completion date.
"If we're going to do it," she said, "let's get it done."
(The preceding article by Judy Fahys and Thomas Burr was published August 6, 2008, by The Salt Lake Tribune.)
