GUEST COMMENTARY

I live in Paradox and I do not want the proposed uranium mill to be built in the Paradox Valley, for many reasons. I was at the July 31st meeting in Paradox in which I was not allowed to speak about being opposed to the Canadian Company, Energy Fuels, building a uranium mill eleven miles from my home, in direct view and downwind. In answer to JoAnn Sharp’s letter in the August 15th Watch, I do not wish to move and I like what I moved into when I moved to the Paradox Valley 16 years ago. I just don’t want Paradox to be changed into a toxic mill town. Over 60 people in Paradox have told me they do not want the mill, but they also do not want problems with people who are for the mill so they do not speak out publicly often. Of the people who spoke for the mill at the July 31st meeting in Paradox I know of only a few that would actually want to work at the mill. Meanwhile the rest of us, including all the children, the old people, the ranchers, the farmers, etc. will have to live with any mistakes, accidents, 80 ore trucks a day, the inevitable toxic dust blowing in the wind and coming down in the rain, and eventually the cracked liners(liners always crack eventually) surrounding the mill tailings allowing the polluting of the ground water. Many people here are accustomed to uranium ore, but don’t seem to realize the mill tailings are much more toxic and because they are finely ground they get into the air, rain, and groundwater easily. Radiation, radon, heavy metals, and chemical pollutants are in mill tailings dust and though there are stricter laws now about polluting, a mill is still allowed to spew a tremendous amount. From Wikipedia: “The effects of radiation poisoning, whether from a large dosage of radiation in a short period or long term exposure to low levels of radiation, occur as ionizing radiation that interferes with cell division and induces cancer as the cell-cycle genes are mutated. Radioactive compounds are more damaging when ingested or inhaled. Symptoms of radiation poisoning range from headache, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, nosebleed, spontaneous abortion or stillbirth in pregnant women, temporary or permanent sterility, loss of hair all over the body, loss of leukocytes and increased infection, and in large dosages uncontrollable bleeding of the mouth, under the skin, and in the kidneys, the destruction of bone morrow, severe damage to gastric and intestinal tissue with diarrhea and loss of water, and ultimately death.”

The chemicals and heavy metals in the mill tailings cause another myriad of symptoms and sicknesses. Energy Fuels doesn’t have the money to build the proposed mill, and they have not built a mill, let alone a technologically advanced safe mill as they say they are going to build. I don’t want Paradox to be their testing ground for the just on paper “safe” mill they propose. I don’t want Paradox to be razed as was Uravan from radioactive pollutants from the mill there. The uranium companies have a history of not telling people the truth. I measured from the proposed mill site to Bedrock with my odometer, it came to six-and-a-half miles. George Glacier stated it to be 12 miles in the presentation he did for the San Miguel County Commissioners on May 28, which has been published in many newspapers since as fact. Glacier also stated that yellowcake (uranium 238) will be shipped to Canada to be enriched and sold (to who?). I wouldn’t want a job that had any chance of providing material for terrorists to produce bombs with.