Uranium

UraniumUndeterred by court decisions upholding the state of New Mexico's right to regulate Hydro Resources Churchrock Section 8 in-situ uranium project, the Eastern Navajo Diné against Uranium Mining and the New Mexico Environmental Law Center have filed a complaint with the First Judicial Court in Santa Fe. The filing asserts that the New Mexico Environment Department bypassed the normal regulatory process by allowing HRI to conduct mining activities before the state agency made a decision on the company's discharge permit application. The plaintiffs argue that the New Mexico Environment Department does not have the authority to accept HRI's discharge permit application as a permit renewal under the Water Quality Act


which provides that the agency may issue a discharge permit for no longer than seven years. The permit was originally approved in 1989 and renewed in 1996. The Eastern Navajo Diné against Uranium Mining contends the permit expired in 2003 although the New Mexico Environment Department still consider HRI to have a valid permit. Last month, HRI CEO Don Ewigleben said the fact the NMED confirmed HRI's discharge plan for an underground injection control permit "supports our belief that we followed proper procedures and abided by all the rules and regulations of the NMED.


New Mexico has the largest identified uranium resource base in the U.S. and our 101.4 million pounds of in-place mineralized uranium material is among the largest quantifies owned by any one company in the state," he added. URI also holds a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license, "which combined with the discharge plan enables URI to move closer toward production using in situ recovery on its Churchrock Section 8 project where there are 6.5 million pounds of in-lace mineralized uranium material," the company said.

Uranium