Officials with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board are holding hearings in Rapid City over a proposed uranium mining site in the southern Black Hills.
The board is taking oral testimony, if necessary, through Friday.
Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel is comprised of three judges. Those judges are trying to determine whether Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials adequately assessed potential impacts to Native American cultural, religious and historical resources at the Dewey-Burdock In Situ Uranium recovery facility.
It’s one of two separate hearings the Powertech project will undergo in the coming months. The US Environmental Protection Agency is requesting public comment on the project. One is associated with a proposed aquifer exemption. The second is for a permit for deep injection wells that Powertech will use to dispose of waste fluids—after treatment.
Mark Hollenbeck is manager for the Dewey Burdock project site.
“It’s encouraging that we’re finally getting some movement,” Hollenback says. “After 11 years we’re finally starting to make progress on permitting. But, it is a sad state of affairs that when people want to hire people, they want to put people to work and the science is proven—but it still takes 10 to 12 years to get through the bureaucracy and the regulatory hurdles to get an operation.”
The Oglala Sioux Tribe raised concerns about the protection of cultural and religious resources in 2010.
Officials with the Clean Water Alliance say the project could pollute two out of three aquifers in the Black Hills.
