Anti-uranium attorney 'encouraged' after hearing
By Cindy Yurth
Tséyi' Bureau
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It's well-known in legal circles that you can jinx yourself by predicting how judges are going to rule, but an attorney for two groups protesting uranium mining in New Mexico said he felt good about a hearing in Denver Monday.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in what lawyers say is the first-ever challenge to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's approval of licenses for an in-situ uranium mining operation: Hydro Resources Inc.'s bid to leach uranium out of an aquifer that supplies drinking water to thousands of Navajos.
President Joe Shirley Jr. has already condemned the proposal, saying it violates a 2005 Navajo Nation law against uranium mining, although the leases are on privately held land in the Checkerboard.
Monday, Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining and the Southwest Research and Information Center had 15 minutes to present oral arguments in their 12-year-old lawsuit against the NRC.
An Associated Press story about the hearing said the judges expressed "surprise" that the NRC had granted HRI permission to inject a chemical solution into the aquifer to leach uranium and pump it out.
Eric Jantz, attorney for the two anti-mining groups, confirmed that characterization in a telephone interview Wednesday.
"It was encouraging to see that the judges were engaged and definitely seemed to be skeptical of what HRI was saying," he said.
The groups contend that the leach operations, to be located near the communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock, N.M., would contaminate the aquifer and also release radiation into the atmosphere in an area already scarred by decades of uranium mining.
An HRI attorney countered that uranium mining techniques have improved drastically in recent years and further, that the injection mining would be confined so it wouldn't contaminate the aquifer.
Airborne radiation would be within acceptable levels, according to HRI, but the anti-mining groups dispute that.
The allottees who have leased out land for uranium mining contend they are being unfairly prevented from enjoying the royalties it would bring, but the mining has few other local supporters.
Twenty-eight people from Church Rock and Crownpoint traveled to Denver to attend the hearing, and Navajo schoolchildren protested outside the courtroom with placards reading "Say no to uranium, say no to sickness."
Groups from the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation and local Coloradoans also were on hand, according to the AP.
If the appellate panel rules against the groups, they still have the option of asking for an en banc hearing - meaning all 11 appellate judges would review the case - or taking it to the Supreme Court, Jantz said.
"It's premature to talk about either of those options," he said. "What I can say is that the people of Crownpoint and Church Rock don't want uranium mining, and win or lose, there is going to be resistance to uranium mining in the future."