Rock the Earth Successful in Defending Oglala Tribe’s Rights

As reported in the March edition of Rock the Earth Notes, on February 22, Rock the Earth joined with the Center for Water Advocacy ("CWA") to oppose Crow Butte Resources' ("CBR") Uranium Mine Expansion by filing an amicus (‘friend of the court’) brief in support of the Tribe’s right to intervene in proceedings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (“NRC”) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (“Board”).

Located near Crawford, Nebraska, The Crow Butte Mine produces 800,000 to 1 million pounds of yellowcake uranium per year (current price $89lb). The Crow Butte Mine is owned by Canadian-based Cameco, Inc. which calls itself the largest uranium company in the world. Cameco Resources (formerly Crow Butte Resources), a Cameco subsidiary that owns the mine, represents 10% of Cameco's uranium reserves.

CBR is asking the NRC for a permit to expand uranium mining in and around towns, farms, and Indian territories, directly impacting indigenous people’s water rights and threatening their health, livelihood and sacred sites. CBR's process currently consumes and contaminates 4.7 billion gallons of water per year from the High Plains Aquifer that is the water source to communities in eight western states.

On November 12, 2007, five Petitioners from parts of the poorest region in the United States asked the Board to participate in decisions relative to uranium mining and its harmful effects in northwestern Nebraska and the Lakota (Sioux) Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Southwest South Dakota. According to NRC sources, this is the first request to intervene in an NRC proceeding relating to the expansion of an existing uranium mining operation in approximately 17 years. The petitioners are Thomas Cook, Slim Butte’s Agricultural Development Corp., Western Nebraska Resources Council, Debra White Plume, and an Oglala Lakota nonprofit organization called Owe Aku.

Rock the Earth and the CWA support the Petitioners' right to intervene in the mine permit process.
On April 29, 2008, a three-judge panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled in favor of allowing intervention by members of the Oglala Tribe in a challenge to the proposed Crow Butte Uranium Mine expansion. To read the opinion of the Board, go here. To read more about this project, see the Crow Butte project page. The NRC Staff has appealed the decision by the Board to the full Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Citizen Action is Still Needed Needed!
Despite all of the dangers and threats to the environment from uranium materials mining, use, power, weapons, disposal and cleanup, none of the current Presidential contenders have taken a position adverse to the uranium/nuclear industry (other than some Democratic candidates critical to the development of Nevada's Yucca Mountain repository).

You Can!

• Write letters to editors and to congress and state representatives to educate them about the true costs of nuclear materials, and the need to tighten controls and regulations at each step of production.
• Transition to renewable energy to fulfill your personal, family and community needs.

For more information on this important issue, check out the Rock the Earth Crow Butte Project Page.

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