Last summer, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management issued a report that determined an increase in uranium mining in the region would have “no significant environmental impact.” The report allowed the DOE to bring back a program that initially fueled atomic weapons but would now go toward powering hair dryers and electric cars.

A lawsuit filed late last week in Colorado District Court by four environmental non-profits begs to differ with those findings, alleging that the DOE failed to conduct an environmental analysis that examines the comprehensive effects of multiple mines and a new mill in the Uravan Mineral Belt.

In short: the DOE ignored the negative ripples that would radiate out from a new uranium boom, plaintiffs say.

“It’s well documented that the Uravan mineral belt is seen as a unit,” said Travis Stills, a managing attorney for the Energy Minerals Law Center, a nonprofit law firm serving communities impacted by energy mining. “[The DOE] narrowly looked at the questions of whether to expand the program all the way, without looking at what the very obvious results of that program would be.”

The Colorado Environmental Coalition, the Information Network for Responsible Mining, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Native Ecosystems all filed the complaint, which asks the DOE to halt leasing.

Joann Wardip, a spokesperson for the DOE out of the Washington, D.C. office, limited comment but said: “The department has received the complaint, and we intend to review it very carefully.”

A year ago, the DOE announced 27,000 acres in the Uravan Mineral Belt, which arcs west from here to Utah, through the bust town of Uravan, would be available for uranium mining.

The DOE estimated the expanded program could dig 2 million pounds of uranium ore from the mineral belt every year. It could put as many as 300 trucks a day on area roads. It could create almost 600 jobs and increase wages.

Per federal policy, the department was required to conduct a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis before bringing the nuclear age back to the southwest. It was from that analysis that the Finding of No Significant Impact sprung. 

“[The] DOE assessed cumulative impacts in the context of other existing actions, or reasonably foreseeable future actions that are occurring or might occur within the region of impact during  the 10-year duration of DOE’s proposed actions,” it reads.
But had the DOE conducted a proper study, Stills said, it would have seen “a considerable number of problems with these lease tracts.”

It would have seen old mine sites with open mineral veins leeching uranium into water and plants and old mines full of rubble, he said. “The purpose of these rules is to keep DOE from repeating their past rounds of mistakes … that led to death in the uranium industry,” Stills said. 

The complaint now makes its way to the United States Department of Justice for response. Andrew Ames, a spokesperson at the department, said he was unaware whether the department had received the complaint, and said they would have to be served and the court would then set a schedule.