A delegation of local officials from Grand County, Utah, plans to travel to Washington, D.C., within the next month to promote increased cleanup funding for the Energy Department’s Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project.
The group is expected to meet with members of Utah’s congressional delegation and Energy Department officials in February to lobby for raising Moab UMTRA funding from roughly $35 million to $45 million per year, a source said Wednesday.
The Utah State Legislature last June passed a resolution supporting the $45 million funding level, and local proponents say the budget hike could speed completion of the cleanup from 2034 to 2028.
At issue is cleanup of a 130-acre tailings pile located about 3 miles outside of Moab, in Grand County near the Colorado River. The tailings result from operations of a uranium concentrate production mill from 1956 to 1984.
Thus far, 56 percent of the tailings (8.9 million tons) have been moved from the site by train to a disposal cell built near Crescent Junction, Utah, according to Grand County UMTRA Liaison Lee Shenton. The figures are slightly higher than what was indicated in slides Shenton had posted online during October 2017.
The Moab UMTRA funding proposed by DOE for fiscal 2018 is $35.3 million, which is lower than the $38.6 million included in the fiscal 2017 budget, according to the slides.
Current projections indicate the last of the tailing would be shipped in 2033, followed by a groundwater cleanup period of one-to-two years, according to the slides. Increasing the annual funding to $45 million would enable UMTRA to increase tailings shipments from two to four trainloads per week – accelerating the ultimate cleanup date to 2028, Grand County officials have said.
The group that plans to travel to Washington includes Grand County Council Chair Mary McGann, Rani Derasary of the Moab City Council, and Joette Langianese, at-large stakeholder from the Moab Tailings Project Steering Committee.
Idaho-based Portage is the contractor in charge of moving the tailings. in April 2016, the engineer and technical solutions company secured a five-year, $153.8 million follow-on task order to its initial five-year contract. Portage in January 2017 was bought by rival North Wind Group.
