Leeds • Can land atop former uranium mines in Leeds’ historic Silver Reef area ever be given a clean enough bill of health to be fit for residential development?
Gary Crocker, the principal owner of Silver Reef Investment Holdings, insists it can. In fact, he’s banking on it. He has spent $15 million to advance his plan to build 100 homes on 148 acres, part of which would be situated on land that was part of the Big Hill and Chief Chloride uranium mines.
Thus far, he has spent roughly $1 million of that to clean up waste rock and radioactive contaminants on the site as part of a Voluntary Cleanup Project (VCP) agreement signed with the Utah Utah Division of Environmental Response and Remediation (DERR), which could pave the way for him to construct 22 homes for the first phase of Silver Pointe Estates.
Critics of the VCP process doubt that developers will do a thorough job of cleaning up contaminants, especially when it involves radioactivity. But Bill Rees, environmental program manager of DERR’s VCP & Brownsfields section, argues voluntary cleanups overseen by the state meet the same rigorous standards as those conducted by the federal government.
“It’s in the best interest that the program … saves tax dollars so that a party is voluntarily stepping up to clean up [the land] as compared to the government having to pay to clean it up and then trying to cost-recover on the back side,” Rees said.
Under the VCP, state environmental officials say they work in concert with developers or others enrolled in the program and ensure their efforts to remediate contaminated land are thorough and meet agreed-upon standards.
Rees said there have been 126 applications filed from people wanting to take part in the program since 1997 and estimates DERR is currently overseeing about 50-plus VCP projects.
Opponents of Crocker’s project, however, say they have examined 1,750 VCPs in states in the Intermountain Area and attest they have failed to find one that addressed uranium or radium 226 contamination, especially on land where residential homes are planned to go.
Robin Anderson, a retired EPA Superfund remedy and regulatory compliance expert opponents of Crocker’s development have consulted with, said the reality is that VCP cleanups are not as closely scrutinized and do not meet the same standards as those done at Superfunds sites that are overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency.
“They may say they care about the surrounding community and can do a good job under the voluntary program, but that doesn’t mean it is meeting Superfund standards,” Anderson said, noting there is no requirement in the state’s voluntary program to comply with Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA — the federal law which created Superfund sites.
Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of the Health Environment Alliance of Utah, has also consulted with Silver Pointe Estates opponents. She said government oversight in VCPs can be lacking and adds that phase one of Crocker’s project has not “been remediated well.”
“The potential buyers, residents and the homeowners association that are going to inherit this problem really do need to know about the risks in a very informed way,” she said.
Trust – or, more precisely, the lack thereof when it comes to the government – is another issue.
Silver Pointe skeptics say people in southwest Utah are familiar with “downwinders,” the term given to people exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing, especially with respect to those carried out at the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1992.
Ralph Rohr, a retired surgical pathologist who lives in Leeds, notes the United States Atomic Energy Commission failed to warn Utahns about the dangers of nuclear bomb testing, resulting in many people who were exposed to the fallout becoming sick and dying.
“People here in southern Utah … are trusting and patriotic and were certain that their government would not lie to them,” Rohr said. “But they found out that they were lied to, and many of them paid with their lives or their health.”
Rohr and other opponents are anxious to avoid a repeat with Silver Pointe Estates.
Tuddenham echoes Rohr’s concerns, saying southwest Utah is on the front lines when it comes to being exposed to high levels of radioactivity — not only from nuclear testing but also from uranium mining.
“There are a lot of indigenous tribes who have dealt with this history of uranium mining and contamination and there are a lot of abandoned mines in the area,” she said. “And we’ve never quite dealt with that history. So we have to be cautious going forward.”
Two years ago, DERR provided Crocker and his development team with a “no-further-action letter,” which essentially says the cleanup benchmarks for phase one of his project have been met. Still, Crocker is waiting to receive town officials’ approval before beginning construction.
If that approval comes, Rohr worries about the consequences.
“No uranium-contaminated cleanup site has ever been approved for a new housing development in the United States,” he said. “Silver Pointe would be the first and set a dangerous precedent.”
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