U.S. to Return Land to Ute Indian Tribe

The Department of Energy unveiled a complex plan Friday to return 84,000 acres of land to the Ute Tribe and start the cleanup of a notorious uranium mine in Utah whose radioactive waste has been polluting the Colorado River for a decade.

The deal, announced by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson at Moab, Utah, constitutes the largest-ever voluntary return of public land to Native Americans in the lower 48 states. It also signals a long-awaited commitment from the administration to clean up the closed Atlas uranium mine, which has become synonymous with ground water contamination in the West.

Richardson, calling it “the right thing to do,” outlined a three-part proposal that would:

* Move a 10-ton mountain of radioactive mine tailings that currently sits 750 feet from the Colorado River near Moab in southern Utah and seek congressional approval to fund a potential $300-million cleanup.

* Return the 84,000-acre parcel in northeastern Utah to the Utes. The land was taken from the tribe in 1916 in order to claim oil shale reserves for the Navy.

* Set aside a 75-mile strip of land along the Green River on the Ute land for protected status.

Richardson said the proposals, linking disparate issues at opposite ends of the state, constitute something of a “Utah Preservation Act.” The land giveback is subject to congressional approval and the details of other agreements are still being negotiated, the secretary said.

“I see a triple win,” Richardson said in an interview from Salt Lake City, “by returning land to its rightful owner, by cleaning up Moab and [addressing] a water quality issue for several states and finding a way to pay for it, and by protecting land in the corridor of the river.”

The plan to return the land was applauded by the Utes. “It is actually a moral issue in that the government has finally returned to us what was taken from us without our consent,” said O. Roland McCook, chairman of the tribe’s business committee.

The issue of the Atlas mine cleanup has been lingering and thorny. The Atlas mine and mill operated from 1956 to 1984. The Denver-based Atlas Corp. filed for bankruptcy two years ago and its $6.5-million reclamation bond has not begun to fund the cleanup.

A trustee group has been working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to clean up the site. Friday’s deal also transferred the responsibility for the mine remediation from the NRC to the Energy Department.

Robert Wiygul, a lawyer for Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund, which represents a coalition of groups that have filed suit against the NRC, said the ground water degradation has been significant. At least two endangered fish species are at risk, and concerns have been raised about the 25 million human users of Colorado River water, including many in Southern California. “It’s a toxic cocktail of radioactive material, metals and ammonia, all toxic to marine life and seeping into ground water,” Wiygul said.

“This is a great leap to solve a problem that has been around for a long time,” said Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah). He said a site for the tailings had been found in the desert, some 14 miles from the river.

Richardson said that $10 million had been appropriated in fiscal 2001 for the start of the job, which he said could take six to seven years.

Friday’s announcement was the latest effort by the government to reduce lands no longer needed by the Navy. In 1998, the Energy Department sold off 47,000 acres of Navy oil reserves at Elk Hills near Bakersfield to Occidental Petroleum for $3.6 billion.

The Naval Oil Shale Reserve land, which was given to the Utes in 1882, adjoins the 4.5 million-acre Uintah and Ouray Reservation, home to the tribe’s 4,200 members.

The Utes’ financial gain may be tempered by concessions made by the tribe. The deal calls for the tribe to pay a percentage of its mineral royalties to help defray the cleanup cost. Richardson said the tentative figure is 8.5%.

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Times researcher Belen Rodriguez contributed to this story.