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1 Environmental Protection Agency 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 Public Hearing for 

7 Health and Environmental Protection 

8 Standards for Uranium and 

9 Thorium Mill Tailings 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 9:08 a.m. to 3:55 p.m. 

15 Tuesday, March 10, 2015 

16 

17 William Jefferson Clinton Building, East 

18 1201 Constitution Avenue, N.W. 

19 Washington, DC 20004 

20 

21 

22 
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1 ATTENDEES 

2 

3 EPA: 

4 BILL LONG, Director, Center for Radon and Air 

5 Toxics, EPA 

6 INGRID ROSENCRANTZ, Center for Waste Management 

7 and Regulations, EPA Radiation Protection 

8 Division 

9 TOM PEAKE, Director, Center for Waste 

10 Management and Regulations, EPA Radiation 

11 Protection Division 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 
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1 C O N T E N T S 

2 PAGE 

3 MORNING SESSION 

4 KATIE SWEENEY, National Mining 

5 Association 10,46,105 

6 MIKE THOMAS, Uranerz Energy Corporation 18 

7 NEIL BLANDFORD, Daniel B. Stephens and 26 

8 Associates representing Goliad County 

9 Groundwater Conservation District 

10 GEOFFREY FETTUS, Natural Resources Defense 32 

11 Council 

12 BENJAMIN KLEIN, Uranium Producers of America 38 

13 CHRISTOPHER PUGSLEY, Thompson and Pugsley 52,64 

14 

15 AFTERNOON SESSION 

16 ANDREW SHAW, McKenna, Long & Aldridge, 77 

17 representing Cameco Resources 

18 AARON MINTZES, Earthworks 85 

19 ANTHONY THOMPSON, Thompson and Pugsley, 89 

20 representing the National Mining Association 

21 LANCE LARSON, Natural Resources Defense 99 

22 Council 
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S 

2 MORNING SESSION 

3 MR. LONG: Okay. Good morning, everyone. 

4 My name is Bill Long. I am the Director of the 

5 Center for Radon and Air Toxics at EPA's Indoor 

6 Environments Division. I'll be presiding over 

7 the hearing today. Joining me on the panel are 

8 Ingrid Rosencrantz and Tom Peake from the Office 

9 of Radiation and Indoor Air, in headquarters here 

10 in D.C., and this hearing is now in session. 

11 We are here today to listen and receive 

12 your comments on EPA's Proposed Revisions to 

13 Health and Environmental Protection Standards for 

14 Uranium and Thorium Mill Tailings, also known as 

15 40 CFR Part 192. In a moment, Ingrid Rosencrantz 

16 will explain in more detail what was proposed in 

17 that notice. 

18 But before I turn it over to Ingrid, let 

19 me explain a little bit about how today's hearing 

20 will work. There will be two sessions, one this 

21 morning, from 9 to noon, and one this afternoon 

22 from 1 to 5 p.m., both here in this hearing room. 
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1 Please be sure you have checked in at the 

2 registration desk even if you are not planning on 

3 speaking today. 

4 I will call the scheduled speakers to the 

5 podium. When it's your turn to speak, please 

6 state your name, spelling your last name for the 

7 court reporter, and your affiliation, before you 

8 begin your testimony. Your comments will be 

9 transcribed and included in the record of 

10 comments on the proposed rule. 

11 In order to ensure everyone has the 

12 opportunity to speak, and to ensure fairness, 

13 please limit your testimony to 10 minutes. We 

14 will signal to you when you have 1 minute left to 

15 speak. I'm going to try to use this thing here 

16 for timing. When 10 minutes have passed, I will 

17 ask you to complete your testimony. If you have 

18 more to say after your 10 minutes are up, and you 

19 would like to speak again with information that 

20 is new and discrete from your previous testimony, 

21 we're happy to have you speak again. Please sign 

22 up to speak again at the registration table where 
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1 you signed in. You will be called again after 

2 other speakers. If you choose to speak again, 

3 please refrain from using additional time to 

4 rebut other speakers. 

5 After you finish your testimony, members 

6 of the panel may ask verifying questions. Please 

7 note that during the hearing we will not answer 

8 questions on the proposed rule, but if you have 

9 questions about the process, please find one of 

10 the EPA representatives when the hearing is not 

11 in session. 

12 If you have written comments, written 

13 copies of your testimony, or supporting 

14 documentation, please give a copy to our staff at 

15 the registration table, and this will be very 

16 helpful as we prepare the transcript. 

17 If you have additional comment you would 

18 like to make, you can submit them in writing. 

19 Comments must be received by 5 p.m. on April 27, 

20 2015. 

21 Let me assure you that EPA gives just as 

22 much consideration to comments that we receive in 
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1 writing as we do to comments we receive at public 

2 hearings like this one. Instructions for 

3 submitting comments are included in a fact sheet 

4 at the registration table, and you can pick up a 

5 copy at that table, outside of the door. 

6 Today's public hearing is scheduled to 

7 end once the last registered speaker has provided 

8 comments, so if you would like to testify but 

9 have not yet registered to do so, please sign up 

10 at the registration table outside this room. 

11 We may call a break for everyone's 

12 comfort. The rest rooms are located out in the 

13 main lobby, and then go on either side. If you 

14 do not have a federal employee ID you will need 

15 to be escorted. We have escorts here to help. 

16 Tony Nesky will escort the gentlemen and Connie 

17 Gillam -- Connie are you here? -- or Sara, maybe 

18 Sara DeCair will escort the ladies. Please keep 

19 your visitor badge if you plan to leave the 

20 building and return. People with visitor's 

21 badges will need to go through security again. 

22 And, also, please remember to turn in your 
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1 visitor badge when you leave for the day. 

2 Okay. Now let me turn things over to 

3 Ingrid Rosencrantz, who will summarize the 

4 proposed rule. 

5 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: Thank you. Thanks for 

6 coming today. I want to let everyone know we 

7 really appreciate your engagement on this 

8 proposed rule. As you know, we're here to listen 

9 and receive your comments on EPA's Proposed 

10 Revisions to Health and Environmental Protection 

11 Standards for Uranium and Thorium Mill Tailings, 

12 also known as 40 CFR Part 192. 

13 Can folks hear me okay? Okay. 

14 [Microphone is adjusted.] 

15 Thanks. Basically, we're proposing to 

16 revise this rule by adding an additional new 

17 subpart, called Subpart F, that explicitly 

18 addresses groundwater protection, restoration, 

19 and stability at uranium in-situ recovery 

20 operations. 

21 The major provisions of this proposal 

22 include the following. First, we're specifying 
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1 the minimum 13 constituents for which groundwater 

2 protection standards must be met, and there is a 

3 list of those constituents in the proposal, the 

4 preamble and the proposed rule. 

5 Secondly, we're specifying monitoring 

6 requirements for different phases of operation, 

7 including monitoring for the preoperational 

8 phase, the operational phase, restoration, 

9 stability, and long-term stability. 

10 And then, finally, we're also specifying 

11 requirements for corrective actions, where 

12 necessary. All of those requirements proposed in 

13 the rule itself and in the preamble, so we 

14 encourage you, of course, to read through those 

15 and become familiar. 

16 We announced this proposal in the Federal 

17 Register on July 26th of 2015 -- I'm sorry, 

18 January 26th of 2015. The comment period started 

19 then and currently is scheduled to end on April 

20 27th of this year. We have let folks know we 

21 have received several requests for extending the 

22 comment period, and we are currently considering 
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1 those requests. We have not made a final 

2 decision on whether or to what date we would 

3 extend the comment period. 

4 Again, I'd like to thank you for your 

5 interest and participation, and we may be asking 

6 clarifying questions. Aside from that, we'll be 

7 interested to hear what you all have to say. So 

8 thanks very much for your engagement. I'll turn 

9 it back over to you. 

10 MR. LONG: Okay. Thanks, Ingrid. I'd 

11 like to call up our first scheduled speaker, and 

12 that is Katie Sweeney. Katie, if you could spell 

13 your name, please, and state who you are 

14 representing, for the court reporter. 

15 MS. SWEENEY: Hi. My name is Katie 

16 Sweeney. The last name is spelled S-w-e-e-n-e-y. 

17 And I am the general counsel of the National 

18 Mining Association. I'm sort of torn between 

19 trying to read as fast as I can for 10 minutes or 

20 signing up for some additional time, so we'll see 

21 how it goes. 

22 The National Mining Association is a 
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1 national trade association representing the 

2 producers of most of America's coal, metals, 

3 including uranium, industrial and agricultural 

4 minerals. NMA's members include producers of 

5 domestic uranium as well as companies that have 

6 exploration projects or pending applications for 

7 the development of domestic uranium mining 

8 projects. An initial point, and I'm glad to hear 

9 that this is under consideration, the request for 

10 the extension of the comment period, NMA intends 

11 to submit substantive comments on the proposed 

12 rule, but the current comment period is simply 

13 insufficient to allow adequate time to review the 

14 more than 2,500 pages of supporting materials, 

15 and, believe me, I did go through and count. I 

16 haven't made my way through all of those yet. 

17 The ability to review and analyze these 

18 supporting materials, many of which are 

19 scientific or technical in nature, is crucial to 

20 the association's effort to provide meaningful 

21 comments on the proposal. In addition, industry 

22 commenters will need to assemble cost and other 
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1 site-specific data for the use in their comments. 

2 The rest of my comments today will focus 

3 on EPA's flawed assumptions regarding risks posed 

4 by in-situ recovery of uranium. The whole 

5 rulemaking is based on the premise that in-situ 

6 recovery activities, or ISR, may impact adjacent 

7 aquifers that either are now, or could someday be 

8 sources of drinking water. EPA's authority to 

9 promulgate the rule is UMTRCA, or the Uranium 

10 Metal Tailings Radiation Control Act. Other 

11 speakers will address whether EPA has exceeded 

12 its general standard-setting authority under 

13 UMTRCA with this rulemaking by prescribing 

14 implementation requirements that are exclusively 

15 under the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions purview. 

16 EPA insists in looking at this rulemaking 

17 in a vacuum, a rulemaking that sets EPA's 

18 groundwater standards for ISR facilities. EPA 

19 does not adequately acknowledge existing federal 

20 and state regulatory programs that protect 

21 groundwater, even their own. 

22 For example, there is EPA's underground 
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1 injection control program, under the Safe 

2 Drinking Water Act. As EPA correctly states in 

3 the proposed rule, the purpose of the UIC program 

4 is to prevent endangerment of underground sources 

5 of drinking water. Similarly, the main purpose 

6 of this rulemaking is to limit the future 

7 potential for groundwater to be degraded from 

8 undetected, long-term changes in groundwater from 

9 ISR operations. There's definitely overlapping 

10 purposes there. 

11 EPA maintains that reliance on the 

12 requirements of the UIC program alone would not 

13 adequately address groundwater protection at ISR 

14 facilities, given that there are not groundwater 

15 restoration requirements under the UIC program. 

16 In that, EPA is correct. There are no 

17 groundwater restoration requirements for ISR 

18 facilities under the UIC program, but the reason 

19 for the lack of such requirements is critical. 

20 It is due to the acknowledgement that ISR 

21 operations occur in excepted aquifers. 

22 In order for an ISR operation to proceed, 
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1 a UIC permit is required, and typically an 

2 aquifer exemption is needed. The aquifer 

3 exemption effectively removes the aquifer from 

4 the protection of the Safe Drinking Water Act, 

5 due to the finding that it does not now currently 

6 serve as a source of drinking water and it cannot 

7 and will not, in the future, serve as a source of 

8 drinking water. In the case of ISR operations, 

9 the aquifer exemption is granted either due to 

10 the mineralization or the poor natural quality of 

11 the water, usually both. 

12 EPA is using the rulemaking and its 

13 UMTRCA authority to do what it cannot do under 

14 the UIC program -- require restoration of an 

15 exempted aquifer. Again, EPA maintains that 

16 restoration is needed to help prevent excursions 

17 of pollutants into adjacent, non-exempt aquifers, 

18 but EPA ignores the fact that both the nuclear 

19 regulatory commission and state regulatory 

20 authorities do require a restoration of ISR 

21 operations under existing programs. 

22 EPA downplays the NRC program by 
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1 intimating that NRC only does so under guidance 

2 or license condition. EPA bases its conclusion 

3 on the fact that at one point in time NRC was 

4 considering a rulemaking that would apply 

5 specifically to ISR facilities. However, since 

6 NRC postponed that rulemaking, NRC has clearly 

7 stated that as a matter of law, Criterion 5(B)(5) 

8 of 10 CFR Part 40 applies to ISR operation, 

9 requiring that groundwater be maintained at, or 

10 restored to a commission-approved background or 

11 an MCL, whichever is higher, or an alternate 

12 concentration limit, or ACL. The existing 

13 5(B)(5) standard is a generally applicable 

14 standard that EPA promulgated under its UMTRCA 

15 authority and NRC adopted and is currently 

16 implementing at ISR operations. 

17 Similarly, states in which ISR operations 

18 occur also require restoration at ISR operations, 

19 but under their authority as primary states, 

20 administering the EPA's UIC program. States are 

21 permitted by law to require more stringent 

22 standards than EPA, and have chosen to do so in 
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1 requiring groundwater restoration of ISR 

2 operations. 

3 A major flaw in EPA's proposed rule is 

4 the failure to adequately acknowledge the impact 

5 of existing federal and state programs in 

6 protecting adjacent aquifers from any potential 

7 risks of ISR operations. 

8 Secondly, as to EPA's failure to properly 

9 assess the risks of ISR operations to 

10 groundwater, the agency points to no evidence in 

11 the rulemaking record that ISR facilities have 

12 ever adversely impacted an adjacent aquifer. 

13 Are we okay with the time, or is that not 

14 working? Oh, I get to just keep going. 

15 MR. LONG: Yeah. Tom? Yeah, I think 

16 this is not working, and I just realized it, so I 

17 think I'm going to use my iPhone. 

18 MS. SWEENEY: Does anybody know about how 

19 long I've been? 

20 REPORTER: It's been about 7 minutes. 

21 MS. SWEENEY: Seven minutes? Okay. 

22 MR. LONG: Okay. Thank you. 
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1 MS. SWEENEY: I'll just finish this 

2 paragraph and then I'll sign up again. 

3 MR. LONG: Okay. 

4 MS. SWEENEY: In addition, EPA minimizes 

5 the importance of studies that show that adjacent 

6 aquifers have been adequately protected by 

7 existing federal and state programs. EPA can 

8 point to no evidence because none exists. 

9 So what does EPA say exactly about risk? 

10 Because the evidence doesn't exist, the proposed 

11 rule merely speculates and hedges most of the 

12 risk discussion with terms "may," "could," and 

13 "unable to quantify." As examples, EPA talks 

14 about human health risks that could result in the 

15 -- I'm sorry -- that could result in the ability 

16 to quantify how many deaths that would be 

17 averted, admits it does not have a basis for 

18 estimating which, if any, well fields would 

19 experience an undetected, contaminated plume in 

20 absence of the proposed rule. 

21 Perhaps the most telling statement is the 

22 following: "We find it difficult to characterize 
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1 the probability of magnitude of future 

2 contamination problems or the costs inclined in 

3 remediating such future contamination." 

4 And then I will continue later. Any 

5 questions? 

6 MR. LONG: Okay. Thank you. I 

7 appreciate that. Questions? 

8 [No audible response.] 

9 MR. LONG: Okay. We are going to call 

10 our second speaker, Mike Thomas. Mike, if you 

11 also could spell your name and state who you're 

12 representing. 

13 MR. THOMAS: Mike Thomas. T-h-o-m-a-s. 

14 I am the Vice President of Regulatory and Public 

15 Affairs for Uranerz Energy Corporation, and I'm 

16 also the Vice President of the Wyoming Mining 

17 Association. 

18 Well, good morning and thank you for 

19 having this hearing today. As I said, my name is 

20 Mike Thomas. I am the Vice President of 

21 Regulatory and Public Affairs for Uranerz Energy 

22 Corporation, headquartered and operating in 
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1 Wyoming. I'm also the Vice President of the 

2 Wyoming Mining Association. The Mining 

3 Association is an industry association 

4 representing mining companies, contractors, 

5 vendors, suppliers, and consultants in the state 

6 of Wyoming, whose members are uranium recovery 

7 licensees, including in-situ and conventional 

8 uranium recovery operations. There are several 

9 companies planning new uranium recovery 

10 operations and several companies conducting final 

11 reclamation restoration activities. 

12 Thank you for the opportunity today to 

13 present preliminary comments on the proposed 

14 rulemaking. I'm also pleased to see the recent 

15 announcement that the EPA will be scheduling 

16 additional hearings in Wyoming and Texas. These 

17 are the areas were ISR production is currently 

18 taking place and the areas where this rulemaking 

19 will have the most impact. This is a great 

20 benefit to those land owners, operators, local 

21 governments, and members of the public in those 

22 areas, to be able to voice their concerns and 
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1 comments on the proposed rulemaking without 

2 having the considerable expense and effort to 

3 getting to Washington, D.C., from remote places 

4 in Wyoming. 

5 The EPA has been working on this 

6 rulemaking for several years now, and upon 

7 completion and publishing in the Federal 

8 Register, the voluminous rule contains over 20 

9 documents. Because this rule has the ability to 

10 have major operational economic impacts on your 

11 Uranerz and those other ISR companies operating 

12 in Wyoming, I'm requesting that the current 

13 comment period proposed by the EPA to be extended 

14 by at least another 90 days in order for the 

15 complex rule to be fully reviewed and fully 

16 commented on by Uranerz, the Wyoming Mining 

17 Association, and all others that are affected. 

18 Even with the amount of documentation, 

19 Uranerz and the WMA have been able to conduct a 

20 cursory review of the rulemaking and have the 

21 following comments for the EPA. Additional 

22 comments will be coming on from both companies 
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1 and the association. 

2 Comments that I'll focus on, on three 

3 areas -- the rulemaking transparency and 

4 consultation, technical aspects, and economics. 

5 So with that, let's begin with the transparency 

6 and consultation. This rulemaking was conducted 

7 without any consultation with the Wyoming 

8 regulatory agencies or with the Mining 

9 Association. The EPA did not ask the Wyoming 

10 Department of Environmental Quality about 

11 existing requirements for groundwater restoration 

12 in the state of Wyoming, or of the success of 

13 those operations that have restored groundwater. 

14 Additionally, EPA did not contact or ask 

15 for information from the WMA or companies that 

16 have conducted restoration successfully. This is 

17 a departure from the last EPA rulemaking that 

18 affected the industry, the Subpart W rulemaking. 

19 In that rulemaking, the EPA at least sent out 

20 requests for information to an industry, to 

21 gather data to support what was going on. 

22 The EPA also failed to mention the work 
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1 conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on 

2 analyzing the impacts of ISR operations. Both 

3 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Generic Impact 

4 Environmental Statement for ISR mining and the 

5 2009 NRC study on environmental effects of ISR 

6 mining were not utilized in this rulemaking. The 

7 GEIS concluded that ISR mining operations are of 

8 low environmental risk, and the 2009 study 

9 reported that there was no known migration of 

10 recovery solutions to adjacent, non-exempt 

11 aquifers based on 40-plus years of ISR 

12 operations. 

13 Moving on to the technical basis of the 

14 rulemaking, this rulemaking lacks a sound 

15 regulatory basis. It is not risk-informed and 

16 lacks justification through sound metrics. This 

17 is demonstrated in the words of the preamble, 

18 where it says, and I quote, "It's difficult to 

19 characterize the benefits of our proposal by 

20 applying typical agency metrics." If sound 

21 metrics cannot be used to justify rulemaking, 

22 then it is not justified. 
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1 Furthermore, the entire technical 

2 discussion is speculation, with use of such terms 

3 as "potential could migrate," and "may increase 

4 human health risk." The EPA does not present any 

5 data demonstrating that there is the potential 

6 for migration of recovery solutions, post7 restoration, nor is any data presented where an 

8 adjacent aquifer has been impacted post9 restoration. 

10 Lastly, the EPA repeatedly mentions their 

11 concerns about the future use of water and how 

12 groundwater is becoming scarce. However, EPA 

13 does not address the cost in both dollars and 

14 resource, or trying to achieve the statistical 

15 95-percent confidence level. EPA must know that 

16 for every one gallon of water used in 

17 restoration, one gallon of fresh water of inflow 

18 is used. If quality water is being consumed to 

19 achieve a 95-percent confidence without placing 

20 any value on the future use of the water, then 

21 the groundwater is being wasted. This defeats 

22 the EPA's purpose of protecting the groundwater 
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1 for future use. 

2 Moving on to economics, the economic 

3 analysis used by the EPA is not correct. Long4 term licensing cost, land-holding cost, operating 

5 cost, well sampling and lab cost, and bonding 

6 have either been understated or left out. 

7 Additionally, metrics used to describe the size 

8 of the industry are incorrect, such as using 

9 utility uranium purchases to describe the size of 

10 the ISR industries. Currently the ISR industry 

11 produces less than 10 percent of the uranium that 

12 is used by utilities and by no means supplies all 

13 the uranium consumed by these utilities. 

14 In conclusion, this rulemaking is flawed 

15 and needs to be withdrawn. The EPA has presented 

16 rulemaking that lacks any regulatory basis or 

17 certainty for Uranerz and other ISR mining 

18 operations. Without having any regulatory basis 

19 or certainty, our business, our mining industry 

20 cannot move forward, and therefore this 

21 rulemaking should not move forward. 

22 Thank you very much. 
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1 MR. LONG: Thank you. Any questions? 

2 MR. PEAKE: I have a question. Do you 

3 have post-restoration data that you'll be able to 

4 share with us? 

5 MR. THOMAS: There's been an industry 

6 paper out through NMA/NRC conferences that shows 

7 restoration data for not only in Wyoming but in 

8 Texas operations too. I can get a hold of the 

9 person. Katie or I could. That information 

10 would be supplied in the comment period, or our 

11 comments too. 

12 MR. PEAKE: How long do you monitor? I 

13 don't know the status of your particular 

14 operation, but how long do you monitor after 

15 you've restored? 

16 MR. THOMAS: We are -- with Uranerz 

17 Energy, I'll just speak to this specifically for 

18 Uranerz Energy. Right now we're currently 

19 operating. We have no well fields in 

20 restoration. Right now we are required to 

21 monitor stability monitoring for at least 1 year 

22 after we determine that the aquifer is stable. 
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1 MR. PEAKE: Thank you. 

2 MR. THOMAS: Prior, it used to be 6 

3 months and it's been increased to 1 year. 

4 MR. LONG: Any other questions, panel? 

5 Okay. I'd like to call up the third speaker, 

6 Neil Blandford. If you could spell your name and 

7 state who you're representing, Neil. 

8 MR. BLANDFORD: Neil Blandford, B-l-a-n9 d-f-o-r-d. I'm a principal hydrologist with 

10 Daniel B. Stephens and Associates in Albuquerque, 

11 New Mexico, representing the Goliad County 

12 Groundwater Conservation District today. 

13 As I said, I'm here to provide comments 

14 on behalf of the district. I have read through 

15 most of the background materials provided for the 

16 proposed rule changes, and I've noticed both in 

17 the Federal Register and the background materials 

18 there is reference to the Goliad project in a 

19 number of reports that were produced as part of 

20 that contested case hearing, and the district 

21 would like to thank EPA for considering those 

22 reports, and that data that's available is part 
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1 of that case, which was very hard-fought, on 

2 behalf of the district. 

3 The reason that the district contested 

4 the permit to the extent that it did is because 

5 the district residents rely solely on 

6 groundwater, and perhaps somewhat different from 

7 some other ISR sites, there is a number of 

8 domestic wells and water users in the vicinity of 

9 this proposed facility. Anyone from the Western 

10 states realizes the importance of groundwater to 

11 those states. Needs are increasing through time 

12 and supplies are not available. Surface water is 

13 entirely appropriated in most Western states and 

14 the future supplies will come from groundwater, 

15 and therefore it's very important to the district 

16 to protect those resources. 

17 There is one permitted mine now. There's 

18 other exploration going on in the county. So in 

19 terms of a water resources planning perspective, 

20 they could be faced with the fact of having 

21 multiple mines, checkered, in some way, 

22 throughout the county, and this could happen in 
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1 other areas, as well. 

2 So in our view, long-term monitoring of 

3 these facilities, so we can determine for certain 

4 that there's not concerns with impacted 

5 groundwater in the future, only makes sense, and 

6 that's really the last resort that the district 

7 has at this point, in terms of protecting its 

8 water resources. 

9 As explained in the Federal Register, 

10 analysis of prior sites, the operational plans 

11 talk about restoration of groundwater, and there 

12 is a large degree of restoration that occurs, but 

13 usually there is not full restoration. That we 

14 know from existing sites, and we know that there 

15 are situations that, for whatever reason, full 

16 restoration is not possible, and it's our view 

17 that that's not fully understood, and it's a 

18 continuing area of research. 

19 The Conservation District fully supports 

20 the approach of the preoperational phase 

21 monitoring. This was a significant issue in the 

22 Goliad case, where the initial uranium 
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1 concentrations sampled from the monitor wells 

2 were high, and it's in our opinion that was due 

3 to the actual process of drilling and completing 

4 a monitor well where oxygen was introduced to the 

5 aquifer, allowed uranium to come into solution, 

6 and therefore the first groundwater sample taken 

7 had a high value of uranium in it. Subsequent 

8 sampling, conducted by the applicant, which was 

9 not made available until we were within the 

10 contested case hearing, showed significantly 

11 lower values of uranium in the aquifer after a 

12 significant period of time had passed from the 

13 drilling of the well. 

14 So the approach in these proposed 

15 regulations of having a more extended period of 

16 pre-mine monitoring, if you will, to make sure 

17 that we're looking at appropriate background 

18 concentrations makes sense and is fully supported 

19 by the district. 

20 We also support the approach of using a 

21 consistent monitoring network throughout all 

22 phases of mining, from preoperational to the 
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1 long-term stability phase. This was another issue 

2 of contention that came up in the Goliad case, 

3 where there were monitor wells within the mining 

4 unit that had a limited screen interval over the 

5 ore zone, and monitor wells, perimeter monitor 

6 wells which had a longer screen interval outside 

7 of the ore zone. 

8 Such an approach is fine in our view if 

9 the wells used are consistent throughout the 

10 monitoring phase, but to assert that the higher 

11 uranium concentrations, for example, in 

12 groundwater, from a limited screened well within 

13 the ore zone be used as a background 

14 concentration mine-wide is not an appropriate 

15 approach, in our view, and I think that this rule 

16 deals with that in the way that it's written. 

17 We also support the, as I mentioned 

18 earlier, the long-term time frame, the 30-year 

19 time frame, and the statistical analysis 

20 approach. We also support the use of modeling, 

21 although I would note, based on another case I've 

22 been involved in, which is the Church Rock case, 
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1 where we did some modeled review on behalf of the 

2 New Mexico Environment Department, that there's a 

3 ways to go in understanding the hydrogeochemistry 

4 and the kinetics of the uranium minerals, and I 

5 think that's acknowledged in your background 

6 documents and there's some ongoing work with the 

7 U.S. Geological Survey, and I think that makes a 

8 lot of sense. But we have done a fairly thorough 

9 data review, looking for kinetic relationships, 

10 and we were not able to find adequate information 

11 there to do detailed modeling of future uranium 

12 concentrations. 

13 Roman number IV-D in the proposed rules, 

14 Excursions, you've requested input on the concept 

15 of a stand-by period, and you note that for a 

16 conventional mill there may be extended periods 

17 of stand-by, but I would, again, agree with the 

18 proposed rule in this case, that the way that 

19 impacted groundwater for the mining operation is 

20 maintained is through active pumping. So there 

21 really should be no significant period of stand22 by for these types of facilities, certainly not 
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1 years. Operationally, there will be lesser 

2 periods of time that will be required that, for 

3 one reason or another, pumping may not continue, 

4 but those periods should be minimized. 

5 And that concludes my comments at this 

6 time, and again, to the extent to have time left, 

7 I may make further comments later in the day. 

8 MR. LONG: Thank you very much. Any 

9 questions from the panel? 

10 [No audible response.] 

11 MR. LONG: Okay. All right. I'd like to 

12 call our next speaker, who is Geoff Fettus, I 

13 think. Thank you. 

14 MR. FETTUS: Good morning and thank you 

15 for holding this hearing. My name is Geoffrey 

16 Fettus, G-e-o-f-f-r-e-y F-e-t-t-u-s, and I'm a 

17 senior attorney with the Natural Resources 

18 Defense Council. NRDC is a national, nonprofit 

19 environmental organization with over 1 million 

20 combined members and activists. Our activities 

21 include maintaining and enhancing environmental 

22 quality and monitoring federal agency actions to 
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1 ensure that federal statutes, enacted to protect 

2 human health and the environment, are fully and 

3 properly implemented. 

4 Since 1970, NRDC has sought to improve 

5 the environmental health and safety conditions at 

6 civil nuclear facilities licensed by the NRC, 

7 under standards set by EPA. We have called for 

8 an EPA rule to address ISL uranium mining for 

9 nearly a decade and we are truly pleased that 

10 this draft has finally arrived. EPA has proposed 

11 these new standards and amendments under its 

12 Atomic Energy Act authority, as amended by 

13 Section 206 of the Uranium Mill Tailings 

14 Radiation Control Act, or UMTRCA, and I will not 

15 say the whole law again, just UMTRCA of 1978. 

16 NRDC supports EPA's action in this 

17 appropriate exercise of federal authority. We 

18 look forward to offering extensive written 

19 comments in support of strengthening the rule by 

20 the April 27th deadline. 

21 And I'll speak extemporaneously for a 

22 moment now. We don't see the need for an 
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1 extension of time. You've already provided a 

2 generous 90 days. However, if there is an 

3 extension of time, we've waited so long for this 

4 rule and there's so much in terms of the record 

5 that many groups have already created, we think 

6 that this can be done with all dispatch, and an 

7 additional 30 days, if that accommodates all the 

8 parties, should be adequate. 

9 I'll move on. As a first order of 

10 business, we're pleased to offer our unequivocal 

11 support today to EPA's well-grounded 

12 interpretation of the law, that UMTRCA is the 

13 controlling legal authority for protection of 

14 groundwater for in-situ leaching uranium mining 

15 sites, and that the NRC or any agreement state is 

16 obligated to implement these 40 CFR Part 192 

17 standards to implement these standards. 

18 So when we file our written comments in 

19 April, we will demonstrate, in extensive detail, 

20 that reliance on how NRC and agreement states 

21 have interpreted the requirements of the 

22 underground injection control program, authorized 
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1 under separate legal authority, do not fail to 

2 adequately address groundwater protections at ISL 

3 facilities. Neither does the NRC licensing 

4 regime. Rather, the current NRC interpretation 

5 of its statutory regime and regulatory 

6 obligations directly allows for significant 

7 contamination of scarce sources of Western 

8 groundwater. As EPA noted in this draft, if the 

9 groundwater is not considered a U.S. drinking 

10 water, as is typically the case at ISL sites, it 

11 is not protected under the Safe Drinking Water 

12 Act and the ISL mine is, for all intents and 

13 purposes, used as a disposal area and left, in 

14 every instance that we have found, severely 

15 contaminated. 

16 Next, we offer support for EPA's well17 grounded position that UMTRCA requires it to 

18 establish protections consistent with the 

19 requirements of the Resource Conservation and 

20 Recovery Act. Therefore, an aquifer exemption 

21 under the Safe Drinking Water Act does not 

22 relieve the licensee of the obligation to 
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1 remediate environmental contamination, resulting 

2 from activities regulated under UMTRCA. EPA 

3 standards issued pursuant to UMTRCA clearly and 

4 plainly apply within the exempted portion of the 

5 aquifer. 

6 Make no mistake. We expect your valid 

7 interpretation of these statutory obligations 

8 will meet with resistance on a number of crucial 

9 issues and we've already heard that today. As 

10 one example, both NRC and the ISL industry have 

11 taken the position that background water quality, 

12 the fundamental requirement of collecting and 

13 analyzing environmental data, impacts, and 

14 alternatives to an area where the mining will 

15 take place, can be done long after licensing and 

16 approving the site and long after the aquifer has 

17 been affected. Indeed, restoration goals that 

18 are never met are set on an already fouled nest. 

19 This cannot continue, and your rule, if 

20 finalized, can start the process of addressing 

21 such harms. 

22 Another example of expected resistance is 
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1 NRC and industry have asserted that environmental 

2 impacts can be dismissed as small and temporary 

3 without any underlying analysis that demonstrates 

4 a correspondingly minimal impact. Indeed, to the 

5 contrary, the impacts to the aquifer in every 

6 instance that we have seen are large and 

7 irreversible. Our April comments will 

8 exhaustively demonstrate that groundwater will be 

9 substantially degraded and that there is long10 term harm to crucial natural resources. 

11 While there are several aspects of the 

12 rule that merit our support, there are areas 

13 where the rule either needs clarification or 

14 strengthening. Issues such as ongoing industrial 

15 waste disposal for ISL operations, how excursions 

16 and upper control limits are treated, and 

17 ensuring the new standards apply to ISL mines 

18 that go in and out of operation are just a few 

19 items that need substantially more precision. 

20 But to conclude my brief statement, this 

21 rule is necessary, well-grounded in its organic 

22 statute, and years overdue. Communities and 
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1 water resources across the American West, from 

2 south Texas to Wyoming, have been negatively 

3 affected by uranium recovery for decades, and 

4 this set of standards, implemented with all 

5 dispatch, can finally start the industry and its 

6 direct regulators, the NRC and the agreement 

7 states, on a path to a full accounting of the 

8 environmental harms and costs of uranium 

9 recovery. 

10 Thank you very much for this opportunity 

11 to speak, for holding this year, and I'll take 

12 any questions. 

13 MR. LONG: Thank you. No questions. 

14 MR. FETTUS: Thank you. 

15 MR. LONG: All right. Our next speaker, 

16 again, is Katie Sweeney. I'm sorry. Let me back 

17 up. Benjamin Klein, number 5. Sorry, Benjamin. 

18 MR. KLEIN: Thank you. My name is 

19 Benjamin Klein, K-l-e-i-n. I'm here today to 

20 speak on behalf of the Uranium Producers of 

21 America, which is a trade association of the 

22 leading uranium mining conversion companies in 
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1 the United States. Our members have operations 

2 in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, New 

3 Mexico, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, and our 

4 industry plays a critical role in ensuring that 

5 U.S. nuclear reactors have a domestic supply of 

6 uranium. At this point we are providing less 

7 than 10 percent of the reactor needs and we're 

8 very concerned that with this rulemaking we could 

9 see our industry shrink even further. 

10 We're still reviewing the rulemaking, the 

11 2,500 pages of supporting documents, but we want 

12 to share our initial views today. It's also 

13 important for the EPA to hear directly from the 

14 stakeholders in the industry. I'm happy to come 

15 today. I'm based in D.C., but obviously our 

16 industry is based in the West, and we're happy 

17 that EPA has announced additional hearings to be 

18 held in Texas and Wyoming. We think that's an 

19 important step for you guys to hear directly from 

20 the communities that are impacted by this rule. 

21 We are, however, joining others in 

22 requesting an extension of the comment period by 
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1 90 days. As I mentioned, there's 2,500 pages of 

2 supporting documents, which we're reviewing. We 

3 want to provide detailed comments. It's 

4 obviously a complex issue and an additional 90 

5 days, we feel, is certainly warranted in this 

6 case. 

7 With that said, let me share some of our 

8 initial thoughts, from going through the 

9 materials. Overall, we're very concerned that 

10 the rulemaking ignores the history of ISR mining 

11 in the United States. It's already an industry 

12 that's highly regulated at every phase of 

13 operation, including restoration. Existing 

14 regulations require ISR operators to restore 

15 groundwater to baseline conditions, and we're 

16 troubled that EPA didn't, at least to our 

17 knowledge, reach out to the industry nor to the 

18 state regulators to learn more about the process 

19 to date in the existing regulations. 

20 We do recognize that EPA has authority 

21 under the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control 

22 Act to set general standards for ISR operations, 
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1 but it's the NRC and the agreement states that 

2 are charged with implementing those standards and 

3 outlining the specific steps an operator must 

4 take to demonstrate compliance. And in our view 

5 the rulemaking goes too far and actually gets 

6 into the particulars of what an operator must do, 

7 which is really the NRC's role. 

8 For example, the requirement for 30 years 

9 of post-restoration groundwater monitoring, we 

10 believe, is outside the scope of EPA's authority, 

11 and frankly isn't supported by the science that 

12 we've seen. The requirement would threaten the 

13 economics for many of our projects, tie up 

14 capital, and make it very difficult to lease 

15 land. It's very difficult to go to a landowner 

16 and lock up their land for an additional 30 

17 years, particularly when we don't believe EPA has 

18 presented evidence to show that this requirement 

19 would be warranted. 

20 It's been mentioned this morning but I 

21 think it's worth mentioning again that the NRC 

22 has looked at this issue extensively. A 2009 
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1 General Environmental Impact Statement issued by 

2 the NRC concluded that ISR operations are low3 risk. They also had a separate 2009 study which 

4 concluded, in part, "The data from these 

5 monitoring programs do not show impacts 

6 attributable to the ISR facility. The staff is 

7 unaware of any situation indicating the quality 

8 of groundwater at a nearby water supply well has 

9 been degraded. The use of water supply well has 

10 been discontinued or a well has been relocated 

11 because of impacts attributable to an ISR 

12 facility." 

13 The Texas Commission on Environmental 

14 Quality, which has also been regulating in this 

15 area for 3 decades, also noted, in a May 24, 

16 2012, letter to the EPA that there has not been 

17 one instance of documented off-site pollution of 

18 a USDW from ISR mining activities. And so we 

19 feel both at the state level as well as the NRC, 

20 which has been regulating in this space for many 

21 years, they have not found problems with ISR 

22 mining, and have not found impacts with adjacent 
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1 wells. 

2 The EPA does reference a USGS report from 

3 2009 that looked at restoration at Texas 

4 facilities. While that report claimed that the 

5 industry failed to fully restore all 

6 constituents, the report never looked at the 

7 public health or environmental impact of those 

8 elevated levels. None of the 22 sites that were 

9 studied contained water suitable for drinking 

10 before the project, and all the projects met the 

11 definition of prior use post-restoration. 

12 So what about these elevated levels? 

13 Well, a 2009 study by NRC concluded that the 

14 remaining constituents were restored to 

15 concentrations that were above baseline but they 

16 were restored to levels the NRC staff found to be 

17 protective of public health and the environment. 

18 Further restoration -- and this has been 

19 mentioned this morning -- further restoration to 

20 address the few elevated constituents will waste 

21 additional valuable fresh groundwater. Drawing 

22 in and using more fresh water from outside the 
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1 exempted portion of the aquifer to restore what 

2 is and will always be water that's not fit for 

3 human consumption seems to run counter to EPA's 

4 stated desire to protect future sources of 

5 drinking water. 

6 When we've gone through the rulemaking, 

7 we really don't see clearly articulated benefits. 

8 The EPA does note it's difficult to characterize 

9 the probability or magnitude of future 

10 contamination problems. The EPA seems to only be 

11 able to site probable or possible benefits, 

12 rather than specific benefits or specific 

13 examples of harm that has occurred in the 

14 industry to date. 

15 We also believe that the EPA has 

16 underestimated the cost of the rulemaking. The 

17 cost estimate makes no mention of the added cost 

18 of leasing land, maintaining a surety bond, 

19 maintaining staff and equipment on site for an 

20 additional 30 years. EPA is also proposing this 

21 rule be retroactive for existing projects that 

22 have not entered restoration, and the costs of 
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1 this rulemaking were never factored into those 

2 projects, which, for many of them, would make the 

3 economics simply not work. So we feel that this 

4 retroactive provision needs to be stricken from 

5 the rule. 

6 Finally, we're troubled the rulemaking 

7 process ignores the fact that before an ISR 

8 project can commence, the operator must receive 

9 an aquifer exemption permit from the EPA. The 

10 permit can only be granted after the operator 

11 demonstrates the water cannot now, or in the 

12 future, be a source of drinking water. Yet 

13 throughout the proposed rule, the EPA notes that 

14 some day the water may become a source of 

15 drinking water. EPA makes no mention of the fact 

16 that the agency has already concluded the water 

17 is already unsafe for human consumption, now as 

18 well as going forward. 

19 So, in conclusion, we would urge EPA to 

20 withdraw the rule and instead to work with the 

21 industry, work with the states, and determine if 

22 there are updates that need to be made to the 
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1 restoration standards. 

2 MR. LONG: Thank you. I think we have a 

3 question. 

4 MR. PEAKE: I'd like to ask you the same 

5 question I asked earlier. Do you have any post6 restoration data, and how long does that data go 

7 for? Do you have any data that goes beyond 

8 several years? 

9 MR. KLEIN: I believe we do, and our 

10 members will be providing that data. There is 

11 considerable data that's been generated in Texas, 

12 which we'll be providing as part of our response 

13 to the rulemaking. I don't know offhand the 

14 number of years, but some of those projects, it's 

15 certainly well beyond a couple of years. We 

16 would be happy to show that. 

17 MR. PEAKE: That would be great. 

18 MR. LONG: Okay. Any other questions? 

19 [No audible response.] 

20 MR. LONG: Okay. Thank you, and our next 

21 speaker is Katie Sweeney. 

22 MS. SWEENEY: Do I need to respell my 
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1 last name? Okay. This is Katie Sweeney from 

2 National Mining again, and I'm just going to 

3 finish up my discussion on risk and how EPA's 

4 risk assessment is flawed for this rulemaking. 

5 We believe that EPA misreads or ignores 

6 existing well-field restoration data. In the 

7 absence of evidence of off-site migration, EPA 

8 selectively looks at well-field restoration 

9 results in an attempt to justify this rulemaking. 

10 For example, EPA cites groundwater 

11 restoration at uranium in-situ recovery mines, 

12 South Texas Coastal Plain, a Susan Hall (U.S. 

13 Geological Survey) study from 2009, for the 

14 proposition that most in-site recovery sites 

15 historically have been unable to meet restoration 

16 goals for all constituents, even after extensive 

17 effort. EPA, however, fails to acknowledge that 

18 (1) most constituents were restored to baseline; 

19 (2) even though some constituents were not 

20 completely restored, that does not mean the 

21 elevated concentrations pose a risk to human 

22 health or the environment; and (3) there is no 
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1 direct correlation to elevated concentrations in 

2 the exempt aquifer and increased risk to an 

3 adjacent aquifer. 

4 Another report EPA cites is "Nuclear 

5 Fuel's Dirty Beginnings: Environmental Damage and 

6 Publish Health Risks from Uranium Mining in the 

7 American West," a report by the Natural Resources 

8 Defense Council. I don't believe -- and I'd be 

9 happy to be corrected if this is wrong -- that 

10 the report was ever peer reviewed, so, therefore, 

11 I think it fails to meet EPA's data quality 

12 standards. 

13 Even a report EPA commissioned to assess 

14 exposure scenarios and exposure pathways for 

15 potentially hazardous constituents, mainly 

16 radionuclides, from ISR facilities does not 

17 support the agency's conclusion that migration of 

18 contaminates have the potential to result in 

19 significant exposures to individuals outside of 

20 the production areas. The report, EPA, 2012, 

21 "Groundwater Modeling Studies at In-Situ Leaching 

22 Facilities: An Evaluation of Doses and Risks to 
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1 Off-Site Receptors From Contaminated 

2 Groundwater," primarily examined failure 

3 scenarios, and that report specifically cautions, 

4 "The scenarios examined focus on failures of the 

5 ISR operations that are possible but unlikely if 

6 the operations are carefully monitored by the 

7 operators and the regulatory authorities." 

8 These failure scenarios contain 

9 conservative assumptions that are typical of risk 

10 assessments and may not apply in any specific 

11 situation because of population distribution 

12 differences, and the magnitude and duration of 

13 the exposure scenarios examined versus an actual 

14 occurrence. 

15 So not only do none of the studies or 

16 reports cited in the proposed rule demonstrate 

17 actual risk of detrimental impacts to an adjacent 

18 aquifer, they provide no support whatsoever for 

19 EPA's arbitrary decision to impose a 30-year-long 

20 stability monitoring period. Besides a reference 

21 to the 30-year time frame being borrowed from the 

22 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act program, 
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1 EPA fails to adequately justify its use. 

2 Finally, EPA ignores existing data from 

3 NRC, the agency with the greatest expertise in 

4 regulating uranium recovery, that reveals the 

5 low-risk nature of in-situ recovery operations. 

6 Importantly, NRC considers ISR operations more 

7 environmentally benign than other types of 

8 uranium recovery. In 2009, using knowledge 

9 gained during the past 30 years of licensing in 

10 regulating in-situ recovery facilities, NRC 

11 published a Generic Environmental Impact 

12 Statement to assess the potential environmental 

13 impacts associated with all aspects of in-situ 

14 uranium recovery, including groundwater 

15 restoration. 

16 The GEIS confirms the low-risk nature of 

17 in-situ recovery activities, indicating that the 

18 majority of the potential impacts are small, 

19 explains that all groundwater in an in-situ 

20 uranium recovery zone is exempted from 

21 consideration as a source of drinking water by 

22 the EPA, because it is unsuitable for human 
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1 consumptions as a drinking water source, both 

2 before and after uranium recovery operations 

3 occur, describes the groundwater restoration that 

4 is required to protect adjacent, non-exempt 

5 waters, and explains that in ISR mining non-toxic 

6 leaching agents, such as oxygen with sodium 

7 carbonate, are injected through the wells into 

8 the ore body to dissolve the uranium. 

9 Additionally, NRC prepared another 

10 document in 2009, providing the findings of NRC 

11 on groundwater from a number of ISR facilities. 

12 Importantly, NRC found that no groundwater 

13 excursions from the studied ISR operations 

14 resulted in environmental impacts. EPA fails to 

15 give adequate credence to the NRC findings. 

16 I appreciate the opportunity to speak. 

17 MR. LONG: Thank you. Any questions? 

18 [No audible response.] 

19 MS. SWEENEY: And can I -- for one thing 

20 that we've been talking about, this is just in 

21 response to Tom's question from before, about 

22 data. Quarterly monitoring data that EPA gathers 
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1 under the UIC program might also be instrumental 

2 to look at here, is what I'm hearing from some of 

3 my members. So it would be data that EPA already 

4 has. 

5 MR. PEAKE: Thank you. 

6 MR. LONG: Very good. And our next 

7 speaker is Christopher Pugsley. Christopher, if 

8 you could state your name for the court reporter, 

9 and who you represent. Thank you. 

10 MR. PUGSLEY: Good morning. Thank you 

11 very much for having me here today. My name is 

12 Christopher Pugsley. Last name is spelled P-u-g13 s-l-e-y. I currently serve as Owner and Partner 

14 in the law firm of Thompson and Pugsley, here in 

15 Washington, D.C. I am also serving as outside 

16 counsel to the National Mining Association, as 

17 well as to most of the members of the uranium 

18 recovery industry, including ISR recovery. 

19 Before entering my initial remarks, I'd 

20 like to make a couple of personal comments on 

21 this that are solely reserved to me, and not to 

22 any other party. The first is I fully support 
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1 EPA's effort to conduct additional public 

2 hearings in Wyoming and Texas. I would further 

3 comment that it would make very good sense for 

4 EPA to also consider a hearing in Denver, 

5 Colorado, as EPA did with its 40 CFR Part 61 

6 Subpart W proposed rule. This is mainly because 

7 many of the members of our members have corporate 

8 offices in Denver, as well as EPA having its 

9 Region 8 office in Denver. I think the hearing 

10 on the Subpart W rule went very well in Denver. 

11 It was very well attended, and a lot of good 

12 speakers, so I think that EPA should consider 

13 that as another public location. 

14 Secondly, I'm an attorney. The only 

15 science that I have a degree in is political 

16 science, so I'm not going to waste my time 

17 commenting on the science of ISR. I think that 

18 has been fully endorsed through litigations at 

19 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, two of which 

20 have not been finally decided but have initial 

21 decisions. We have the Hydro Resources 

22 litigation that stemmed from 1996 until around 
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1 2006, and was litigated on issues associated with 

2 groundwater, all the way up to the Supreme Court, 

3 where the Supreme Court denied review. But an 

4 affirmative decision was rendered by the U.S. 

5 Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver. 

6 The second is the Strata Energy 

7 litigation, which recently had an initial 

8 decision issued on similar issues, finding that 

9 the science is indeed intact. 

10 Lastly, with respect to the questions 

11 that have been asked previously about will 

12 additional data be made available by industry, 

13 from a personal level I would wish EPA had 

14 reached out to the industry like they did in the 

15 Subpart W proposed rule, for data input, because 

16 there was at least 2 to 3 years of requests from 

17 EPA to industry regarding data on radon emissions 

18 from tailings impoundments and other ponds, et 

19 cetera, at ISR and conventional mill facilities. 

20 Had EPA done that, the EPA may not have come out 

21 with this proposed rule, because I think EPA 

22 would have seen the science works here. 
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1 With that said, I'm going to return to my 

2 prepared comments, which are, as I said, not from 

3 a technical or science background but from a 

4 legal perspective. The initial position we are 

5 taking here is that the proposed rule itself, 

6 and, more specifically, two key aspects of the 

7 rule, both of which have been discussed in 

8 previous commenters' discussion, the new and 

9 emphasis on prescriptive pre-operational 

10 monitoring time frames and data requirements, as 

11 well as new prescriptive post-restoration 

12 stabilization monitoring, are outside the scope 

13 of EPA's Uranium Mill Tailings and Radiation 

14 Control Act-based jurisdiction. 

15 The EPA's jurisdiction over uranium 

16 milling in 11(e)(2) byproduct material is found 

17 in UMTRCA as passed by Congress, which creates a 

18 three-tiered jurisdictional system for 11(e)(2) 

19 byproduct material -- the first resting with EPA, 

20 the second with the Nuclear Regulatory 

21 Commission, and the third with the U.S. 

22 Department of Energy. Under UMTRCA, EPA was 
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1 granted the authority to promulgate generally 

2 applicable standards for the safe management and 

3 disposal of 11(e)(2) byproduct material, and as 

4 we know, these are found in 40 CFR Part 192. 

5 Under UMTRCA, NRC is directed to conform 

6 its regulations for uranium milling and 11(e)(2) 

7 byproduct material to these generally applicable 

8 standards, and under UMTRCA, the Department of 

9 Energy is directed to take title to all 11(e)(2) 

10 byproduct material and the land on which such 

11 material is disposed after licensed termination 

12 for long-term surveillance and monitoring as a 

13 general licensee of NRC, in perpetuity. 

14 Currently, the closure period prescribed 

15 is 200 years, and, to the maximum extent 

16 practicable, 1,000 years, unless waived by the 

17 Commission. As of this time, ISR well-fields, 

18 i.e., the subsurface, the depleted underground 

19 ore body and the water within, NRC has waived the 

20 long-term surveillance requirements under UMTRCA 

21 because there is no risk of contamination of 

22 adjacent, non-exempt aquifers. 
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1 As a general matter, UMTRCA's 

2 jurisdictional lines are clearly drawn between 

3 EPA's standard-setting authority and NRC's 

4 implementation, compliance, and enforcement 

5 authority. Given that the proposed rule focuses 

6 exclusively on ISR operations and groundwater, 

7 the focus of this testimony will be directed at 

8 that. 

9 The two aforementioned prescriptive 

10 proposals violate the provisions of UMTRCA and 

11 are legally invalid on their face, as they are 

12 outside EPA's UMTRCA-based jurisdiction. With 

13 respect to the first proposal or the prescriptive 

14 preoperational monitoring requirements, this 

15 requirement is an attempt by EPA to direct the 

16 Commission, NRC, on how to properly assess 

17 Commission-approved background in accordance with 

18 10 CFR Part 40, Appendix A, Criterion 7, which 

19 requires one full year of baseline sampling, or 

20 background sampling, prior to submitting a 

21 license application. 

22 The statutory, generally applicable 
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1 standard for groundwater protection at uranium 

2 recovery sites -- and this is all uranium 

3 recovery sites that generate 11(e)(2) byproduct 

4 material -- is found at 10 CFR Part 40, Appendix 

5 A, Criterion 5(B)(5), which EPA adopted from its 

6 RCRA regulations, and which the Commission 

7 incorporated into its regulations. Criterion 

8 5(B)(5) requires that groundwater be maintained 

9 or restored to Commission-approved background or 

10 an MCL, whichever is higher, or an alternate 

11 concentration limit -- and let me make this 

12 clear. All three of those standards, including 

13 the alternate concentration limit, are, by law, 

14 allowed, regardless of what any party says. They 

15 are legally valid. 

16 The manner in which NRC's licensees 

17 comply with this standard, including the 

18 determination of Commission-approved background, 

19 prior to the commencement of licensed ISR 

20 operations, is left solely to the Commission 

21 under the Mill Tailings Act, or UMTRCA. 

22 Currently, under the Commission's risk-
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1 informed, performance-based licensing program for 

2 uranium recovery facilities, as translated from 

3 10 CFR Part 50.59, ISR license applicants gather 

4 appropriate groundwater quality data pursuant to 

5 Criterion 7, for 1 year or more, and then submit 

6 it in a license application to characterize 

7 preoperational baseline. Then, after the license 

8 is issued and a full well-field, including 

9 monitor well network is installed, additional 

10 data is gathered and requires at least approval 

11 from NRC staff to establish Commission-approved 

12 background for the purposes of compliance with 

13 Criterion 5(B)(5). 

14 It is integral to licensed ISR operations 

15 that Commission-approved background be 

16 determined, so that before operations commence, a 

17 licensee will know what groundwater standard they 

18 have to comply with, under Commission 

19 regulations, pursuant to EPA's generally 

20 applicable standard for groundwater corrective 

21 action. 

22 Given that the determination of 
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1 Commission-approved background in order to 

2 commence license operation is a compliance 

3 methodology, EPA is not permitted to direct the 

4 Commission on how to comply with this 

5 requirement. 

6 With respect to the stabilization 

7 monitoring period, this, again, is an attempt by 

8 EPA to direct the Commission on how to comply 

9 with groundwater quality characteristics at 

10 Criterion 5(B)(5). As stated previously, the 

11 standards in 5(B)(5) are the generally applicable 

12 standards mandated by EPA. The Commission, 

13 however, is charged with implementing the 

14 standards and determining appropriate compliance 

15 with such standards. 

16 Now, EPA certainly has the power to 

17 mandate groundwater restoration in accord with 

18 these standards, which its Safe Drinking Water 

19 Act UIC program does not expressly require, but 

20 40 CFR Part 144.12(e) allows the EPA 

21 administrator to order a licensee to go back and 

22 conduct further restoration under the UIC program 
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1 if a US DW is in imminent danger. NRC already 

2 has determined that the Atomic Energy Act, as a 

3 matter of law, mandates groundwater restoration 

4 pursuant to Criterion 5(B)(5). So the issue of 

5 whether EPA would need to set a standard 

6 requiring this is moot. Under this restoration 

7 standard -- 

8 MR. LONG: One minute. One minute 

9 remaining. 

10 MR. PUGSLEY: Thank you -- has determined 

11 that stabilization monitoring at the end of 

12 active groundwater restoration, or in the terms 

13 of Criterion 5(B)(5), groundwater corrective 

14 action, is a necessary part of determining that 

15 compliance with Criterion 5(B)(5) has been 

16 satisfied. 

17 Thus, the proposed rule is an 

18 impermissible attempt by EPA to direct the 

19 Commission on how to comply with this 

20 requirement. 

21 Lastly, the goal of UMTRCA is to protect 

22 groundwater outside a defined point of exposure 
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1 for the appropriate closure period. While an ACL 

2 is considered to be a generally applicable 

3 standard under UMTRCA, mandated by EPA, 

4 compliance with its requirements are reserved 

5 solely to the Commission and embody well6 understood Criterion 5 requirements and guidance. 

7 Thus, in conclusion, from a legal 

8 perspective, the proposed rule is legally invalid 

9 on its face, and certainly could potentially be 

10 subject to serious legal challenge at the 

11 conclusion of the rulemaking period. Thus, I 

12 would like to encourage EPA to withdraw the rule 

13 and reevaluate the legal implications of it prior 

14 to either issuing a revised rule or withdrawing 

15 it completely. 

16 Thank you, and I'll take any questions 

17 you have. 

18 MR. LONG: Thank you. No questions? 

19 [No audible response.] 

20 MR. LONG: Okay. Thank you, Christopher. 

21 MR. PUGSLEY: Thank you. 

22 MR. LONG: And I believe we have come to 
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1 the end of our currently signed up speakers. 

2 Tom, do you have an additional -- no? Okay. So, 

3 let's take a break now. 

4 [Inaudible comment.] 

5 MR. LONG: Okay. We have one speaker 

6 left who has not yet arrived. I believe that's 

7 about 11 o'clock, so we're going to need to call 

8 a recess. So I will recess this meeting. The 

9 estimated -- the time we will begin again is at 

10 11 o'clock. So, again, if anyone needs to visit 

11 the rest room, we have escorts. For gentlemen, 

12 Tom will do it. 

13 [Inaudible comment.] 

14 MR. LONG: What? Tony. And for ladies, 

15 Kathy will do that, in the green. So we are in 

16 recess. See everyone back at 11 o'clock. 

17 Before we get started, the guards told us 

18 they found an iPod. An iPod was turned in at the 

19 guard desk. So just check if anyone has lost 

20 their iPod. Someone has found it. 

21 [Recess taken from 9:59 to 10:59 a.m.] 

22 MR. LONG: Okay. We're going to get 
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1 started with our next speaker, and we only have 

2 one speaker for the remainder of this session, 

3 unless someone comes in at the last minute, and 

4 that is Christopher Pugsley. So, Christopher, 

5 thank you. 

6 MR. PUGSLEY: Once again, thank you for 

7 allowing me to offer these comments today. 

8 Again, Christopher Pugsley, P-u-g-s-l-e-y, 

9 Partner and Owner of Thompson and Pugsley in 

10 Washington, D.C. 

11 I appreciate the additional time. I did 

12 not have much of an opportunity to get into the 

13 groundwater corrective action standard 

14 discussion, so I was just going to go through 

15 that real quick and then I'll be finished. 

16 Again, the attempt to put in a 

17 prescriptive stabilization monitoring period as 

18 part of groundwater restoration is an overreach 

19 by EPA from its generally applicable standard 

20 authority under UMTRCA into NRC's implementation 

21 and compliance responsibility. 

22 It is well understood that ISR operations 
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1 can and often do raise the concentrations of 

2 certain constituents in an excepted aquifer to 

3 levels above what is deemed Commission-approved 

4 background prior to operations. By law, raising 

5 such concentrations automatically triggers the 

6 requirement for groundwater corrective action, 

7 under Criterion 5(B)(5), and as stated by NRC, 

8 given that the Atomic Energy Act requires 

9 restoration. After cessation of operations, 

10 operators are required to commence groundwater 

11 restoration within their licensed limits, or time 

12 frames, that is. 

13 Since the primary purpose, and really the 

14 only purpose of groundwater restoration, other 

15 than compliance with 5(B)(5) is to restabilize 

16 the exempted aquifer to prevent migration of 

17 recovery solutions to adjacent, non-exempt US 

18 DWs, the Commission determined that stabilization 

19 monitoring is required to ensure compliance with 

20 Criterion 5(B)(5). 

21 As currently implemented with four 

22 consecutive quarters of sampling to ensure there 
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1 are no steadily increasing trends, and that the 

2 exempted aquifer will remain in compliance with 

3 Criterion 5(B)(5), the Commission is determined 

4 that when it signs off on restoration, that that 

5 compliance will be maintained as evidenced by my 

6 previous comment that the Commission has waived 

7 long-term surveillance requirements under the 

8 Mill Tailings Act for those exempted aquifers. 

9 EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act UIC program 

10 already has a prohibition on the conduct of 

11 injection or other associated operations that 

12 would lead to the migration of recovery solutions 

13 into adjacent, non-exempt aquifers. That's at 40 

14 CFR Part 144.12(a). Thus, again, to implement 

15 this type of prescriptive standard is 

16 unnecessarily duplicative. 

17 In addition, there are instances where 

18 ISR well-fields do not reach Commission-approved 

19 background or an MCL, whichever is higher. As a 

20 result, by law, Criterion 5(B)(5) offers an 

21 alternate concentration limit as a pre-license 

22 termination alternative, which is a site-
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1 specific, constituent-specific, risk-based human 

2 health standard that has been used and 

3 implemented through RCRA and through NRC's 

4 program as prescribed by EPA. 

5 While the concept of an ACL is considered 

6 to be a generally applicable standard under 

7 UMTRCA, compliance with the requirements of an 

8 ACL are reserved solely to the Commission and is 

9 embodied in well-understood Criterion 5 

10 requirements, one of which is preoperational 

11 class of use, which is utilized by agreement 

12 states such as Wyoming, Nebraska, and Texas. 

13 End guidance. After the pronouncement 

14 that AEA required restoration as a matter of law, 

15 ISR operators now would be required to pursue 

16 ACLs in the event they cannot reach Commission17 approved background or an MCL, but it is critical 

18 to note that an ACL is a legally valid standard 

19 with which ISR operators and, frankly, all 

20 generators of 11(e)(2) byproduct material can and 

21 must comply with. 

22 As part of the compliance process for an 
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1 ACL, an operator is not even allowed to apply for 

2 one unless it is demonstrated that they have made 

3 an attempt to restore the aquifer to Commission4 approved background or an MCL, whichever is 

5 higher, in order to satisfy the as-low-as6 reasonably-achievable, or ALARA requirement, 

7 within the Commission's purview. This is the 

8 initial step in the compliance process for an 

9 ACL. By prescribing how long the stabilization 

10 period must be, EPA is attempting to usurp the 

11 Commission's authority to determine compliance 

12 with Criterion 5(B)(5) standards, as incorporated 

13 by the Commission from EPA. 

14 As can be seen from this approach, the 

15 manner in which an ACL is obtained is a 

16 compliance measure and not a standard, while the 

17 ACL requirement itself is a standard that can be 

18 offered. Indeed, the proposed rule, on page 

19 4179, Column 3, specifically notes that EPA does 

20 not have UMTRCA-based legal authority to concur 

21 with the Commission's determinations on the grant 

22 of an ACL, which is almost what the proposed rule 
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1 is trying to do. However, when reading the rule, 

2 it's actually attempting to define the 

3 methodology for compliance for ISR ACLs, rather 

4 than simply requesting concurrence authority, 

5 which EPA recognizes it does not have the 

6 authority to do. This concurrence authority is 

7 similar to what EPA does have the power to do 

8 under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which is 

9 concur with an amendment to the state program 

10 authorizing an aquifer exemption for recovery 

11 operations. 

12 Thus, based on this analysis, the 

13 proposed rule is going much further into the 

14 Commission's authority than a simple concurrence 

15 request would be. 

16 And with that said, I'll take any other 

17 questions you have. 

18 MR. LONG: Okay. Any questions, panel? 

19 [No audible response.] 

20 MR. LONG: No questions? Okay. Thank 

21 you. 

22 MR. PUGSLEY: Thank you. 
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1 MR. LONG: And I believe that is the last 

2 listed speaker we have. Does anyone else wish to 

3 speak? I believe we have a number of speakers 

4 signed up to speak in the afternoon. The first 

5 one is scheduled to speak at 1:30, although we 

6 are going to open at 1:00, reopen our session at 

7 1:00. But feel free to show up at 1:30 to hear 

8 the first speaker. 

9 I'll close this session now, and give you 

10 all some additional time, and we'll reconvene 

11 again at 1:00, and our first speaker is scheduled 

12 at 1:30. Thank you. 

13 [Lunch recess taken from 11:07 a.m. to 

14 1:00 p.m.] 

15 AFTERNOON SESSION 

16 MR. LONG: Okay. Good afternoon, 

17 everyone. My name, for those of you who weren't 

18 here this morning, is Bill Long, the Director of 

19 the Center for Radon and Air Toxics in the Indoor 

20 Environments Program at EPA. Thank you all for 

21 coming. I'll be presiding over the hearing this 

22 afternoon, and joining me on the panel are Ingrid 
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1 Rosencrantz and Tom Peake from the Office of 

2 Radiation and Indoor Air in Washington, D.C., and 

3 this hearing is now in session. 

4 We are here today to listen to and 

5 receive your comments on EPA's Proposed Revisions 

6 to Health and Environmental Protection Standards 

7 for Uranium and Thorium Mill Tailings, also known 

8 as 40 CFR Part 192. In a moment, Ingrid will 

9 explain in more detail what was proposed in that 

10 notice. 

11 But before I turn it over to Ingrid, let 

12 me explain a little bit about how today's hearing 

13 will work. This is the second of two sessions. 

14 There was one this morning from 9:00 until about 

15 11:30, and this afternoon's session is from now 

16 until 5:00. We may end early if we don't have 

17 other speakers signed up. Please be sure you 

18 have checked in at the registration desk even if 

19 you are not planning on speaking today. 

20 I will call the scheduled speakers to the 

21 podium. When it's your turn to speak, please 

22 state your name, spelling your last name for the 
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1 court reporter, and your affiliation, before you 

2 begin your testimony. Your comments will be 

3 transcribed and included in the record of 

4 comments on the proposed rule. 

5 In order to ensure everyone has the 

6 opportunity to speak, and to ensure fairness, 

7 please limit your testimony to 10 minutes. I 

8 will signal to you when you have 1 minute left to 

9 speak. When 10 minutes have passed, I will ask 

10 you to complete your testimony. If you have more 

11 to say after your 10 minutes are up, and you 

12 would like to speak again with information that 

13 is new and discrete from your previous testimony, 

14 we're happy to have you speak again. Just please 

15 sign up to speak again at the registration table 

16 out there. You will be called again after the 

17 other speakers. If you do this, please refrain 

18 from using your additional time to rebut points 

19 made by the other speakers. 

20 After you finish your testimony, members 

21 of the panel may ask some verifying questions. 

22 Please note that during the hearing we will not 
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1 answer questions on the proposed rule, but if you 

2 have questions about the process, please find one 

3 of the EPA representatives when the hearing is 

4 not in session. 

5 If you do have written copies of your 

6 testimony, or supporting documentation, please 

7 give a copy to our staff at the registration 

8 table. This will be very helpful as we prepare 

9 the transcript. 

10 If you have additional comment you would 

11 like to make, you can submit them in writing. 

12 Comments must be received by 5 p.m. on April 27, 

13 2015. 

14 Let me assure you that EPA gives just as 

15 much consideration to comments we receive in 

16 writing as we do to comments we receive at public 

17 hearings like this one. Instructions for 

18 submitting comments are included in a fact sheet 

19 at the registration table, and you can pick one 

20 up there. 

21 Today's public hearing is scheduled to 

22 end once the last registered speaker has provided 
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1 comments, so if you would like to testify but 

2 have not registered to do so, please sign up at 

3 the registration table outside this room. 

4 We may call a break for everyone's 

5 comfort or if we have a large gap in between 

6 speakers. Just know that if you don't have EPA, 

7 a federal employee ID, you'll have to be escorted 

8 from here to one of the rest rooms. We have a 

9 couple of people here who will escort you. Please 

10 keep your visitor's badge if you plan to leave 

11 the building and return. People with visitor's 

12 badges will need to go through security again. 

13 And when you leave, please turn in your visitor's 

14 badge at the guard desk. 

15 So let me turn things to Ingrid 

16 Rosencrantz, who will summarize the proposed 

17 rule. 

18 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: Again, thanks to 

19 everybody for being here today. We appreciate 

20 your engagement on this proposed rule. 

21 [Inaudible comment.] 

22 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: It's not working at 
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1 all? Let me borrow your mic. 

2 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: Okay. Sounds like 

3 that's working. Great. Again, thanks, 

4 everybody, for coming. I guess that's about the 

5 third time I've said that today. We're here to 

6 get your comments and input on our proposed rule, 

7 Revisions to Health and Environmental Protection 

8 Standards for Uranium and Thorium Mill Tailings, 

9 also known as 40 CFR 192. 

10 We're proposing to revise this rule by 

11 adding an additional new subpart, what we're 

12 calling Subpart F, that explicitly addresses 

13 groundwater protection standards, restoration, 

14 and stability at uranium in-situ recovery 

15 operations. 

16 The major provisions of this proposal 

17 include the following. We're specifying the 

18 minimum 13 constituents for which groundwater 

19 protection standards must be met. Those 13 

20 constituents are in the preamble and the rule. 

21 We are specifying monitoring requirements for 

22 different phases of operation, including 
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1 preoperational phase, the operational phase, 

2 restoration, stability, and long-term stability. 

3 In addition, we're specifying 

4 requirements for corrective actions, where that 

5 may be necessary. 

6 We announced this proposal in the Federal 

7 Register on January 26th of 2015, and that's when 

8 the comment period started. The comment period 

9 currently is scheduled to end on April 27th of 

10 this year. We have received several requests, as 

11 I mentioned earlier, to extend the comment 

12 period, and we are evaluating that possibility. 

13 Again, let me thank you all for your 

14 interest in the rule and for your participation 

15 here, in this hearing. I'll turn it back over to 

16 you. 

17 MR. LONG: Thank you, Ingrid. Okay. I 

18 would like to call the first speaker we have 

19 scheduled for this afternoon's session, Andrew 

20 Shaw, and, Andrew, you can sit at that mic there, 

21 and please spell your name and state who you are 

22 representing, for the court reporter. And, again, 
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1 you have 10 minutes, and I'll signal to you when 

2 you have a minute left. 

3 MR. SHAW: Thank you. My name is Andrew 

4 Shaw, A-n-d-r-e-w S-h-a-w, appearing today on 

5 behalf of Cameco Resources. That's C-a-m-e-c-o. 

6 Good afternoon. I’m an attorney at 

7 McKenna, Long & Aldridge. I appreciate EPA 

8 holding this important hearing, and, as I said, 

9 I'm appearing today on behalf of McKenna's 

10 client, Cameco Resources, the largest U.S. 

11 producer of uranium. Cameco Resources is the 

12 U.S. subsidiary of Cameco Corporation, a company 

13 based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. 

14 In 2004, Cameco Resources produced 2.7 

15 million pounds of uranium. Cameco Resources' 

16 U.S. production, coupled with Cameco's global 

17 production, supply approximately 30 percent of 

18 the uranium field needs for U.S. nuclear 

19 reactors, which constitute about 20 percent of 

20 the electricity mix in the U.S. President Obama 

21 and Administrator McCarthy have repeatedly 

22 emphasized that nuclear energy, the largest 
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1 source of low-carbon power in the U.S., is 

2 essential to meeting the Administration's effort 

3 to reduce CO2 emissions. 

4 Cameco Resources is also a vital part of 

5 the economies in rural communities in Nebraska 

6 and Wyoming. For instance, Cameco Resources' 

7 operations support 45 jobs in Nebraska and 171 

8 jobs in Wyoming, along with 75 contractors at the 

9 Smith Ranch-Highland and North Butte production 

10 facilities. 

11 Ensuring safety and protecting public 

12 health and the environment are Cameco Resources' 

13 top priorities. Cameco Resources' in-situ 

14 recovery operations near Crawford, Nebraska, and 

15 in Glenrock, Wyoming, have been in operation for 

16 24 and 27 years, respectively, without an 

17 instance of contaminating surface water or 

18 adjacent land owners' water wells. To ensure the 

19 protection of water resources, Cameco Resources 

20 has installed more than 800 monitoring wells at 

21 its Smith Ranch-Highland site alone, and these 

22 wells are sampled at a minimum of every 2 weeks. 
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1 Cameco Resources' uranium operations are 

2 regulated by a variety of state and federal 

3 agencies, including the Wyoming Department of 

4 Environmental Quality, the Wyoming State 

5 Engineer, the Nebraska Department of 

6 Environmental Quality, the Nebraska Department of 

7 Natural Resources, the Nebraska Department of 

8 Health and Human Services, the U.S. Nuclear 

9 Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Land 

10 Management, the Occupational Health and Safety 

11 Administration, the Environmental Protection 

12 Agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation, 

13 and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Cameco 

14 Resources is subject to robust state and federal 

15 regulatory regimes and our operations are 

16 routinely inspected and monitored by government 

17 officials. 

18 As to EPA's draft Part 192 rule, Cameco 

19 Resources is concerned that this proposal will 

20 add costly, burdensome, and unnecessary 

21 requirements without ensuring a higher degree of 

22 environmental protection. In particular, Cameco 
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1 Resources has strong reservations about the 

2 proposed 30-year monitoring year requirement in 

3 the draft rule. The 30-year monitoring 

4 requirement is based on Resource Conservation and 

5 Recovery Act rules for engineered hazardous waste 

6 sites, who pose starkly different issues than 

7 ISR. For example, a RCRA-engineered facility is 

8 a man-made surface facility designed to 

9 encapsulate and contain hazardous waste, and 

10 prevent the waste from contaminating any surface 

11 or groundwaters. 

12 On the other hand, an ISR ore body is 

13 located several hundred feet underground, in a 

14 natural aquifer, that contains groundwater that 

15 is high in radium, uranium, and radon gas, before 

16 production commences, making it unfit for human 

17 consumption. 

18 A 30-year monitoring period will add 

19 significant new expenses to uranium development. 

20 Some of these costs include maintaining surety 

21 for 3 decades after completion of water 

22 restoration; maintaining UIC Class I deep 
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1 disposal wells and maintaining the well-field 

2 surface infrastructure. 

3 Cameco Resources is also concerned that 

4 the basis for the proposed regulation does not 

5 consider the record of the industry or the 

6 science that is available to evaluate the 

7 restoration of the groundwater. Cameco has 

8 provided water quality data, operational data, 

9 and core samples from its operations to 

10 independent academic researchers who are funded 

11 by the state of Wyoming and the Federal 

12 Government, including the EPA, to study the ISR 

13 uranium ore bodies and the post-restoration field 

14 conditions so that science is available for 

15 informed regulatory decisions. 

16 U.S. uranium producers operate in a 

17 highly competitive global market and Cameco 

18 Resources is concerned that additional cost and 

19 uncertainty associated with this proposal could 

20 inhibit the company and the sector's ability to 

21 maintain and/or expand uranium production. Cameco 

22 Resources is also concerned that EPA's draft 
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1 proposal will not enhance public health and 

2 environmental protection. For instance, EPA's 

3 draft rule noted that the environmental and 

4 public health benefits of new monitoring 

5 requirements are difficult to characterize. 

6 The 30-year monitoring requirement may, 

7 however, result in the unintended consequence of 

8 delaying service reclamation efforts. 

9 Specifically, uranium producers and state 

10 regulators will be reluctant to ever fully close 

11 wells, header houses, and related facilities due 

12 to concerns that they may be necessary sometime 

13 before the 30-year monitoring period expires. 

14 Consequently, the monitoring requirement will 

15 result in wells and facilities being maintained 

16 at the same level they are in while they are in 

17 production, rather than the operator safely and 

18 completely closing, restoring, and reclaiming the 

19 area in a timely manner. 

20 In summary, these new regulations will 

21 add additional cost to Cameco Resources' 

22 operations, and such costs will make it more 
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1 difficult for the company and other U.S. 

2 producers to maintain existing production or 

3 develop new operations. This is an important 

4 point, as U.S. nuclear reactors currently receive 

5 less than 10 percent of their uranium fuel needs 

6 from domestic producers. Thus, additional cost 

7 may make it even more difficult for U.S. 

8 operators to produce uranium and raise energy 

9 security concerns for our domestic power system. 

10 Moreover, EPA's draft proposal offers undefined 

11 environmental benefits and may have the perverse 

12 effect of delaying important and necessary 

13 reclamation efforts. 

14 In light of the significant economic 

15 policy and technical issues raised by EPA's draft 

16 proposal, Cameco Resources would like to 

17 respectfully request that the agency grant a 180-

18 day extension in order to provide the industry 

19 and all stakeholders with the opportunity to 

20 review the rule and the associated 2,500 pages of 

21 supporting documents. 

22 Safe and responsible production of 
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1 uranium is Cameco Resources' top priority, and 

2 the company is committed to working with state 

3 and federal regulators, including the EPA, on 

4 informed rulemaking. In the weeks and months 

5 ahead, Cameco Resources looks forward to 

6 discussing with EPA about the company and the 

7 industry's environmental record on ISR. 

8 Thank you for the opportunity to speak 

9 today on this important issue. 

10 MR. LONG: Thank you. Any questions from 

11 the panel? 

12 MR. PEAKE: You were talking about the 

13 costs, and I was wondering, would you be 

14 providing cost information as part of your 

15 written submission in the future. 

16 MR. SHAW: Thank you for the question. 

17 Our intention is to detail the cost impacts in 

18 our written submission. That's something that 

19 Cameco Resources is currently reviewing. I think 

20 one of the reasons that we are requesting, and 

21 others in the industry are request a time 

22 extension is to be able to fully evaluate and 
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1 provide EPA with as informed of an estimate on 

2 the cost impacts as possible. 

3 MR. PEAKE: And then as part of that, 

4 would you be able to provide any cost information 

5 on how the -- you had mentioned the 30-year 

6 period, but you didn't address the potential for 

7 shortening that period with geochemical modeling. 

8 So will you be providing cost information related 

9 to that option, as well as just the 30-yaer? 

10 MR. SHAW: That's something that we'll 

11 certainly look at, if that would be helpful for 

12 the agency. I think that we were intending to 

13 look at that, but if that would be helpful to you 

14 guys as you look at the comments, we would be 

15 happy to provide information on that. 

16 MR. PEAKE: Okay. Thank you. 

17 MR. LONG: Okay. Thank you, Andrew. I'd 

18 like to call our next speaker, who is Aaron 

19 Mintzes. And, Aaron, if you could spell your 

20 last name and describe who you're representing. 

21 MR. MINTZES: Thank you. My name is Aaron 

22 Mintzes. That's M-i-n-t-z-e-s. I'm with 
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1 Earthworks. Earthworks is a national NGO based 

2 here in D.C., that works to protect communities 

3 and the environment from the impacts of mineral 

4 development, while seeking sustainable solutions. 

5 I just have a couple of brief points that 

6 I would like to make. Thank you for coming out 

7 with this proposal. There are some really, really 

8 good things that EPA has contemplated in this 

9 proposal, and we really appreciate your moving 

10 forward with this. We believe that effective and 

11 meaningful groundwater protections for ISL 

12 uranium mining and milling facilities are really 

13 long overdue, and that these new standards are 

14 really desperately needed in order to protect 

15 groundwater supplies, particularly in Western 

16 states. 

17 We generally think that the ISL uranium 

18 industry is largely under-regulated, and that 

19 ISL's companies have had a poor record in 

20 restoring polluted aquifers to pre-mining 

21 conditions. 

22 I did want to make a brief comment. 
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1 Forgive me if this is slightly tangential, but I 

2 wanted to make a brief comment about the aquifer 

3 exemption itself. We would like EPA to look at 

4 this aquifer exemption. We believe that the whole 

5 process for declaring these exemptions is not 

6 working as it should. We think that the 

7 exemptions are granted too readily. 

8 But more to the point, I think in light 

9 of emerging technologies, as well as the effect 

10 of water scarcity, particularly in the West, as 

11 well as climate change, it's important to 

12 reevaluate how these aquifer exemptions are 

13 granted, and it is our view that if EPA were to 

14 reevaluate this situation, we may find that what 

15 was once considered -- forgive me if I don't get 

16 the technical jargon right -- what was a 

17 nonpotable source of drinking water, I think the 

18 standard is, what, 10,000 milligrams of total 

19 dissolved solids or something per liter. We 

20 believe that what was once considered a potential 

21 for an aquifer exemption may no longer apply in 

22 light of the changing circumstances that I just 
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1 mentioned -- water scarcity, climate change, and 

2 so on -- as well as emerging technology, for 

3 that. 

4 EPA should also address other issues in 

5 this proposed rule that speak to potential for 

6 spills or leaks from the ponds or impoundments 

7 that could be potential sources of groundwater 

8 pollution, and EPA should do more to fully 

9 address the presence of certain geological 

10 factors, or existing unplugged or abandoned wells 

11 that may help determine whether certain aquifers 

12 are unsuitable for ISL mining. 

13 We have concerns about how the 

14 alternative concentration limits may end up 

15 playing out in practice, and we would urge you to 

16 consider the technical written comments that we 

17 will submit in partnership with some of our 

18 colleagues, to EPA at the appropriate time, to 

19 address those in greater detail. 

20 Again, I wanted to say I really 

21 appreciate what EPA is doing here. This is an 

22 important step and this is the right thing to do. 
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1 Thank you. 

2 MR. LONG: Any questions from the panel? 

3 [No audible response.] 

4 MR. LONG: No. Okay. Thank you, Andrew 

5 [sic]. Our next Anthony Thompson, and, again, we 

6 have a 10-minute limit, Anthony. I'll signal you 

7 when a minute is left. 

8 MR. THOMPSON: Okay. I'll do my best. 

9 MR. LONG: I mentioned this before. I'm 

10 not sure you were here. If you want to speak for 

11 some additional time, that's okay. You just need 

12 to go back and register for another slot. 

13 MR. THOMPSON: Standard EPA efficiency. 

14 Risk assessment is defined by the National 

15 Research Council. The National Academy of 

16 Science refers to the characterization of the 

17 expected adverse health effects of exposure to 

18 potentially hazardous substances. Risk 

19 management, on the other hand, is the public 

20 process of deciding what to do where risk has 

21 been determined to exist. 

22 MR. PEAKE: Could you speak more into the 
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1 microphone, please? 

2 MR. THOMPSON: Within the context of a 

3 given pollution control program, risk management 

4 requires the decision-maker to act by integrating 

5 risk assessment with considerations of 

6 engineering feasibility and figuring out how to 

7 exercise our imperative to reduce risk in the 

8 light socio-economic and political factors. This 

9 is accomplished through a system that guarantees 

10 risk management is informed but not determined by 

11 science. 

12 Risk assessments involve varying degrees 

13 of uncertainty, even assuming the data are 

14 reliable and politicization of the scientific 

15 review has not occurred. As one commenter has 

16 explained, there are three distinct analytical 

17 areas in risk assessment -- source 

18 characterization transport, and exposure 

19 assessment and dose response assessment. Careful 

20 treatment of subjectivity, uncertainty, and 

21 statistics is required in all phases of risk 

22 assessment. A firm may need to use realistic 
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1 assumptions and models, rather than just merely 

2 conservative assumptions that may be politically 

3 safe but have little relationship to actual 

4 environmental risk and health problems. 

5 The Resource Conservation and Recovery 

6 Act imposes waste management requirements on 

7 substances that pose a substantial present or 

8 potential hazard to human health or the 

9 environment. Similar provisions that invite and 

10 require assessment or risk exist for other 

11 statutes. 

12 The Benzene decision by the Supreme 

13 Court, Industrial Union case, was a leading case 

14 wherein the Supreme Court found that before an 

15 agency can promulgate any permanent health or 

16 safety standard, the Secretary, in this case, of 

17 OSHA, is required to make a threshold finding 

18 that a place of employment is unsafe, in the 

19 sense that significant risks are present and can 

20 be eliminated or lessened by a change in 

21 practices. 

22 The Benzene decision's core findings were 
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1 further endorsed in NRDC v. EPA, the so-called 

2 Vinyl Chloride decision. First the Court 

3 endorsed risk assessment based on realistic 

4 assumptions in light of the best available 

5 scientific information. EPA's task, the Courts 

6 concluded, is to determine what inferences should 

7 be drawn from available scientific data and 

8 decide what risks are acceptable in the world in 

9 which we live. 

10 Second, the Court noted that 

11 determination of acceptable risk will always be 

12 marked by scientific uncertainty. The Court 

13 further stated, as the Supreme Court has stated 

14 recently, safe does not mean risk-free. Instead, 

15 something is unsafe only when it threatens humans 

16 with a significant risk of harm. So the standard 

17 for promulgating health and safety standards in 

18 this country is that you are addressing a 

19 significant risk of harm. 

20 There is another case and I'm not going 

21 to go into that. I'm going to cut it out. But 

22 read together, the Benzene and the Vinyl Chloride 
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1 Decisions, disfavor agency reliance on 

2 simplistic, unnecessarily conservative approaches 

3 for making judgments of risk. In these 

4 decisions, the Courts acknowledged that the 

5 quantification of risk is a difficult task, but 

6 it must be undertaken to establish credible, 

7 reliable, and legally supportable judgments on 

8 what risks are present, what regulatory actions 

9 should be taken. When properly applied and 

10 subjected to meaningful peer review, science can 

11 serve as a significant legitimizer of regulatory 

12 decision-making, this from former EPA 

13 Administrator, William Ruckleshaus. 

14 The EPA Science Advisory Board report on 

15 radiation risk assessment recommended using best 

16 estimates with appropriate statements of 

17 uncertainty in all risk assessments. Without 

18 rigorous and quantitative assessment of 

19 uncertainty, risk cannot be scientifically 

20 evaluated, and the credibility of dose or risk 

21 values cannot be judged. To improve the 

22 reliability of risk assessments, sensitivity 
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1 analysis can be conducted to reveal the most 

2 influential pathways and parameters, and guide 

3 the expenditure of resources in effort for the 

4 sake of improvement. 

5 The benefit of quantified uncertainty is 

6 to provide lucid and unambiguous information to 

7 the decision-maker so the potential value of the 

8 information is clearly understood, because risk 

9 is brewed from the equal dose of two ingredients 

10 -- probabilities and consequences. Risk 

11 assessment must evaluate the probability of some 

12 harm coming to an individual or population as a 

13 result of exposure to a substance or situation. 

14 Significance is a generally applicable 

15 legal standard endorsed by the Supreme Court in 

16 the Benzene Decision, by the legislative history 

17 of the Clean Air Act, as addressed by the Vinyl 

18 Chloride Decision, and it's particularly 

19 appropriate where carcinogenic pollutants with no 

20 known effects levels are involved. Although it 

21 may be appropriate to use conservative 

22 assumptions where there are legitimate questions 
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1 about key facts, reliance on totally unrealistic 

2 scenarios only compromises the validity of the 

3 resulting risk estimate and undermines the risk 

4 management decision. 

5 So, implicit in such approach are 

6 requirements to identify the strengths and 

7 weaknesses of each assessment by describing 

8 uncertainties, assumptions, and limitations, as 

9 well as the scientific basis and rationale for 

10 each assessment. Using the best scientific tools 

11 available will not help public understanding. 

12 Unfortunately, in this particular 

13 rulemaking, EPA has made no attempt to quantify 

14 the risk and identify the uncertainty. Indeed, 

15 since the entire document appears to be based on 

16 unsupported speculative assumptions, piled one on 

17 top of another, without any showing of risk in 

18 the world in which we live, much less that there 

19 is a significant risk from the concerns that this 

20 is proposing to address, the proposal is, in my 

21 view, legally invalid on its face. 

22 There are some examples of risk 
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1 assessment, quote, in the rule. It says the rule 

2 will reduce health risks that could result from 

3 undetected excursions into adjacent aquifers. The 

4 main risk is cancer, although I am currently 

5 unaware that uranium in water has ever been shown 

6 to cause cancer in humans, and in the Safe 

7 Drinking Water Act rulemaking, developing the 

8 uranium standard, neither did EPA. The best it 

9 would come up with is measurable changes in 

10 kidney chemistry. The proposal goes on to state 

11 that the number of cancer deaths, or when they 

12 might happen, cannot be estimated. That's not 

13 risk assessment. That's not quantification or 

14 identification of uncertainty. 

15 Another example. Assessed exposure 

16 scenarios and pathways have the potential to 

17 result in a significant exposure, so control is 

18 needed to prevent failure scenarios that may 

19 occur. What are they? There are none of them 

20 set forth and explained. There's no data. 

21 In summary, these examples are but a few 

22 of the many statements in the proposal that don't 
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1 have any supporting data, backed up with 

2 statements like "we believe," that purport to be 

3 a substitute for a risk assessment, instead of we 

4 have data suggests that this is a problem, or a 

5 significant risk to public health and safety. 

6 There are many problems with this 

7 proposal, and I'm just going to mention two 

8 others very, very briefly. The first is a fairly 

9 transparent attempt to justify the 30-yaer 

10 stabilization period on the basis of UMTRCA's 

11 requirements to provide equivalent protection 

12 under the no-tailings regulations for hazardous 

13 components of 11(e)(2). If you look at the 

14 legislative history of the Mill Tailings Act, 

15 there is a very clear delineation between the 

16 hazardous components of 11(e)(2) and the 

17 radiological components. And the comparison of a 

18 RCRA-active hazardous waste management unit to a 

19 restored ISR well-field doesn't pass the smile 

20 test. First of all, a RCRA hazardous waste 

21 disposal unit, it's not even a Subtitle D solid 

22 waste disposal. It takes the worst of the worst. 
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1 It's got synthetic materials that are very, very 

2 toxic, that has natural materials such as heavy 

3 metals. They are at levels that are extremely 

4 toxic. It's in no way comparable to an ISR well5 field. 

6 MR. LONG: One minute. 

7 MR. THOMPSON: And I only have one more 

8 thing to say. There are several statements that 

9 ISR operations are very different from 

10 conventional mills, and that is true, except that 

11 you have it backwards. You suggest that the ISR 

12 operations are more complicated and potentially 

13 more hazardous, and that anybody involved with 

14 the uranium industry knows that's simply silly. 

15 There is a huge source of radon in the tailings. 

16 They can be put on top, on the ground above a 

17 pristine aquifer. They involve the use of large 

18 amounts of acid and huge amounts of water. And 

19 then there's the possibility of wind-blown 

20 tailings. 

21 So the comparison is exactly, 100 percent 

22 backwards. Thank you very much. 
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1 MR. LONG: Thank you. Thank you, 

2 Anthony. Okay. We'd like to call our next 

3 speaker, Lance Larson, please. 

4 Sorry. One moment. Did the panel have 

5 any questions? Sorry about that. I forgot. 

6 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: I just have one 

7 question. Just your affiliation. 

8 MR. THOMPSON: I'm representing the 

9 National Mining Association, of the law firm of 

10 Thompson and Pugsley. 

11 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: I'm sorry? 

12 MR. THOMPSON: The law firm of Thompson 

13 and Pugsley, on behalf of the National Mining 

14 Association. 

15 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: Okay. Great. Thank 

16 you. 

17 MR. LARSON: Can you hear me okay? 

18 Great. My name is Lance Larson, L-a-r-s-o-n. 

19 Thank you for the opportunity to allow me to 

20 provide comments today on the proposed rule. 

21 Before I proceed, I want to get into a 

22 little bit of background information regarding 
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1 myself. I'm current a science fellow with the 

2 National Resources Defense Council, or NRDC. I 

3 work on various issues concerning groundwater 

4 across the United States. I have a Ph.D. in 

5 environmental engineering and biogeochemistry, 

6 and have been lead author on multiple peer review 

7 journal articles regarding how redox-sensitive 

8 elements, such as uranium, transport change and 

9 interact under various environmental conditions. 

10 I've given talks at international geochemistry 

11 conferences and worked on some of the most 

12 sophisticated instruments in laboratories in the 

13 world. 

14 Today we have heard multiple viewpoints 

15 from various legal interpretations of this rule. 

16 However, I'm not a lawyer and will be addressing 

17 various technical and scientific aspects of the 

18 rule, now and in detailed written comments in the 

19 future. 

20 It's well established that no ISL site 

21 has returned concentrations to baseline levels 

22 for all constituents. Furthermore, 
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1 concentrations of uranium, a hazardous 

2 contaminant of concern in drinking water, not 

3 only remains elevated but it's not uncommon to 

4 observe average concentrations increasing in 

5 order of magnitude or more within the production 

6 zone. 

7 So, to put that in perspective, take any 

8 number or any aspect in your life and increase it 

9 by an order of magnitude. So some of the 

10 concentrations are extremely elevated, from some 

11 of the data that we've seen. 

12 Therefore, under the current regulatory 

13 regime, the restoration of groundwater at ISL 

14 sites has been overwhelmingly unsuccessful and 

15 severe contamination remains within the aquifer. 

16 This obstinately degraded groundwater is 

17 partially explained by the interaction of the ISL 

18 operation with the intrinsic geochemistry of 

19 uranium in subsurface environments. When uranium 

20 becomes oxidized and mixed with carbonate, which 

21 is what occurs during the ISL process, the 

22 uranium changes its state and becomes more 
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1 soluble. This is essentially how the mining 

2 occurs. However, this new oxidation state, 

3 combined with an organic carbon, has observed in 

4 scientific literature to be much less 

5 environmentally reactive and, hence, more mobile 

6 in groundwater. 

7 So how do we know this detailed 

8 information in the scientific literature about 

9 uranium geochemistry and transport in aquifers? 

10 Over the last 60 years, Cold War uranium mining 

11 has left multiple sites throughout the West with 

12 uranium-contaminated groundwater. Restorations 

13 and transport models at these sites have 

14 underestimated transport rates, natural 

15 processes, and cleanup times. Therefore, only in 

16 recent years a significant effort by the 

17 scientific community have worked to understand 

18 the complexities of uranium geochemistry in 

19 groundwater with the end goal of treating 

20 uranium-contaminated groundwater. 

21 Over the past decade, our understanding 

22 of uranium geochemistry has greatly expanded and 
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1 must be accounted for in these rules. Sound, 

2 current, and accurate science must drive the 

3 policy, and not the other way around. 

4 Understanding the science, adequate data 

5 collection, and proper monitoring are paramount 

6 to showing, with absolute certainty, that uranium 

7 and other hazardous constituents are not 

8 migrating into adjacent, either horizontal or 

9 vertical, non-exempt aquifers. 

10 Make no mistake. Once ISL operations are 

11 completed and the pumps are shut off, the 

12 uranium-contaminated production zone water is not 

13 locked in or naturally contained by an arbitrary 

14 aquifer exemption boundary. 

15 NRDC applauds the long-term monitoring 

16 requirements with this rule. This rule accounts 

17 for unseen harms that may not be observed until 

18 years after active mining has been concluded. 

19 Further, stability monitoring needs to be 

20 required for all wells, to assess and understand 

21 the environmental impacts. 

22 I look forward to submitting detailed 
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1 written comments with substantial groundwater 

2 data and analysis associated with the current 

3 scientific literature review of uranium 

4 geochemistry. 

5 Thank you for your time, and I'll take 

6 any questions. 

7 MR. LONG: Any questions? Okay. Thank 

8 you, Lance. That is our last scheduled speaker 

9 we have on the list, although I see one. Is 

10 another speaker coming up? Okay. 

11 [Inaudible comment.] 

12 MR. LONG: Okay. We do have a registered 

13 speaker who has not yet arrived. We're trying to 

14 reach him to confirm that they still want to 

15 speak . In the meantime, just let me ask, is 

16 there anyone else here who would like to speak? 

17 Okay, or who has spoken before and would to say 

18 more? If so, register at the front desk, but I'm 

19 not seeing any volunteers. 

20 So, in that case, while we're trying to 

21 reach this speaker, I'm going to call a recess 

22 for 15 minutes. What's that? Yeah, a little 
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1 longer than 2 minutes. Let's reconvene at two 

2 o'clock, recess until two o'clock. Thank you. 

3 [Recess taken from 1:38 to 2:00.] 

4 MR. LONG: Okay. I'm going to call the 

5 hearing back to order. Sorry. Katie Sweeney, if 

6 you are ready, we will take your testimony. 

7 MS. SWEENEY: Hi. I'm Katie Sweeney with 

8 the National Mining Association, and I just 

9 wanted to talk briefly about the cost-benefit 

10 analysis accompanying the rule. EPA has two 

11 independent obligations to do this cost-benefit 

12 analysis. So UMTRCA requires it as does SBREFA. 

13 We have some issues with the costs that were 

14 actually taken into consideration, and that EPA 

15 was able to quantify as part of the proposal. 

16 Really, the only cost that EPA quantifies 

17 are the additional monitoring costs involved with 

18 complying with the rule, and we think even those 

19 are significantly underestimated. EPA does 

20 mention the cost of additional financial 

21 assurance or surety, but they don't really 

22 quantify that, and there is some difficulty in 
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1 quantifying that, because there is the 

2 possibility that surety would not even be 

3 available for an additional 30-yaer time frame. 

4 And I don't know if the people who are 

5 working on this rulemaking have been talking much 

6 at all with the Office of Solid Waste and 

7 Emergency Response -- I can't remember what OSWER 

8 stands for at EPA, but I'm sure you guys know -- 

9 has been working on, on the financial assurance 

10 for hard rock mining industry, and one of the 

11 issues that has complicated that rulemaking, as 

12 discussed recently in an affidavit by Barnes 

13 Johnson of EPA, in a court case, regarding when 

14 EPA should be working on that rulemaking, is 

15 their capacity. 

16 So EPA was required by Congress, through 

17 an appropriations bill, to look at the capacity 

18 available for longer-term financial assurance, 

19 and the declaration of Barnes Johnson actually 

20 talks about the issues that are associated with 

21 that, and how complicated that analysis is. So I 

22 do recommend that you all talk to that office, as 
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1 well, in determining whether there actually is 

2 financial assurance available, the capacity 

3 available to comply with this rulemaking, because 

4 obviously if there isn't, that would put this 

5 industry, the uranium industry, out of business. 

6 Some of the other costs that are not 

7 taken into consideration at all in the cost8 benefit analysis are the costs of maintaining 

9 your license, for NRC license. It's not cheap to 

10 maintain those licenses. It's not cheap to 

11 maintain your state permits. You may be paying 

12 inspection fees. Claims maintenance fees, if 

13 you're located on public lands, which many of 

14 these operations are, particularly in Wyoming, 

15 those costs can be in the millions of dollars, 

16 depending on how many acres of public land you 

17 hold within your permit boundary. So that could 

18 be very, very expensive to maintain, not just 

19 yearly but for 30 years. 

20 The cost of continuing the lease for 30 

21 years with the private surface holders. There's 

22 a difficulty there with this being retroactive, 
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1 unless you've already started restoration, 

2 because you've entered into contracts with these 

3 private land holders to use their lands for a 

4 certain period of time, so not only might this 

5 rulemaking interfere with that, but there would 

6 be the additional cost of working out something, 

7 if you even could, with the private land holder, 

8 and what those costs might be, or yet to be 

9 determined, but I can't imagine it would be 

10 cheap. 

11 There are also taxes for continuing to 

12 hold the land, if you're the owner of the land. 

13 There's insurance, there's property insurance, 

14 there's general liability insurance. There are 

15 equipment costs involved with keeping your 

16 operations open, and personnel costs, as well, 

17 for the additional years that the site would have 

18 to be monitored, that we think weren't taken into 

19 consideration. A couple of the uranium member 

20 companies have kind of a back-of-the-envelope 

21 calculation, and I'm sure that we'll have more 

22 refined calculations when we submit comments on 
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1 the rule. But from their perspective, instead of 

2 being about $13 million a year over the industry, 

3 they are looking at maybe $50 million for the 

4 additional 30-year period, and that's one 

5 company. 

6 So I just wanted to offer that on the 

7 cost-benefit analysis. My remarks earlier really 

8 went to the risk and/or the benefits of this 

9 rulemaking. We certainly don't think that there 

10 are risks here that these costs should be 

11 incurred at all. 

12 So I appreciate the opportunity to talk a 

13 little bit about that. Thank you. 

14 MR. LONG: Thank you. Questions? 

15 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: I have a clarifying 

16 question. I wasn't quite sure. You were saying 

17 that they were estimating roughly the cost was 

18 $50 million for the 30 years. Was that per year 

19 for the 30 years. 

20 MS. SWEENEY: No, no, no. Total. 

21 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: Oh, for the total of 30 

22 years. Okay. 
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1 MS. SWEENEY: Yeah. But that's one 

2 company. 

3 MS. ROSENCRANTZ: Right. One company, 

4 but a total of $50 million for the 30 years. 

5 Okay. 

6 MS. SWEENEY: Exactly. 

7 MR. PEAKE: And will you be providing 

8 information in written comments at a later time, 

9 with this information? 

10 MS. SWEENEY: Yes, and hopefully it will 

11 be better quantified. I am not sure that with my 

12 list of costs that weren't considered. I think 

13 that list will likely grow as we have an 

14 opportunity to delve into the cost-benefit 

15 analysis a little bit more, but I anticipate 

16 you'll get quite a few comments on that part. 

17 You might even get the comment which -- just a 

18 suggestion aside -- but one of the companies said 

19 to me, "I think the cost-benefit analysis says, 

20 well, if it drives the price of uranium up, 

21 that's good for uranium because then they can 

22 demand more for their product." I haven't found 
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1 that in there yet, but if that's in there, we'll 

2 comment on that too. 

3 MR. LONG: Okay. Thank you. I believe 

4 we still have a scheduled speaker who has not yet 

5 arrived, and we have not been able to track them 

6 down. So we are going -- EPA is going to stay 

7 here in case they show up. I think I'm going to 

8 put us in recess for the time being, for a 15-

9 minute recess. We're going to stay here. You'll 

10 have to make the decision whether you think it's 

11 worth it. They may or may not show. Tony have 

12 we heard? We have not heard. 

13 So we're going to go into recess. Feel 

14 free to stay as long as you want. We're probably 

15 going to keep the hearing open until 3:30 or 

16 4:00, at least, and we may have another speaker 

17 who had intended to come that could be trying to 

18 get here. So we're in recess. 

19 [Recess taken starting at 2:08 p.m.] 

20 MR. LONG: Okay. It's about four 

21 o'clock. I will conclude this public hearing. 

22 Thank you all for participating today. This 
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1 hearing is officially closed. 

2 [Whereupon, at 3:55 p.m., the Public 

3 Hearing was adjourned.] 

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