“I see the trucks that go in and out every day now,” Badback said.
And state regulators, Clow said, don’t appear to share the tribe’s interest in addressing the pollution.
Instead of answers, Kerr received a letter from Geosyntec’s attorneys objecting to his use of the request for information process and asking him to “revise or rescind” his questions.
Kerr’s company walked off the job a few months after the dispute began, leaving at least 4 acres of the cell covered in loose rock.
Division engineers, he hoped, would have documentation to prove that the mill had made significant changes to his original job specs.
The pollution predates the construction of the new tailings cells — including the cell Kerr excavated, which is not currently in use.
But the contamination is spreading toward the White Mesa community, Clow said, and concentrations of some pollutants are increasing.
And the overall increase of acidity in the water below White Mesa — that’s not coming from the waste cells, either, Goble said, because it occurs in groundwater both uphill and downhill from the cells.
A 2013 letter to Energy Fuels shows the Division of Radiation Control agreed to revise several background levels for groundwater at the site, including the benchmark for uranium.
State officials have repeatedly argued that the contaminated water is not used by the tribe — that the community of White Mesa draws its drinking water from a deeper source that remains clean.