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Two foreign uranium mining companies have announced plans to drill more than two dozen exploratory wells on the edge of Bears Ears National Monument.
The Salt Lake Tribune's Brian Maffly reports that Atomic Minerals has partnered with Kraken Energy to develop 324 mining claims across more than 6,000 acres of public land in San Juan County, Utah, adjacent to Bears Ears National Monument. Both companies are headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Atomic says the Bureau of Land Management has already granted permits for the 25 exploratory wells, which require the companies to post just $58,000 in bonds.
The uranium claims were staked last year under the General Mining Act of 1872, which still governs mining on national public lands. The claims are on land that were originally proposed for inclusion in Bears Ears National Monument, but ultimately left out of the final maps signed by President Barack Obama in 2016.
Landon Newell, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, told the Salt Lake Tribune the project demonstrates the problems with a 150-year-old law written in an era of land exploitation, with no environmental safeguards.
“You have an operator who, with very minimal notice and very minimal review, can go out, literally a stone’s throw from Bears Ears, and drill 25 wells,” Newell said. “That’s crazy.”
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I think and hope what folks see is that the preferred alternatives that we are analyzing are very different than what the company’s proposal was. That’s the balance that we’re trying to do.”
