Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Roca Honda Mine

Chapter 2. Alternatives, Including the Proposed Action
Legacy Issues
Topic Alternative 1 – No Action
• Because of little or lax
regulation during the earlier
(pre-1990s) round of uranium
mining, New Mexico was left
with a legacy of environmental
contamination and health
problems.
• Legacy issues associated with
contamination and health and
safety impacts from past
uranium mining and milling
would continue for the
foreseeable future.
• Ongoing environmental cleanup,
reclamation, and remediation
would gradually reduce actual
levels of contamination and
potential exposure but
confidence would take longer to
be restored and certain long-term
health effects from past
exposures would continue to
play out.
• Elevated lung cancer rates were
documented in underground
uranium miners, especially
among those who also smoked.
• Uranium mill workers exposed
to uranium dusts and mill
products showed no clear
evidence of uranium-related
disease, indicating that exposure
to normal levels of uranium ore
was not an acute health risk,
unlike exposure to radon within
Alternative 2 – Proposed Action
(Two-shaft alternative)
• Same as alternative 1.
• The lack of open pit mining, leachate
treatment, ore milling, in situ leachate
handling, and wastepile disposal; and the
requirements for ventilation and similar
health and safety requirements of current
uranium mining regulations suggest that
there is little or no connection between the
legacy health issues of uranium mining
and processing in the past, and anticipated
health and safety effects from the proposed
Roca Honda Mine.
Alternative 3 – One-shaft
Alternative
• Same as alternative 2.
80 DEIS for Roca Honda Mine, Cibola National Forest