The Water Information Program

Uranium mining operations proposed east of Wellington would either benefit Northern Colorado or cause it irreparable harm. Those were some of the messages delivered Wednesday to the Fort Collins Rotary Club by representatives of both sides of the debate over the Centennial Project, a proposal to extract uranium ore from sandstone buried beneath the Weld County prairie. The 20-year project would boost tax revenue for the state, as well as Weld and Larimer counties, said Richard Blubaugh, vice president of environment, health and safety for Powertech (USA), which has proposed the project. The company would use water treated with oxygen and sodium bicarbonate pumped through wells to dissolve and remove the ore. The process, known as in-situ recovery, has been used successfully around the country, Blubaugh said. But Lilias Jarding of Coloradoans Against Resource Destruction, or CARD, which is opposed to the proposal, said the in-situ process could contaminate groundwater with heavy metals and radiation.

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