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"The more one hears about BP's ruinous catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the more one has to worry about the risks inherent in the proposed in situ uranium mining in nearby Weld County. Both BP's extraction of oil and Powertech's extraction of uranium depend on piping systems to bring the desired substance to the surface. The piping system Powertech proposes to use involves many injection wells to push chemically treated water down through the Laramie Fox-Hills aquifer, which thousands of people depend on for water, and into the uranium ore body. Many more extraction wells will be used to pull the dissolved uranium and other dangerous heavy metals to the surface."

Two groups and an individual have filed nomination petitions with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources to have lands west of Edgemont declared special, exceptional, critical or unique. The petitions were filed Dec. 28 in Pierre. Oglala Sioux tribal member Debra White Plume, Defenders of the Black Hills and the Oglala Sioux Tribe have all filed the petitions with the DENR's Minerals and Mining program to ask that the determinations be made. The lands are within an area that has been leased by Powertech Uranium for exploration and possible mining of the mineral.

When PowerTech Uranium Corp. began drilling exploration wells in northern Colorado, landowners scrambled to gather baseline water quality information and to learn all they could about the in-situ leach uranium mining process being proposed throughout several western states. Then in March, a Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality internal report revealed several years-long regulatory violations at the nation's largest operational in-situ uranium mine, Cameco Corp.'s Smith Ranch-Highland mine north of Glenrock.

Jay Davis thought a letter in the mail one October day in 2006 explaining uranium claims under or near his 80-acre Larimer County ranch had to be a joke. He tossed the letter aside assuming one of his friends was trying to pull a fast one. "We just totally dismissed it," Davis said. Then, a man from Powertech Uranium Corp. came knocking on his and neighbors' doors explaining plans to mine uranium underneath thousands of acres north of Fort Collins.

A few years ago, Ward wrote for Tomdispatch about various plans to dump radioactive waste, including 40 years worth of "spent fuel rods" from nuclear reactors, in his Utah backyard. People who lived downwind were alarmed. They had been exposed to radioactive fallout during the era of atomic testing in the 1950s and feared more of the same -- cancer for "downwinders" and obfuscation and denial from federal regulators. Since Ward wrote his account, local activists have successfully blocked the projects. Score one for the little guys.