A sign at a Powertech site in Colorado. The company is behind the Dewey Burdock Uranium Project in South Dakota.

Native Sun News Today: Oglala Sioux Tribe wins consultation ruling

NRC rules OST must be consulted

Uranium mining must meet Tribe’s standards
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Today
Health & Environment Editor
nativesunnews.today

WASHINGTON –– In a decision announced during the last hours before Christmas holidays, Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners ruled that NRC staff must heed the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s demand for further consultation on historic sites in order to validate a license for proposed uranium mining and milling operation in the southern Black Hills of South Dakota.

The ruling on December 23 was the most recent federal action in the tribe’s seven-year fight to prevent the first proposed solution mining in the state. The decision applies to a 10,580-acre wellfield project at the Dewey Burdock property 50 miles from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the adjoining counties of Custer and Fall River.

Responding to appeals from the tribe and other parties in the administrative case, the commissioners backed a contested 2015 Atomic Safety and Labor Board position that “consultation with the tribe had been insufficient to comply with the staff’s additional obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act.


Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: NRC rules OST must be consulted

(Contact Talli Nauman, Health and Environment Editor, at talli.nauman@gmail.com)

Copyright permission Native Sun News

Join the Conversation