New Kodiak 100 Turboprop at Redtail Aviation, Canyonlands Field, Moab, Utah

In black lettering on the engine cowling was the single word, “Kodiak”. With its compact size and under-fuselage baggage module, it would take a superior power plant to lift this ten-place aircraft on hot days and the high altitude (4557 ft. elevation) of Canyonlands Field. Later, I discovered that the Kodiak

lightweight materials utilized in construction kept takeoff weight to less than 7,300 pounds. With only moderate loading and two passengers, my Nissan Titan pickup truck weighs over 6,000 pounds. Built for high altitude, rough terrain takeoffs and landings, the Kodiak appeared to be a cut above any other airplane of its type.

In October 2012, I was back at Redtail Aviation working on our webcam, as usual. Even while buried in my work, I could hear the radio crackle to life. When the Redtail Kodiak pilot announced his imminent arrival in Moab, I ran to my truck, retrieved my camera and headed for the tarmac. Although the Kodiak had already landed, I was able to capture video of the airplane gracefully taxiing to a stop near the terminal. In

only a few minutes the ground crew had secured the Kodiak, unloaded the baggage and helped a full load of passengers disembark in preparation for their own personal Moab adventures.

For any group up to nine people planning a Moab visit, I suggest contacting Redtail aviation for rates and schedules. As of this writing, Great Lakes Airlines provides daily service from Moab to Vernal, Utah and Denver, Colorado. For a group visiting Moab from Phoenix, Las Vegas or Salt Lake City, a Kodiak charter with Redtail Aviation might provide better service and lower costs. Although I enjoy traveling on Great Lakes Airlines, given the chance, I would opt for the adventure of flying in the Kodiak. After all, it is an airplane designed specifically for the conditions at Moab and all around Canyonlands.

Who knows…? Maybe the next time I service their webcam, the good folks at Redtail Aviation will take me up on a demonstration flight in their fabulous new Quest Aircraft Company Kodiak 100 airplane. I can hardly wait to ask, when I return to Canyonlands Field in Moab, Utah.

Email James McGillis

"A billion here, a billion there... Pretty soon you have some real money." - Senator Everett Dirksen

While living in Los Angeles in the 1980s, I first became aware of “The Moab Pile”. Near Moab, Utah, on the right bank of the Colorado River, stood an eighty-foot tall mountain of uranium tailings saturated with acid, ammonia and radio nucleotides. In newspaper articles of that time, I discovered that seasonal flooding of the Colorado River threatened to sluice 16 million tons of tailings into the drinking water supply of fifteen million people downstream.

When I started traveling to Moab on a regular basis in 2006, the Moab Pile once again entered into my thoughts and dreams. Although the subject did not receive much press coverage, that year floods of a size not seen since 1984 again cut into the Moab Pile. Throughout its term of office, the George W. Busch administration was slow to commit funds to the cleanup of the imminent hazard.

Once the Obama administration took over, it allocated federal stimulus funds to the project. Now, four years later, the Moab Pile is smaller by almost one-third. With current funding curtailed to pre-stimulus levels, the twenty-five million people now living downstream will have to wait another six to twelve years for the complete removal of the Moab Pile. If ever there was a good case for increased federal funding, the Moab UMTRA Project is that case.

Following is a timeline for the creation and demise of the Moab Pile:

• 1952 – Near Moab, Utah, prospector Charlie Steen discovered and claimed the largest uranium deposit in United States history.

• 1954 – Steen approached the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about building the first large, independent uranium mill in the United States.

• 1957 – Near Moab, on an outside bend of the Colorado River, Uranium Reduction Company (URC) dedicated its $11 million uranium mill.

• 1962 – Charlie Steen sold URC and its uranium mill to Atlas Corp.

• 1962 – Licensed and regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Atlas Corp. continued the operation of the uranium mill.

• 1970 – The Atlas Corp. mill converted from producing uranium concentrate (yellowcake) to producing fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

• 1984 – Spring floods on the Colorado River blasted up to 66,000 cubic feet [1,870 cubic meters] per second directly into the Moab Pile, causing an undocumented release of contaminated material into the Colorado River.

• 1984 – Atlas Corp. ceased operations at Moab, leaving both the mill and up to 16 million tons of uranium tailings and contaminated soil at the site.

• 1988 – When it became obvious that the mill would not operate again, Atlas Corp. began on-site remediation of the mill and tailings pile.

• 1995 – Atlas Corp. crushed the mill and then placed an interim cover of soil over its remnants and the tailings pile.

• 1998 – Atlas Corp. declared bankruptcy, relinquished its license and forfeited its reclamation bond.

• 1998 – The NRC appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as the trustee of the Moab Mill Reclamation Trust, licensing that company to initiate site reclamation.

• 2000 – Congress and President Bill Clinton approved transfer of responsibility for the Moab Pile to the Department of Energy (DOE).

• 2001 – The DOE accepted transfer of title for the site, with direct responsibility going to their office in Grand Junction, Colorado.

• 2003 – In order to slow the migration of ammonia and other contaminants into the Colorado River, DOE contractors constructed eight extraction and more than thirty freshwater injection wells at the site.

• 2004 – The DOE Moab Project Team published a draft plan that called for moving the contaminated tailings and decommissioned mill to an offsite location.

• 2005 – DOE announced its preferred disposal site, thirty miles away in the desert, near Crescent Junction, Utah.

• 2006 – Flash flooding cut through layers of sand that covered the pile, washed out a containment berm and left a large puddle on top of the 130-acre Moab Pile.

• 2007 – EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City, Utah received a $98 million contract for removal and disposal of tailings through 2011.

• 2008 – In preparation for removal of material, DOE began infrastructure improvements at both the Moab Pile and the Crescent Junction disposal site.

• 2008 – The DOE announced that transportation of tailings to the disposal site would be by rail, rather than by truck.

• 2009 – In April, after upgrades to the roadbed of an existing rail line, DOE and its contractor began removing tailings by rail, disposing of them near Crescent Junction.

• 2009 – Stimulus Funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act increased removal activity to two trains per day, six days each week.

• 2010 – In March, the Moab UMTRA project reached a milestone, with over one million tons of tailings removed from the site.

• 2010 – In August, the Moab UMTRA project reaches another milestone, with over two million tons removed from the site.

• 2011 – Just as stimulus-funding dried up, the Moab UMTRA project reached another milestone, with over four million tons removed from the site.

• 2011 – The Colorado River overflowed its banks at the Moab UMTRA site, causing damage to earthworks and a riverside bicycle path, but sparing the river from direct contact with the Moab Pile.

• 2012 – In a competitive bidding process, Portage, Inc. of Idaho Falls, Idaho displaced EnergySolutions as the prime contractor for removal of tailings from the Moab UMTRA site.

• 2012 – In February, the Moab UMTRA project reached another milestone, with over five million tons removed from the site.

• 2012 – With commencement of reduced federal funding, Portage, Inc. announced a new concept, whereby the annual contract for removal would switch to a nine-month schedule, with a three-month hiatus each winter.

Now, more than sixty years after Charlie Steen discovered uranium near Moab, the estimated completion date for the Moab UMTRA project ranges from 2019–2025. In 1957, the original Uranium Reduction Company mill cost $11 million to build. The current estimated cost to remove and dispose of the mill and its contaminated tailings is $1 billion. For that honor, U.S. taxpayers will shell out almost one hundred times the original cost of construction.

This week, the two top stories in the Moab Times Independent newspaper concern the future of mineral extraction and processing in that area. In one story, “A controversial oil sands mining operation proposed for the Book Cliffs northeast of Moab has cleared its final state regulation hurdle, allowing it to become the nation’s first such project.” In another, “The Grand County Council voted unanimously to send a letter to President Barack Obama opposing creation of national monument status for 1.4 million acres surrounding Canyonlands National Park.”

If the president were to grant national monument status to unprotected landforms, wildlife and viewscapes around Moab, Utah, large-scale mineral extraction projects there would at last receive increased scrutiny. In the sixty years since Charlie Steen discovered uranium near Moab, have we learned anything about the true cost of mineral extraction and processing on our most sensitive public lands?

Email James McGillis

A 1950 Chevy 3100 Half-ton Pickup Truck Becomes an Award Winning Work of Art

Each October, I make it a point to visit Moab, Utah. By then, it is the shoulder season, with warm days, cool nights and many happenings around town and beyond. On October 6-7, 2012, I covered the last and final 24-Hours of Moab Mountain Bike Team Relay Race, Behind the Rocks near Moab. That same weekend, PleinAir Moab ’12 brought artists from all over the country to Moab for some fast-action outdoor painting.

The prior year, I had stopped on a Downtown sidewalk to watch woman paint. Before my eyes, she recreated Pasta Jay’s Restaurant. This year, when I saw a man setting up his easel behind the office at the Moab Rim Campark, I knew just what he was doing. Not wanting to miss the action, I grabbed my camera and headed outside.

By the time I arrived, artist Larry Rudolech had already sketched his subject in charcoal or graphite. After introducing myself, I asked if Larry would allow me to document his creation. In the “Quick Draw” format of PleinAir, I knew that Larry’s current painting would be hanging in the competition room Downtown in less than four hours. Graciously, Larry allowed me to photograph his sketch. We also conversed about his paint preparation and painting technique.

Returning to my appointment with Jim Farrell, owner at the Moab Rim Campark, the artist and his painting soon faded from my mind. After working inside for over an hour, I returned to the back lot, only to discover that both Larry and his painting were gone. “Darn”, was about all I could say. “I wanted to photograph the finished canvas.” After realizing that Larry was long gone, I sighed, “So much for that story.”

One reason that I was interested in Larry’s work was his subject matter. I too had studied his subject for over five years. In 2008, I first discovered Jim Farrell’s 1950 Chevrolet 3100 pickup truck. By the looks of Jim's old Chevy, I surmised that it had been in Moab since it was new, over sixty years ago. Like an old park ranger truck, once it had been painted forest green. Now it was equal parts fading green paint and hard-finished rust. I photographed the old truck in the carport where it stood, its front end raised up on blocks. It was obvious to me that the truck did not run.

After reviewing my photographs, I asked Jim Farrell about his truck. “Well, it still worked when I bought it, but once I got it here, it wouldn’t go any farther.” With a wistful look on his face, Jim said, “I plan to fix it up some day”. Three years later, in 2011, I found Jim’s truck parked under a tree by the office. With new hubcaps, gauges and wiring, Jim Farrell was back in the Chevy truck business. As the Rainbird played water over the cab, I hoped that its windows were waterproof.

Thinking of the great hospitality that Jim Farrell and his wife, Sue had shown me over the years, I decided to purchase Larry’s PleinAir painting and present it to them as a gift. Although the price of Larry’s art was reasonable for an original oil painting, I quickly realized that my budget was too low. Once again, I said, “So much for that story”.

The next day, I walked in to the Campark office, only to find Sue Farrell showing off a new painting that she and Jim had just purchased. Of course, it was Larry Rudolech’s PleinAir painting of Jim Farrell’s old Chevy pickup. After taking photographs inside, I asked Jim Farrell to come outside with me. There, Jim held up his new artwork, with the truck itself in the background. As the reader will see, Larry has an uncanny ability to sense both the whole scene and the details necessary to convey a separate, miniature reality to the viewer. To me, Larry’s work was impressionism at its finest.

Later, via email, Larry Rudolech told me about the great time he had in Moab that week. Following is a synopsis of Larry’s email to me.

“Ok here you go… I am sending you a photo of the Best of Show Award at the Moab PleinAir Event… and Yes, I think Jim and Sue were happy with their painting. I was very surprised and honored to be chosen as this year’s top award winner. The painting I won with was of four VW Buses at Tom Tom's VW Museum. I normally enjoy painting ‘the different’, and when I found the VW Junk Yard; I just had to paint it. I thought it was cute that people called it a Museum.

When I heard the story behind the title of Tom Tom's VW Museum, I was even more pleased I had chosen to paint it. If Moab is the home of many wonderful landscapes, this I thought was a very good rendering of what Moab had become for me. The people of the area give more to Moab than some of the red rocks. After all, one red rock is like the other, but it is clear to see that one Moab resident is not like the other. This I think is one of the great things about Moab. I even began talking a lot about the many FREE SPIRITS of Moab. I am already looking forward to returning to Moab in 2013.

Take care,
Larry Rudolech

Sometimes, when I am far from Moab, listening to the cold winds of winter, I allow myself to travel there in my mind. At my Moab, the days are always warm, but never hot. It is breezy, but not enough to kick up dust. Of course, the landscape is spectacular and the FREE SPIRITS of Moab abound. Around any corner, you never know whom you are going to meet in Moab, Utah. If you see Jim Farrell driving to town in an old green Chevy truck, please say “Hi” to him for me.

for more information on Jim Farrell's 1951 Chevrolet 3100 pickup, please visit MoabTruck.com.

Email James McGillis

A Giant Navajo/Hopi Sipapu Awaits Its Time at the Base of Glen Canyon Dam

Disappearance and Reemergence:

The historical and scientific consensus is that the last pre-Puebloan Indians (Anasazi) migrated away from the Four Corners around 1300 CE. Later, they “reemerged” as the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes. The Hopi Creation Myth centers on the “sipapu”, a hole in the earth from which all of creation arose. Every ancient ceremonial kiva in the Four Corners includes a symbolic sipapu in its floor.

The great kivas provided communal warmth and shelter to the pre-Puebloan. Since an earthquake could collapse their roof beams, kivas also carried with them the risk of sudden death. After a swarm of catastrophic earthquakes around 1250 CE, the pre-Puebloan survivors reemerged from the metaphorical sipapu of their collapsed kivas, only then to leave the land that had long sustained them.

In order to escape the ongoing desertification of their homelands on the Colorado Plateau, many of the lost tribes traveled downriver from the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. To this day, many of caches of their food and tools remain hidden in alcoves high among those canyons. As the climate dried, timber became scarce, crops failed and game animals retreated to well-watered places like Glen Canyon. Using the river as a pathway, the Ancients headed south toward new lands and new lives.

In the wilds of Glen Canyon, they found sustenance for their long trek. Nuts, berries and small game were abundant along the shoreline. Those who understood the weather cycle travelled south in summer or fall, often wintering-over in the lower, warmer reaches of the canyon. Still, the canyon was no place to dally. With the warmth of spring would come annual flooding along the Colorado River.

If the pre-Puebloan episode of climate change was similar to our own, enormous spring floods may have swept the canyon. From wall to wall, the flood would roar, erasing sandbars and banks that had so recently provided shelter for their journey. If the people upstream waited too long, their own supplies of food might be exhausted. If they traveled the river too soon, they risked an unexpected cleansing in the mighty flood.

In its February 1961 issue, Arizona Highways Magazine devoted the inside cover to a photograph of Glen Canyon Dam, then in its early stages of construction. Many of us grew up thinking that the 710 ft. (220 m) high arch of Glen Canyon Dam had always been there. Seeing photos of dam construction in the early 1960s, reminds us how recently the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation placed a plug of concrete and steel into that enormous gap.

It was then, still several years before the filling of Lake Powell, that Edward Abbey and a few brave or foolhardy souls rafted down the Colorado River. Less than one hundred years after its discovery by the expedition of Major John Wesley Powell, Abbey and his inveterate river runners were among the last humans to see Glen Canyon as it always was. In 1869, Powell wrote, “...we have a curious ensemble of wonderful features - carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds, and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon.” For his part, Edward Abbey wrote almost one hundred years later, “In fact I saw only a part of (Glen Canyon) but enough to realize that here was an Eden, a portion of the earth’s original paradise.”

Edward Abbey and many others were incensed that the U.S. Congress funded the building of Glen Canyon Dam. In his 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey waxed rhapsodic on the possibility of toppling the dam, thus releasing the waters that covered all traces of Abbey’s “Eden in the Desert”. In 1981, Abbey and the group known as Earth First converged on the dam. While Abbey spoke to a small group gathered nearby, members of Earth First unfurled a banner designed to look like a huge crack on the face of Glen Canyon Dam. Throughout the protest, there was no violence, sabotage or destruction of property. The symbolic cracking of the dam, it seemed, was protest enough.

Even those who accept the human causes of climate change tend to see it as a recent phenomenon. Outsized events, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 or Superstorm Sandy in 2011 are not enough to convince many that humans play a role in our own meteorological environment. In the spring of 1983, two years after the symbolic cracking of the dam, Edward Abbey and his fellow travelers almost saw their wish come true. Heavy winter snows across the Colorado Plateau, followed by drenching rains and unseasonably warm temperatures brought a flood of unexpected proportions into Lake Powell.

The Bureau of Reclamation was unprepared for the onslaught of water. By July of 1983, Lake Powell reached its highest recorded elevation. In order to increase the carrying capacity of the lake, engineers hastily erected plywood barricades atop the dam. A month earlier, dam operators had opened the left diversion tunnel, sending 10,000 cubic feet per second (280 m3/s), just 7.2% of capacity, down the tunnel into the river below. Meanwhile over 120,000 cubic feet per second (3,400 m3/s) was pouring into the upper reaches of the reservoir.

In this lopsided scenario, something had to give. For a few weeks, it appeared that erosion in the spillway tunnels might cause catastrophic failure of the system. Cavitation-caused erosion was backtracking from the tunnel outlets. If erosion had loosened the enormous concrete plugs that held back lake water from the diversion tunnels (used during initial construction), the dam could have failed. Although the dam rumbled ominously while the spillways were in operation, luck alone saved the day. Just as options were running out, inflow from the upper Colorado River began to slow, allowing the reservoir to subside. Perhaps warm weather caused sufficient evaporation from the lake to save the dam from destruction.

While the “outlet works” received emergency repairs, the ancient power of the river had reemerged from beneath placid Lake Powell. In deference to the facts of global warming, dam operators never allowed Lake Powell to approach full capacity (3708 ft. elevation) again. Since 1983, they have kept lake levels low enough (3640 ft. max. elevation) to capture a flood at least that large. To this day, the “bathtub ring of 1983” stands as a high water mark on the walls of Glen Canyon. Had the public known that Glen Canyon Dam would never live up to its original design criteria, would the dam have received initial approval?

Hoover Dam, built into hard granite at the Black Canyon of the Colorado River many miles downstream will probably outlast Glen Canyon Dam by centuries. Wedged as it is into the soft sandstone walls of Lower Glen Canyon, the Glen Canyon Dam may have received irreparable damage during the vibrational drubbing it took in 1983. Those who controlled the dam during the harrowing days of summer 1983 are retired now, or dead. Despite several engineering surveys intended to allay public fears about permanent damage, we must wait for time to tell.

In what we now call the Four Corner States, it is likely that a swarm of earthquakes marked the end of the pre-Puebloan era. With their kivas in ruins, the ancients could not live through the winter without communal shelter and warmth. With the last of their timber beams burned for warmth, they soon departed for warmer climes. Just as likely, it will be a series of earthquakes near Page, Arizona that will release the plugs from the diversion tunnels beneath Glen Canyon Dam. When one of those plugs pops into the Colorado River like a cork from a Champagne bottle, the scouring effects of the water will bring Glen Canyon, the “Eden in the Desert” back to the surface of the Earth, where it belongs.

Today the Navajo Nation borders Lake Powell and the Colorado River along its northern and western reaches. Coal from Black Mesa, to the north fuels the Navajo Generating Station, which is visible from Lake Powell. Several centuries after disappearance of the pre-Puebloan culture, Indians from current day Western Canada repopulated the Colorado Plateau. Centuries later, those Dine' or Naabeeho people became known as the Navajo. In his 1975 book, “My Heart Soars”, Chief Dan George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada said this:

“Of all the teachings we receive,
this one is the most important:
Nothing belongs to you
of what there is,
of what you take,
you must share.”

In his lament for the hunting and gathering days of his youth, Chief Dan George summed up all that had been lost:

“No longer
can I give you a handful of berries as a gift,
No longer
are the roots I dig used as medicine,
No longer
Can I sing a song to please the salmon,
No longer
does the pipe I smoke make others sit with me in friendship.
No longer”

As we focus on the 1961 image of Glen Canyon, without the dam, perhaps we can decommission it before it blows its concrete plugs. Otherwise, it behooves us to prepare now for the opening of a grand sipapu there, in Glen Canyon, at a future date uncertain.

Email James McGillis