Brief by Central Staff
Mining – January 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Cañon City residents won a battle in December when the state government refused a request from the Cotter Corp., which operates a uranium mill on the south side of town.
Cotter had wanted to process 400,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil from a New Jersey Superfund site. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment denied the application, but renewed the company’s operating license, so that it will still be able to process uranium and vanadium ores.
The mill, which opened in 1958, closed in 1979, and has operated off-and-on since then. It’s running now, and Cotter has been producing uranium to keep the mill busy.
Last August, the company re-opened mines near Nucla and Naturita. It opened a new mine in December, and announced plans to open three more in 2005. Uranium has risen to $20.50 a pound; a year ago, it was $14.50, and at the end of 2000 it was only $7.10.
The Homestake Mining Co. operated the Pitch open-pit uranium mine near Marshall Pass from 1977 to 1983, when production stopped, mostly on account of low prices – the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant failure in 1979 seriously cut demand, and thus prices.
Falling prices then derailed a major uranium project in Frémont County, proposed by Cyprus Minerals. The Hansen project would have mined a deposit in the Tallahassee Creek drainage. Work began in the late 1970s, with production scheduled by 1983.
But when the price began to slide in 1980, the company decided to pull the plug on the $225 million project. The property has changed hands since then, and the possibility remains that mine development could begin – if the price stays high enough to support it.
