By Donna Wilson, STATEWIDE Correspondent.

No one would dispute it. It's beautiful country here in Dawes County with its endless varieties of wildlife and buttes casting shadows across the land, and in the shadow of Crow Butte is Crow Butte Resources, a uranium mine. It employs 55 people.

[Crow Butte resident Donna Brown] They have been so gracious about -- they always have contributed and helped every year for quite a number of years, and we certainly do appreciate it. We feel that they care about the community and about our youth.

The small town of Crawford, Nebraska has learned to live with the mine. It's brought jobs, business, and philanthropy to a depressed area. For the most part, people are indifferent to its existence, now anyway.

The purpose of this hearing is to allow the public to express its views on the application of Crow Butte Resources, Incorporated for modification of an underground injection control permit.

There have been more than a few public meetings about the mine. The difference between now and then is the number of people who attend.

[Uranium mining critic Kate Merriman] Crow Butte Mining has been trying to protect our water, they tell us. But I was here oh, probably 12 years ago when we had our first hearings on this mine, and evidence was presented that no in situ leach has ever been done successfully without incursions into the aquifers and or above ground water contamination.

Today fewer than 10 people show up to say their piece. About a third represent the mine.

[Frank Mills, Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality] A leak occurred in mine unit 2 and the company has submitted a plan of corrective action, and the department has reviewed this plan, and we feel that as it is proposed at this particular point in time that it would probably be sufficient.

Crow Butte is asking to increase the number of uranium mine units operating at any one time. That number will go from three to five. Although they don't want to see production increased, people at the meeting are more concerned about a mine leak discovered six months before today. The leak breached the Brule aquifer.

[Jeff Tracey, Western Nebraska Resources Council] And it's our sense that the permit should be denied until the following things have been done. Number one, that the excursion within the Brule has been cleaned up and brought back to baseline conditions.

24 hours before this meeting, it's business as usual at the mine where little black boxes dot the landscape. Those boxes are wells and the lifeline of Crow Butte.

[Chuck Miller, Crow Butte Resources] We are able to drill water wells and just recover the water, remove the uranium and re-inject the water. And we're not a water consumer, we're a water user. We go around and around in circles. We will use that water many, many times.

Chuck Miller is superintendent at the mine. He oversees the general operations at the plant. In situ leach is what the mining process is called. That simply means in place. Injecting a solution similar to baking soda into the ground and then pumping out that solution, Crow Butte keeps what comes out of production wells like these. In this case it's uranium.

Is it safe?

[Mills] Well, it's safer than open pit mining, because you have a lot fewer avenues or pathways for contaminants to get into the environment. You don't have, for example, problems or large problems with dust or slag piles so you typically don't see any problems associated with runoff or any kind of inhalant.

But Crow Butte has had its share of problems. Most recently a leak in March of last year. That's still being cleaned up. In 1993 another discharge. They were fined $5,000. And in 1991 a malfunction in production wells where thousands of gallons of water spilled onto the land surface. That fine was $3,500. Some think the government has been far too lenient with Crow Butte, that the penalties have merely been slaps on the hand. Kate Merriman and Jack Hornerkamp started their family 12 miles from the mine 15 years ago. They moved from South Dakota.

[Jack Hornerkamp] This was after we had just finished spending probably two years doing political battle with the uranium mining

interests in the Black Hills, and we had just got that to a point where they had backed out of the Black Hills.

Kate and Jack question how much the mine truly benefits the community economically but especially environmentally.

[Merriman] Okay. 50 people have jobs now, but you take a long range view here. We're talking about our children's children's children's children, I mean, a long ways down the road because uranium has such a long half life. We could have radioactivity in our water for thousands of years because of this mine.

[Miller] Why would it not be harmed? The water is no good to start with. It is very, very high in radiometrics. In other words, it has a lot of radium in it.

Plant officials are aware of how much controversy is in this little jar. They acknowledge uranium is dangerous. As far as the process itself, they're happy to explain how it works and stand behind its safety.

[Miller] And our process is chemically compatible with the environment. I know my production from every well. I know my production going from an entire plant as a composite. I know how much I re-inject so I can calculate exactly how much I make.

Has Crow Butte satisfactorily demonstrated that it can restore the water?

[Mills] Yes. The company went through a pilot project where they had to demonstrate that they could, in fact, mine the Chadron aquifer and restore it as a demonstration of their capabilities prior to allowing them to go into a commercial operation.

Crow Butte is a self-regulating operation. It runs its own water tests in its own lab. But DEQ makes periodic unannounced visits to inspect the plant. Early on some of DEQ's concerns involved these big evaporation ponds. They're wastewater storage areas. Now wastewater is stored in an underground well.

[Mills] If you look at the evaporation ponds, they're quite large. They're about the size of a football field. The long term plans for the mine included several more of those. They already have three of them out there. The Class I Well really negated the need to build any more of those ponds at this time.

A relentless foe of Crow Butte Resources, Bruce McIntosh believes the NDEQ and the company have a play-it-by-ear attitude which doesn't work in Dawes County favor.

[Bruce McIntosh, Western Nebraska Resources Council] The regularly have had accidents, that this is the third largest contamination they've had since 1991, and before this, we were promised it wouldn't happen by the DEQ and both by the mining company.

[Merriman] I think they need to show us that they can clean up their mistakes. That's what I'm looking for from them is a real commitment from them that they're going to clean up the water they've contaminated already, that they don't have an exemption for it.

[Mills] The law is to try to get the company to return the water to a use consistent with uses prior to when they mined it, but if you actually look at what those uses were in the actual area of the ore body, it can't be used for anything.

The mine produces almost one million pounds of uranium a year. It's life span is 25-30 years. They're all for economic development but Kate and Jack don't want the mine to outlive their great grandchildren.

[Hornerkamp] I mean, water is the issue here. And taking a long term view like that, I just don't think as a society and us as caretakers of this area can turn our back and ignore the potential for groundwater pollution with this mine.

Mine officials also believe they're caretakers of the land. They only use its resources and encourage concerned citizen to visit. Jack, Kate, nor Bruce have done so.

[Miller] We will tell anybody anything. We have no secrets. We're self-regulating. If we have a problem, we tell the world. I don't think anyone locally is really that worried. I just don't see the problem.

Crow Butte is required by law to replace the water it uses as close to its original state as possible. But the mine falls under an exception. That essentially means although the water is replaced, the land has been written off from future use. Reporting for Statewide, I'm Donna Wilson.