The U.S. Department of Energy says it’s moved six million tons of uranium mill tailings off the old Atlas mill site in Moab. That’s 38-percent of the total, with about ten million tons still to go.
Workers on the site take three months off every winter, but project director Don Metzler says President Obama has proposed an increase in funding to keep them working longer.
“It would allow us to go for twelve months a year, year-round," Metzler says, "with maybe a two-week vacation just so we could watch the dollars there a little bit.”
Metzler is hoping Congress will go along with the new funding proposal by the start of the new federal fiscal year in October.
The site is on the banks of the Colorado River, where tailings from the old uranium mill could potentially contaminate the water supply for more than 40-million people living downstream