July 2, 2008

Contact: Jaime Gardner, Public Affairs Specialist, 303-239-3681

Public comment period opens for the October Mine Site Reclamation

Grand Junction, Colo. - The Bureau of Land Management has opened a public comment period for a proposal to reclaim part of the abandoned October Mine Site, approximately 4 miles south of Gateway, Colo.

The BLM Grand Junction Field Office initiated an Environmental Assessment after receiving a proposal from Nuvemco LLC to remove a rock stockpile containing approximately 7,500 tons of low grade uranium and vanadium ore. Once the low grade ore stockpile is removed, the site will be reclaimed with an appropriate seed mix.

Under the current proposal, the ore would be loaded with one front-end loader into 21-ton semi-trucks and hauled to a processing mill in Blanding, Utah. Permits have been obtained from Mesa County to haul the ore on Mesa County roads 510 and Z 2.4 to Colorado Highway 141 for a period of approximately one month. It will take about 24 days to haul 15 loads per day to the mill.

Nuvemco is proposing to haul the ore at night Monday through Friday to avoid impacting recreation-related traffic on John Brown Canyon Road. They propose to begin loading and hauling between 10 p.m. and midnight. They would bring all of the haul trucks down at once with an escort vehicle by 2 a.m. or later, but before dawn to help avoid vehicle collisions with wildlife.

The haul trucks would be staged on County Road Z 2.4 before and after loading. The Mesa County permit would require all county roads used to be treated with magnesium-chloride for dust control. Nuvemco will submit an Emergency Spill Response Plan to BLM and the State of Colorado to describe what actions are proposed in the unlikely event of a haul truck accident resulting in a spill into surface water.

Detailed descriptions and maps of the proposed project site are available at the BLM Grand Junction Office, at 2815 H Road, Grand Junction, Colorado 81506, as well as on-line at www.blm.gov/co (select Grand Junction on the interactive map). Comments may be mailed to the above address or e-mailed to GJFO_webmail@blm.gov, and should be submitted by July 18th, 2008. For more information, contact Scott Gerwe at (970) 244-3077.

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