Uranium fight grabs national attention

TELLURIDE – The regional fight against the resurrection of the uranium mining industry is garnering some big ink. The tension between Telluride and the uranium-rich slickrock country to the west was the subject of a front-page story published Monday by theNew York Times. Telluride, “an hour away by car and a universe apart in terms of money and clout,” has emerged as a main base of opposition to a proposed uranium-processing mill, called Piñon Ridge, notes theTimes.

If approved, Piñon Ridge would be the first new uranium-processing facility in the United States in more than 25 years. TheTimes suggests that the sometimes bitter dispute in Southwest Colorado may well be the harbinger of an angry national debate to come.

The New Yorker carried a similar piece earlier this year. The magazine had an article about the “uranium widows,” women of these down-valley communities at Naturita and Nucla who support the uranium mill despite the fact that they lost their husbands to cancer caused, at least in part, by exposure to radioactive uranium in the 1950s and 1960s.

TheTimes explains that the down-valley regions are poorer than Telluride, but also have a different outlook. They think Telluride should butt out of their affairs.

“People from Telluride don’t have any business around here,” said Michelle Matthews, 31, a school janitor. “Not everyone wants to drive to Telluride to clean hotel rooms.”

“They’re saying not in my back yard – now how big is their back yard?” asked George Glasier, the local rancher and investor who founded Energy Fuels, the company that proposes the mill.

But Craig Pirazzi, a carpenter formerly of Telluride, remains suspicious of the uranium industry – which suffered a horrendous black eye because of its cavalier approach to human health 50 years ago.

“They say it’s going to be different this time around,” he said. “But our opposition to this proposal is based on the performance of historic uranium mining, because that’s all we have to go on – and that record is not good.”

A blogger on theColorado Independent website notes further complexity in that the uranium processing would be in the Paradox Valley, somewhat distant from Naturita and Nucla. As such, it’s not exactly in the back yards of the uranium workers, either.

TheDenver Post, meanwhile, reports that the uranium processed at Piñon Ridge would likely be exported out of the United States to fuel power plants in China.

Whistler claims Olympics broke even

WHISTLER, B.C. – The organizers of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games say the games broke even. Critics, however, see smoke screening the true bookkeeping.

John Furlong, former chief executive of the Vancouver Organizing Committee, the sponsoring agency, reported that the Olympics cost $1.9 billion to put on. About a third of that was invested directly in creating venues.

That figure left out plenty of investments that may have been needed anyway but were specifically justified by the Olympics. For example, three- and four-laning the Sea to Sky Highway, between Vancouver and Whistler, cost $600 million. The new Vancouver Convention Centre cost $883 million. And the Canada Line, a new electric train in Vancouver, cost $2 billion.

And then security cost $854 million, most of which was picked up by Canada’s federal government. Other costs were covered by the provincial government in British Columbia.

“I don’t know what kind of math they used to break even, but I know it involved a large number of unexpected subsidies,” said David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

Eby told Whistler’sPique Newsmagazine that the organizing committee was exempt from Freedom of Information rules that normally govern federal and provincial affairs.

Olympic organizers had expected to make money from the games, but the economic recession dashed cold water on that notion.

“Canada’s tourism brand is now No. 1 in the world,” claimed Furlong.

Ski instructor at odds with Aspen SkiCo

ASPEN – Is the Aspen Skiing Co. a benevolent and quietly malicious monopolist when it comes to ski instructors? Arguments have been waged both ways in Aspen since a ski instructor named Lee Mulcahy leveled charges that the company was a corporate bum for paying its instructors $69 per day for lessons for which it charges $625 per day.

Mulcahy has now created an organization called People for a Living Wage.

“Corporations rarely enjoy transparency. SkiCo (the Aspen shorthand for the Aspen Skiing Co.) is no different,” Mulcahy wrote in his Dec. 15 letter published in local newspapers.

TheAspen Times reports a flurry of letters in response, including one from the ski company, which seems to object as much to what Mulcahy failed to mention as to what he did say.

Jim Laing, vice president of human resources, said Mulcahy focused on the lowest of 396 pay grades for the 1,200 ski instructors, and those making $69 per day are less than two-tenths of 1 percent, he said. Laing also said that the Mulcahy’s presentation fails to acknowledge the entire compensation package. “We know we have the best package in the industry,” he said.

Ski instructors have no union, although an effort was made to unionize in 1993.

In a filing with the National Labor Relations Board, Mulcahy claims that the company retaliated to his public letters and communications with other ski instructors by kicking him out of an illustrious club of upper-level ski pros and by trying to muzzle him.

Ski towns among leanest in the land

PARK CITY, Utah – Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most slender of them all?

According to thePark Record, Utah’s Summit County – where Park City is located – has that distinction, according to a new survey. It has the nation’s lowest rate of obesity.

The website for the U.S. Center for Disease Control, however, reports that Colorado’s Boulder County has both the lowest rate of diabetes and the lowest rate of obesity. The two are correlated, both positively and negatively.

Boulder County has one notable ski area, Eldora, if it is better known for its university and federal laboratories.

Other ski counties also are found in the top-5 rankings. In lowest rates of obesity, Boulder County is followed by Colorado’s Routt County (Steamboat Springs), New Mexico’s Santa Fe County, and then Summit County, Colorado (Breckenridge) and Summit County, Utah (Park City).

For counties having the nation’s lowest diabetes rates, the results are much the same: Boulder County, followed by Montana’s Gallatin County (Big Sky Resort); New Mexico’s Los Alamos and Santa Fe counties; and then Utah’s Summit County.

Madoff mess continues to plague Aspen

ASPEN – At least four Aspen-area clients of disgraced money manager Bernard Madoff have sued the U.S. Government’s Securities and Exchange Commission, claiming the agency should have recognized “any of the smoking guns provided by credible third parties and industry experts.”

The four individuals collectively seek more than $47 million in damages. TheAspen Times notes that a U.S. Bankruptcy Court filing in 2009 revealed at least 30 people in Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley who had lost money to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Meanwhile, federal bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard has sued six people in the Aspen area – including several who are suing the SEC. He claims that these took more money from Madoff’s funds than they invested – and hence need to fork over money to pay the true victims.

– Allen Best