Michigan’s new Upper Peninsula mineral rush is going radioactive.

Members of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, the largest federally recognized Indian tribe in Michigan, are already digging in to fight a state-approved nickel sulfide mine to the east of their reservation. But at the same time another mining company is preparing to drill uranium test wells on public lands to the west.

Last month, Trans Superior Mineral Resources, also known as Bitterroot Resources, a subsidiary of Cameco, the world’s largest uranium miner, was granted permission by the U. S. Forest Service to construct roads, build drilling pads and bore 50 uranium test wells in the Ottawa National Forest.

Though some locals wrote to the Forest Service in support of the uranium drilling with hopes that it could someday mean jobs, Todd Warner, natural resources director for the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, noted that the company’s plan to bury drill cuttings on Forest Service land could result in radioactive compounds leaching into area groundwater.

Continued – “If a uranium ore body is disturbed in its natural geological setting, radium and polonium will inevitably be released into our environment,” Warner wrote. “The Forest Service has not noted that any additional or added precautions or testing is being required due to the potential or likely presence of uranium, radium, polonium and other radioactive elements.”

Because of the risk of chemical reactions that can cause minerals to contaminate the water supply, metallic mining requires permits from the state Department of Environmental Quality, said Hal Fitch, director of the agency’s Office of Geological Survey. But due to what Fitch called “a weakness in the statute,” exploratory mineral wells in the rocky western half of the Upper Peninsula are exempt from permit requirements.

In the case of the recently approved uranium test well in the national forest, the DEQ will visit and observe operations after being voluntarily contacted by the mining company, Fitch said.

According to nuclear waste specialist Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear, uranium prospecting threatens the Great Lakes and should be banned because of its potential to damage the water supply of 40 million people.

In a letter to the Forest Service he noted that Cameco has a record of worker endangerment and public health impacts and has come under fire for mismanagement at its McCarthur River mine, which suffered a cave-in in 2003 and flooded with radioactive water.