Moab Tailings Steering Committee creates plans for “Prospector Community Park”
Just north of town is the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) project, a 480-acre site that was once home to a uranium-ore processing facility that operated from 1956 to 1984. In 2009, the Department of Energy began relocating the estimated 16-million-ton pile of mill tailings from the current site near the Colorado River to a disposal cell near Crescent Junction: this operation costs $67 million per year and is about 80% complete.
Now, Grand County and the City of Moab are asking: what could the site become once the project is finished? Every five years since 2013, the Moab Tailings Steering Committee (currently, the committee has 14 members) updates its answer to that question; 2023 marked another update year.
At the June 28 Moab City Council meeting, Russ von Koch, chair of the site futures committee, and Noelle Gignoux, an Americorps VISTA in the Grand County Planning Department, presented the 2023 update, called “After the Pile.” The process to obtain community and stakeholder input began in July 2022; von Koch said because the tailings removal will take another few years, there will likely be one more vision update in 2028 before the city and county can begin to pursue actual construction.
Mayor Joette Langianese said the vision update also shows the Department of Energy, which currently owns the site, that when the UMTRA project is done, the city and county have a plan to buy back the land and make it useful.
Last year, the steering committee opened its public comment period: it held an open house and put out an online survey. In the total 179 survey comments, most people said they would like to see the site become an event center, followed closely by trails (which received the least amount of negative comments), a boat ramp, a transit center, or a view area. Unpopular ideas included a food court, federal resource agency center, and an “artist studio village.” Gignoux noted popular ideas catered more to resident-uses, rather than visitor-uses.
Using those responses, the committee drew a map of what the area could become: a park, called “Prospector Community Park.” There’s space for facilities like an event stage, pickleball courts, a food truck court, a splash pad, trails, and river access.
“Honestly, I never thought we would be this close,” Langianese said. “I thought we would be here for another 15 years … it’s really important for us to go through this process, so we have this for the future, and so the federal government and the state can see how much work we’ve put in and how much we want this UMTRA site cleaned up so we can use it for the betterment of our community.”
The resolution to support the 2023 community vision passed unanimously; the vision was also endorsed by the Grand County Planning Commission and on June 20 was officially supported by the Grand County Commission.
