Most Moab UMTRA Workers to Remain Employed Through Winter

Most people working on the cleanup of a former uranium mill site north of Moab will not be laid off during the next three months as was originally announced last spring.

Jeff Biagini, project manager for Idaho-based Portage Inc., said work has been found for 85 of the 112 employees on the project. Portage holds the U.S. Department of Energy contract to haul 650,000 tons a year of contaminated material from the site to a permanent holding facility near Crescent Junction about 30 miles north of Moab.

“It worked out much better than we had originally anticipated,” Biagini said of winter employment opportunities.

He called the 27 workers at Moab and Crescent Junction facilities who will be laid off “a significantly lower number than we thought. For the most part, those 27 people preferred to take that time off. They had other plans or had enough finances.”

“Nobody who wanted to keep working will be laid off,” said Lee Shenton, Grand County’s liaison to the cleanup project.

He said those remaining on the job will either work at Moab or at Portage’s other facilities in the Four Corners region.

Some of the people remaining at the Moab site will continue radiation monitoring, dust control and site security, according to Biagini.

Portage had announced in April that it would suspend the cleanup project from December through February as the most efficient schedule based on its federal contract. The company receives $24 million each year for five years, and officials decided a nine-month schedule was the most cost-effective. Moab Times-Independent

Layoffs Planned at Southeastern Utah Mines

Forty Energy Fuels employees will be laid off from the firm’s Beaver, Daneros and Pandora mines in southeast Utah, the company announced Thursday of last week.

Layoffs at Beaver and Daneros will be effective the end of this month. Employees at Pandora will likely continue working until January or February, Energy Fuels spokesman Curtis Moore said.

The Pandora and Beaver mines are near La Sal. Daneros is 40 miles west of Blanding, about four or five miles south of Fry Canyon.

The layoffs result from low uranium prices, Moore said.

The affected mines will be shut down and placed on “standby” status. A few maintenance workers and managers will stay on site to make sure the mines can re-open quickly if prices improve.

“Energy Fuels is well-equipped to adjust our operations to address market conditions,” company president and CEO Stephen Anthony said in a news release. “Although our Colorado Plateau properties will be placed on standby for the time being, we will maintain these assets with the ability to resume production in a timely fashion upon commodity prices improving.” Moab Times-Independent

Ind. trailer maker laying off some Utahns

A northern Indiana cargo trailer maker has informed Indiana state officials it is laying off at least 106 employees, some of whom work in Utah. Pace American Enterprises Inc. told the Indiana Department of Workforce Development about the layoffs at its plant in Middlebury in a letter this week. The notice said many of the layoffs already have occurred. The company says it has laid off a total of 250 employees at locations in Utah, Indiana, Georgia, Texas and Oregon. Ogden Standard-Examiner