"What the heck is that?"

Yes, this game warden actually says "heck" rather than "hell". She's like that.

When you're sitting in the back seat of the plane, staring down into the count bands, you tend to lose track of where exactly you are. And things seem to come up suddenly.

Like this.

In this case, "this" turns out to be our newest in situ uranium project. "In situ" meaning "in place" or "in site". Rather than digging up the ore bearing precious uranium (precious as of the past year or so... three years ago nobody was looking for uranium except in Iraq), in situ mines inject chemicals into the ore bodies deep below to dissolve out the uranium, which is then sucked up to the surface for processing.

Highly toxic chemicals. Think of highly acidic mercury and or arsenic compounds. Bad stuff.

They tried this in our desert 25 years ago, and fortunately gave up when the price of yellow cake (processed uranium oxide ore) crashed with the end of the nuclear arms race. Another company recently reopened that mine, and has already forfeited their $1 million bond and are looking at an additional $2 million to try to clean up the mess they made in the local water tables.

Oh, joy.

And now we have this new project.

A friend of ours was surveying for this project the same time we were feeding and killing elk. While we were fighting bitter cold and wind, finicky machines and breaking wrists, he was riding in an enclosed Rhino on tracks to mark survey points under several feet of snow.

And since then, they've done all this. Money talks. Or, more accurately, the promise of money talks.

We can only hope this new process will be less environmentally damaging than the old pit mines.

They at least left us some gorgeous lakes...