The Pile

An 80 foot tile of uranium tailings sits in Moab, Utah, a remnant of the town’s mining history during the Cold War. “The Pile,” as locals call it, sits along the banks of the Colorado River and leaches thousands of chemicals into the river daily. Five years ago, the Department of Energy was charged with re-locating the pile but only recently did the agency submit an environmental impact statement with five options suggesting what to do with it. As Sheri Quinn reports, many locals, environmentalists, and public officials of Utah and states downstream are pressuring the DOE to consider only one option.