Nuclear power play: Colorado's Paradox Valley pins hopes on uranium to revive local economy.

• Author: Peterson, Eric

The remote swath of the Paradox Valley in southwestern Colorado earned its moniker from the fact that the Dolores River cuts across it from ridge to ridge rather than running through it lengthwise.

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The valley's name was a big draw for New York transplant Marty Warner, president and executive director of West Montrose Economic and Community Development in the town of Paradox. "Paradox is one of my favorite words," she says. "It's always followed me around. The definition I prefer is 'that which cannot be but is.'"

The name is just one of the lures. Natural beauty abounds in the form of plenty of blue sky, red rock and pinon forests. Then there's the uranium.

The presence of radioactive rock has been common local knowledge for 100 years. It's said that Madame Curie received uranium from the area in the early 1900s, and the Manhattan Project used locally mined uranium in the making of the world's first atomic weapons. The population peaked in the Paradox Valley and vicinity as the uranium industry boomed in the 1950s at around 6,000 people, and today it's about a quarter of that. Modern Paradox has little in the way of commercial activity.

"I had moved here with the understanding they would never restart the uranium industry again," Warner says. "I had a seething hatred of uranium in general because I lived in New York. I put my finger on Uravan on a map once and said, 'I am never going there."

But once she got to know the locals, Warner softened her stance. She even ended up working in administrative support during the cleanup of nearby Uravan, the company town turned Superfund site just around the bend.

Now she sees the uranium industry as the valley's only economic hope.

"It's truly a boom and bust mineral, and right now our area could be the poster child for bust. For 25 years, there has been no industry here. The infrastructure -everything needs to be repaired. The whole town is dilapidated to the bone. This is a resource for this area - it's always been a resource for this area. It caused quite a few people to become millionaires when the mill was 'going and blowing."'

A Canadian company, Energy Fuels, is looking to build the first new uranium mill in the country in the last quarter-century. The Pinon Ridge Mill has Montrose County's seal of approval and is waiting on the state's, due Jan. 17. A lawsuit against the county filed by Telluride's Sheep Mountain Alliance is another potential...