South Dakota Searchlight notes that Encore/Azarga/Powertech has gotten its final federal permits for its long-delayed Dewey-Burdock in-situ uranium mining project in the southern Black Hills:
The Dewey-Burdock project — spanning nearly 20 square miles in Custer and Fall River counties — secured the last of its necessary federal permits for the project last month, according to the federal Permitting Council. The project was included last year in FAST-41, a federal process meant to improve coordination among permitting agencies and hold them accountable to deadlines.
The project, decades in the making, was added to the process in August of last year. Dewey-Burdock — named for rural locations near Edgemont along the southwestern edge of the Black Hills — requires numerous federal, state and local permits and has been mired in administrative and court appeals for years.
The mining method for the project is “in situ”: drilling wells to inject a water-based solution underground, dissolving uranium and pumping it to the surface. The water would be pulled from local aquifers and then treated and pumped back underground after being used for mining, causing opponents to fear pollution of local water sources.
…EnCore Energy Executive Chair William Sheriff said in a news release that the company plans to begin the state permitting process next [Makenzie Huber, “Company Proposing Black Hills Uranium Mine Eyes State Permitting Restart After 13-Year Pause,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.07.05].
Five years ago when Encore/Azarga/Powertech was seeking its state water permits, the company told the state it would use 379 million gallons of water a year, just over a million gallons a day, equal to the average water usage of 70% of the population of Fall River and Custer counties.
Hmm… Black Hills boosters have data showing that the local aquifers already are not able to meet demand and that they need to build a pipeline to draw up to 18.5 million gallons a day from the Missouri River to Edgemont and other dry points west.
Various conservation-minded activists have been raising roadblocks to data centers, which can use hundreds of thousands to 5 million gallons of water per day. This Session the Legislature responded with some mild regulations on data centers’ water and electricity usage. Activists trying conserve water for human sustenance will want to join long-time Dewey-Burdock opponents at the Black HIlls Clean Water Alliance in resisting Encore Energy’s reawakened and thirsty uranium project.