Moab Uranium Tailings 1798a

Tailings from the Atlas uranium mine, adjacent to the Colorado River, just north of Moab at intersection of US 191 and UT 279.

The tailings are on a seismically unstable area that is part of the flood plain of the Colorado, and thus threaten the water supply of all of the areas downriver (e.g., Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles) besides causing ecological damage to fish in the Colorado. The mine began operating in 1956, it wasn't until 2000 that an effort began to remove the toxic waste.