MOAB — Joette Langianese stood on a man-made hillside overlooking the expanse of the Colorado River, near a huge crane lifting a rail car and said the sight was so pleasing she nearly cried.

It was this equipment, these winding roads carved up the hillside and the trucks moving huge mounds of radioactive dirt that evoked such emotion.

"It's like in eight years I was able to accomplish something, a lot of people were able to accomplish this," she said.

"This" was the official celebration Monday of the removal process of the 16 million tons of mining waste left to greet visitors on the outskirts of town at the former Atlas mine, now bankrupt.

"This is a positive project, not a negative thing," Langianese said. "This is a good day for everybody."

The "Pile," as it is called, took the former Grand County Council member to the halls of Washington, D.C., to beg, barter, plead with and nag congressional members to get it removed.

"It was a lot of work that was put in place to keep it in the forefront at a state level and in Washington," she said.

Mayor Dave Sakrison recalls the time when winds from the north would blow a white cloud into town because no liquid was going onto the Pile to curtail the dust.

"The white cloud would just take over and you could actually taste the metal."

At Monday's celebratory event, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said the people of Grand County earned much of the credit with their hard-fought efforts to make government sit up and take notice of the problem.

"The people of Moab and Grand County so cared about this issue that they made this a priority," Huntsman said. "This is a big deal."

Huntsman said any time he has visited the area, and as any other out-of-town politician can attest, they "caught the dickens" from the locals who agitated for action.

"It was people going nuclear on this issue — because that is what it took to make the wheels of government move."

The 1952 discovery of high-grade uranium ore fueled Moab's boom years and created a thriving industry.

It was only decades later, when the price of ore dropped precipitously, that mining operations folded and their aftermath — the waste — was all that was left at the 439-acre site.

The Pile stalks the ecological health of the Colorado River, contaminating it with its residue and threatening the drinking supply of 25 million downstream users.

"This has been leaching into the Colorado River since the late 1950s and has created a real dead zone along the river," said Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust, a conservation organization promoting the health and viability of the Colorado River drainage area.

Sweeping a hand across the view of the Pile, Hedden said historic pictures show the entire area swamped by the river.

"A big flood could conceivably wash this whole thing into the Colorado River," he said.

The beginning of the removal was, as Department of Energy project director Donald Metzler put it, "something many of you have waited a long time to see."

As far back as the '70s, Steve Creamer, current chief executive officer of Energy?Solutions, was conducting studies on the Pile. Monday he was able to celebrate being the contractor on its removal.

"It's a fun place to be in my career," he said. "It's even better to have a project that is right here that is so important not only to the people of Utah but to citizens of the United States."

The official start of the tailings removal — rail cars hauling the waste to Crescent Junction 30 miles to the north — actually began operations two weeks ago, with Monday's event held to celebrate ramping up to full operations.

EnergySolutions was awarded $98.7 million to remove the waste in its first phase, with another $108 million being directed to the project through federal stimulus funding. It's anticipated the stimulus money will accelerate the removal of the waste.

For U.S. Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., who twisted arms of congressional colleagues and jockeyed to get Department of Energy oversight of the project, it can't come too soon.

"I told people to get it out of here, I didn't care what they did," she said. "This is protecting our environment, protecting our community. This is a new day."

She said people often ask why she has such interest and she replies, "We drink your water. It's very simple."

The back-slapping, the handshakes and the celebration of the milestone event also included remarks by Tony Amadeo, the vice president of Midwest Operations for S&K Aerospace, the technical contractors on the project.

He said because the company is tribally owned, the work being done at the Pile is especially significant.

"We are good stewards of the environment and our ecosystem. Returning it back to nature is a big part of our tribal values."

E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com

Mill tailings

Uranium mill tailings are byproducts of mined ore from which the radioactive components, uranium and vanadium, have been removed. Because most of the radioactive elements are gone, the remaining tailings contain low levels of radioactivity. They are still considered waste, and typically also contain chemically hazardous heavy metals such as lead and arsenic. There are vast amounts of uranium mill tailings at old mining sites, especially in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.