I would like to make another comment before the record passes much further away from this point.

I have a note here pointing out to me that H.R. 13650 provides only for the Federal Government to own disposal sites whereas the Commission's proposal had said that in our view it could reasonably go either State or Federal.

Mr. FINNEGAN. What do you do in a situation where the licensees-I am not sure this is the case-both existing or future, has only acquired the surface and not the mineral rights for his operation, for tailings, or, even further, if the licensee only has a lease of the surface. He can't transfer that property.

Mr. HENDRIE. He is not in a position to transfer title unless he is able to go and buy those rights from whoever owns them.

Mr. FINNEGAN. Mineral rights might be pretty expensive.

Mr. HENDRIE. They could indeed be in some parts of the West, I think.

Mr. FINNEGAN. And unobtainable?

Mr. HENDRIE. That is a problem perhaps with certain of the present mill operations. I would think it would be one of the things we would want to look at in the future in licensing new mills to be sure indeed the property on which he was proposing to put the tailings pile in stabilized form was property that was not encumbered and could indeed be transferred.

Mr. DINGELL. Doesn't this pose different problems though, not only in terms of the question of transfer and of mineral rights, but doesn't it impose some problems on us as regards the additional situation where the lease might expire? If you make these licensable materials, the license I assume would run against the mill operator, but would the license run also against the person from whom he had leased the ground on which he was depositing his tailings?

Mr. HENDRIE. I must say I don't know, Mr. Chairman. It is an interesting proposition. There the NRC would be trying to find somebody to lay its license upon and I am not quite sure which one we would get, or both.

Let me ask legal counsel to speak to that.

Mr. SHAPAR. Howard Shapar, Executive Legal Director of the NRC. By making it byproduct material puts it in the mold of the other licensable materials in the act so whoever presently transfers it and uses it, he is usually the person who possesses it and that is the materials license format of the Atomic Energy Act.

Mr. DINGELL. You are saying the license would run against the individual on whose lands the tailings were deposited whether he liked it or not, contemplated at the time of the license. I am not arguing with the logic or morals of this, but I am sure you are going to have some unhappy lessors.

Mr. SHAPAR. As a practical matter, the mill operators, the ones who actually operate the mills, are the ones who are licensed. It has not been a problem up to now.

In terms of the general thrust of your question, remember there are three options, Mr. Chairman.

One is, for the State to license it, it has to be either State-owned land or federally owned land, but under NRC licensing it doesn't have to be owned by the State or Federal Government, in which

case NRC must license it and not the State. So either one of those three options would be available. Whether or not it is State licensed or NRC licensed.

Mr. HENDRIE. I think the chairman's question goes in a little different direction. You can foresee a situation where a mill operator who is an NRC licensee has leased the land on which he has that pile. He has a license from us to have the tailings. His lease with the landowner runs out and the landowner says: "Good, get your pile off my land."

Mr. DINGELL. So he proceeds to use the piles for fill or he proceeds to――

Mr. HENDRIE. As long as we are licensing it, we won't let him upset the tailings and what he is going to do when the landowner tells him to move it, I am not quite sure.

Mr. DINGELL. Isn't the license terminated upon completion of the operation?

Mr. HENDRIE. As we stand at present it is. It would not be under the legislation.

Mr. DINGELL. The license runs against the operator of the mill and not the owner of the ground who has leased the ground for the depositing of the tailings to the mill operator.

Mr. HENDRIE. Yes. In the sense that the mill operator owns the tailings, I guess.

Mr. DINGELL. Does this lead us to some problems or to an anomaly? I am not sure that it does.

Mr. HENDRIE. If we don't have the tailings piles that are established on leased land, but on land that the licensee himself owns unencumbered and thus able to transfer under the legislation, we will not have a problem. I am curious whether anybody knows if we have any in that situation. Let me poll the experts.

Mr. ROUSE. You have raised a difficult question with existing mills. We have a situation now where a proposed mill is not yet constructed and the proposed operator of the mill has leased the land from a rancher. In our draft environmental statement, perhaps anticipating, we recommended that the operator of the mill purchase the land that the mill sat on as well as the tailings disposal area.

We understand at least right now the ranch owner is reluctant to sell the land.

Mr. HENDRIE. Are there any of the licensed mills that are on a leased basis?

Mr. ROUSE. Yes; I believe so.

Mr. HENDRIE. What we might do is just supply a short note for the record because it will take a little looking up to determine. Apparently there are some licensed mills that are active now that are in this leased-land situation.

[The following material was received for the record:]

LAND STATUS OF ACTIVE URANIUM MILLS

The attached listings of NRC Licensed Mills and Agreement State Licensed Mills include information available to the NRC staff on the status of land ownership of the site of the mill and mill tailings.

"Private/Company" indicates the land is owned by the licensee. In the case of the Rocky Mountain Energy Company, some of the land of interest is sub-leased from the State of Wyoming (primary lease from the State held by a local rancher) and some of the property is U.S. Forest Service land.

Note: (1) Chevron mill in Texas licensed, now under construction.

(2) "New" indicates mill initiated operations in the last year.

(3) Agreement State list does not include licensed leaching operations of Ranchers Exploration at Naturita, Colorado (1 million tons of tailings).

Mr. DINGELL. As regards existing facilities and perhaps as regards some of your inactive tailings piles and possibly as regards future action.

Now, I do note that title II, H.R. 13650, requires, at page 19, that the operator ultimately do obtain title to the site where he does his disposal with ultimate turnover of the land to the United States. Now I am curious. this would solve the problem perhaps as regards the future, but as regards the past, it probably won't.

Mr. HENDRIE. There clearly is an opportunity for some trouble with regard to the present sites.

Mr. DINGELL. We do not give condemnation powers here. I don't know whether you have condemnation powers under the Atomic Energy Act.

Mr. HENDRIE. I don't believe so.

Mr. DINGELL. In those instances we either have to have some form of controlling land use, buying an easement, putting some kind of notice in the land title, or subjecting the landowner's interest to some kind of a constraint, Federal or State in character. I am not sure how we attack this.

Mr. HENDRIE. I am not quite sure either, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DINGELL. If you could give us some counsel, I think it would

be helpful.

Mr. HENDRIE. Let us think about it and see how fast we can come back to you with some recommendations.

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you.

Mr. FINNEGAN. In the case of the Federal ownership provision here of these sites, are you not inviting a situation where the Federal Government will ultimately end up with a number of sites scattered around the countryside that may be very difficult in the future to manage? It is not like the Interior Department's management of the public lands where they have a large parcel of land which they can manage fairly effectively. Here you are talking about a site of perhaps a few acres scattered in different parts. How does a particular agency really manage this thing successfully in Federal ownership?

The bill requires Federal ownership, I might point out. NRC said Federal or State. The State might have a better chance of controlling sites, both inactive and active, but what happens if the State, for budgetary reasons, runs out of money in a particular year and decides they have higher priorities? How do they manage?

Mr. HENDRIE. For ownership both in the Federal and State cause, the legislation, at least as we have proposed it in our supplementary material, would retain for NRC a monitoring authority and allow us to go take a look at the sites and see periodically-we would probably make it an annual inspection and see that they had not been disturbed and note any actions we felt should be taken to maintain them in good condition, and then we would notify the States or the Federal agency that owned the site and say here is what you should do about this site and impress upon them, in effect, the civil powers that the Commission has.

Mr. FINNEGAN. You have to remember here we are talking about sites that are going to be in existence for a long time down the future and priorities with even NRC and others, and the question I am raising is, isn't a good solution to this the one that the chairman raised of requiring a recording on the local record as to that particular site so anybody who tries to purchase that land or do anything with it later on is on notice that site has dangerous material, hazardous material, or whatever, and he is in deep trouble if he starts to use it?

Mr. HENDRIE. I can certainly see no objection to such a provision, Mr. Finnegan. It is, in effect, a reinforcing of the attempt to assure that down through time, at least as long as we have a coherent civilization, there are records that say, now be careful with that site, don't just go and do any old thing with it. I can see no objection to that.

Mr. FINNEGAN. The problem of your enforcement later on if the mill operator has gone away, the fact that you inspect it and find something wrong, your license isn't going to help much because you have nothing to enforce it against.

Mr. HENDRIE. Right.

Mr. FINNEGAN. Dr. Rowe?

Mr. RowE. The problem you have brought up, the long-term problem of institutional control is just the one I think we are trying to address in the long range in final standards. We realize institutional controls only have finite lives. We should use whatever ones we have to help us, whether it be ownership or easements, but in the long term we can't depend on these, and this is, I think, the direction the long-term milltailing standards should ad