enCore Energy (TSXV: EU) has cleared the last major federal hurdle between its Dewey-Burdock uranium project and the start of construction.
The company said Thursday the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has issued a final decision authorizing it to begin building infrastructure for the in-situ recovery project in southwest South Dakota. It’s a green light enCore has waited more than a decade to receive.
The approval is narrower than the headline suggests. With the BLM’s final Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact in hand, enCore subsidiary Powertech may build initial ancillary infrastructure on roughly 240 acres of BLM-managed land inside the larger 10,580-acre project area. The approval basically covers portions of the primary and secondary access roads, light-use roads, four groundwater monitoring wells and overhead powerlines.
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The authorization covers the supporting work on public land, not the mine itself. Production wellfields, the processing plant and uranium recovery sit on adjacent private acreage governed by separate permits.
“Securing the BLM’s approval to commence construction on BLM lands marks a significant milestone for the Dewey Burdock Project,” Executive Chair William Sheriff said. He credited the company’s coordination within the federal Fast-41 permitting program with smoothing the path, and said enCore would keep working with U.S. agencies and state regulators to move the project ahead.
The BLM reached its decision after publishing a draft assessment on April 14 and reviewing public comments touching on groundwater, cultural resources, tribal concerns and environmental justice.
Dewey-Burdock has been a long time coming. The project, in Custer and Fall River counties, would use in-situ recovery, which consists of pumping a solution underground to dissolve uranium in place rather than digging it out, and was added to the Fast-41 priority permitting track last August under a White House push to lift domestic mineral output.
The deposit holds measured and indicated resources of about 17.1 million pounds of uranium, with the bulk in the measured category. Getting here took roughly fifteen years of permitting and litigation, including repeated challenges from the Oglala Sioux Tribe and local groups.
enCore Energy last traded at $2.30 on the TSX Venture.
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