By Emily Nicolosi
During the Cold War, the United States government employed thousands of American Indians on western reservations to excavate uranium ore to fuel nuclear reactors and atomic bombs.
“When we were hired we weren’t aware of the potential hazards,” says former uranium miner Larry King. King worked for the United Nuclear Corporation’s mine in the Eastern Navajo Agency near Crownpoint, New Mexico from 1975 to 1983. He and his fellow workers mined without any protection from uranium exposure. “It wasn’t until afterward that I started learning about hazards,” King explains. “Indian Health Services was experiencing a lot of patients with cancer – lung cancer – so they did a study. All the cancer linked back to the past uranium miners.” To date, thousands of miners have died from uranium-related illnesses and many others are sick.
The mining also subjected miners’ families and other community members to radioactive contamination and associated illness.
Today there are more than 1,100 abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation, many of which continue to emit contamination. The thousands of Navajos living near these mines are financially unable to relocate, and the government has not taken action to clean up the mines.
It was not until 1990 that the government gave assistance, in the form of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The law was intended to compensate those who became ill from uranium exposure. However, its provisions do not include compensation for families living near former mines, or even for miners, like Larry King, who worked after 1971.
While residents of the Navajo Nation and its surrounding communities continue to deal with issues arising from past uranium mining, they face another challenge from uranium mining interests. Hydro Resources, Inc. is proposing four new uranium leach mines in the Crownpoint and Church Rock chapters of the Navajo Nation. This project threatens to contaminate the only water source for 15,000 people, some of whom already commute 60 miles a day to haul water for drinking, cooking, bathing and livestock.
Uranium ore beneath the ground is not harmful; in fact, Crownpoint has one of the most pristine aquifers in New Mexico. The proposed in situ leach mines will inject chemicals into the groundwater to strip uranium from the host rock. The mixture of chemicals and uranium is then pumped up through a well and sent to a plant to be refined. The aquifer is left contaminated by uranium, other radioactive substances and heavy metals such as arsenic and selenium.
Leach mining has never been performed in an aquifer that is used for
drinking water. When the technique was tested in Crownpoint, Navajo resident
and laboratory technician Mitchell Capitan observed that “the company could not reduce the majority of contaminants to pre-mining ‘baseline’ levels
after more than six years of restoration attempts.”
The aquifer in Crownpoint currently contains less than one microgram
per liter of uranium. The mining could increase this level up to 100,000
times. According to the mining company’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission license, Hydro Resources is only required to restore the groundwater to 440 micrograms per liter – a level well above the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum recommended level of 30 micrograms per liter, and many times higher than the World Health Organization’s
standard of 2 micrograms per liter.
“Numerous health studies show that even low levels of uranium in drinking water can be toxic for the kidney,” Dr. John Fogarty warns. Fogarty worked as a doctor with Indian Health Services in Crownpoint for seven years and started the first uranium miner’s screening clinic for signs of uranium-related illness. His concern with the new project led him to the board of a group called the Eastern Navajo Dine’ Against
Uranium Mining.
The vast majority of Navajos say “Leetso Dóoda” – no uranium mining. After witnessing the failure of the test project in Crownpoint, Mitchell Capitan and his wife Rita organized hundreds of community members to come together to keep Hydro Resources from destroying their only source of drinking water. The company has been held off in court since 1994. Although most of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rulings have been in the mining company’s favor, Crownpoint’s aquifer remains safe – at
least for the time being.
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