The day before the second anniversary of Bears Ears National Monument’s restoration and two days before Indigenous Peoples’ Day, on a warm and clear Saturday, tribal members from many Indigenous communities and their allies and supporters gathered for the annual White Mesa spiritual walk and protest on October 7, 2023.
The walk, sponsored by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the White Mesa Concerned Community group, travels from the community to the gates of the White Mesa uranium mill in southeast Utah.
LEFT TO RIGHT: White Mesa Concerned Community leader Yolanda Badback, Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Chairman Manuel Heart, Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Councilman Malcolm Lehi, and Councilman Conrad Jacket. TIM PETERSON
“This mill isn’t just our problem. It’s everybody’s problem…it’s going to affect us, all of us, in the long run. We should have thousands of people upset about this,” said Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Councilman Conrad Jacket.
Health concerns loom in shadow of uranium mill near Bears Ears
Located just one mile east of Bears Ears National Monument and a few miles from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s White Mesa community, the White Mesa Mill is the United States’ last operating conventional uranium mill. It was licensed in 1980 to process uranium ore from around the Four Corners region. Back then, it was projected to operate for around 15 years, then close and clean up. Now, more than 40 years later, the mill is still operating, and community members are concerned for the fate of their land, air, and especially their water.
“This is a big thing for us and we don’t want them to expand, because we can smell … that sulfur smell…when we go by, you can smell it. It’s not a good smell. And a lot of our people got sick and we don’t know if it’s due to that,” said White Mesa Concerned Community member Michael Badback.
How has the mill stayed open so long? According to an executive at Energy Fuels Resources, the company that owns the mill, the “White Mesa [Mill] barely makes money. It’s always at risk of permanent closure.” Instead of closing when milling local uranium ore was no longer profitable, past and present owners of the mill have continuously reinvented their business model to keep operating.
The mill turns to radioactive waste
Yolanda Badback, Ephraim Dutchie, Michael Badback, and other community members sing near the gates of the White Mesa Mill. TIM PETERSON
First, the White Mesa Mill began accepting radioactive waste from around the country and the world, often to pocket hefty disposal fees on the order of $5 to $15 million per year, according to Energy Fuels’ CEO.
“The state of Utah does not give a care. This is the place where they want to dump their waste. And not only the waste in America… waste…from Japan, from Europe,” explained Councilman Jacket.
The mill retools again
Now, the mill’s owner is making a play to enter the rare earth elements processing market. Since 2021, the mill has been producing a mixed rare earth carbonate that has to be shipped all the way to Estonia to be further refined. But they’re making plans, buying equipment, and retooling the mill.
So far, Utah regulators have done nothing to involve the public in another transformation that could keep an old uranium mill open even longer.
Lives are more important than money
The spiritual walk approaches the White Mesa uranium mill. TIM PETERSON
At the community center, White Mesa Concerned Community leader Yolanda Badback welcomed those who came to walk. Councilman Jacket and Chairman Heart offered remarks, and Ute Mountain Ute Councilman and White Mesa Representative Malcolm Lehi spoke to the crowd in the Ute language.
“…the Ute Mountain Ute tribal government is in full support of protecting the community of White Mesa,” Chairman Heart told the crowd. “We’re facing health disparities in Indian Country, huge health disparities, not only diabetes, but cancer. And if this water is affecting this community of White Mesa, then it is a big concern. [Mill owner] Energy Fuels is looking at it from a profit margin, and so is Utah. I do not think money should be put before the lives of tribal members,” Heart continued. “Even if this community is a small community, it has to have [the] same equity of healthcare and healthcare services and take care of and protect the Utah citizens, as White Mesa community [members] are Utah citizens.”
Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Councilman and White Mesa Representative Malcolm Lehi (on horseback) and Councilman Conrad Jacket (holding flag) accompany walkers. TIM PETERSON
After the five-mile spiritual walk, near the gates of the mill, Chairman Heart addressed the crowd again.
“Yes, things take time,” Heart acknowledged. “It doesn’t happen overnight, doesn’t happen over a month, a year, it takes time…It takes time to educate people, people from the … Environmental Protection Agency, from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to hold this mill accountable. It’s not just about money, it’s about the lives, each one of the lives that crossed this road and traveled this road. And this mill here is not in the best interest of this community, and they need to move it, close it, put it someplace else where it has no effect to life, water, or the environment. That’s what we ask.”
As uranium prices climb and a long-dormant domestic uranium industry threatens to start up again, the White Mesa Mill and the White Mesa Ute community are at the center of an epic struggle for environmental justice.
In the words of Chairman Heart: “We want to have healthy lives. We want to have access to clean water. We want to have resources for the future of our children and grandchildren that are not here yet.”
Act now. Urge decision-makers to protect the Bears Ears cultural landscape from radioactive waste.
Jeri Fry was six years old when she toured the uranium mill outside town where her dad worked.
It’s the smell she remembers best, more than 60 years later: a deep sulfur odor that permeated the mill and sometimes wafted downwind to the neighborhood where she grew up, two miles away.
“I remember my dad saying to not play in the water when we watered the lawn,” Fry said.
Her father, the mill’s lead chemist, was a whistleblower who alerted authorities to the health consequences of processing the radioactive element. Now 68, Fry has been deeply enmeshed in the decades-long effort in Cañon City to clean up the mill site and the surrounding areas it contaminated.
She cofounded a local group, Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste, to educate people, while she and other community members have spent thousands of hours reading planning documents and attending meetings.
But nearly 40 years after federal regulators designated the mill and surrounding areas a Superfund site and mandated its cleanup, the radioactive waste remains. There still is no plan for how to deal with the millions of tons of radioactive material sitting just south of Cañon City, a city of 17,000 located about 35 miles southwest of Colorado Springs.
The dedicated group of community members that’s been pushing the site owners and government agencies to make progress is increasingly frustrated at the slow pace of change—especially after the company that took on the cleanup responsibilities ran out of money this year, delaying the already drawn-out process once again.
“We the community have been calling ‘fire’ and nobody has come running,” Fry said. “The citizens have had to hold the feet to the fire—always, always, always.”
Maryknoll Sr. Rose Marie Cecchini is seen in Church Rock, New Mexico, at the annual commemoration of the July 16, 1979, radioactive spill in this undated photo. (CNS/Maryknoll Sisters)
When she was assigned to New Mexico 26 years ago after spending 33 years ministering in Asia, Maryknoll Sr. Rose Marie Cecchini never expected to spend so much of her ministry — and for such a lengthy period — helping the state’s tribal peoples deal with the literal fallout of uranium mining.
But she was trained to listen. And when she got to the Land of Enchantment, she got an earful.
“When I came in to the diocese, I came with this realization that I had to learn so much, just as I had to learn about the peoples of Asia,” Cecchini said.
Beginning her work in the Office of Peace, Justice and Creation with Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Gallup, whose 55,000 square miles includes portions of Arizona, she held listening sessions. “It took three years to complete this,” she said.
That’s how Cecchini learned of the legacy of uranium mining in New Mexico.
“Uranium [mining] took off during the 1940s and ’50s, developing in the atomic bomb and the Cold War scenarios,” Cecchini told Catholic News Service in a Sept. 21 phone interview from Gallup. “New Mexico was the source for the half of the uranium.”
She said there was “irresponsible mining and milling, hundreds of mines with no remediation and cleaning, continuing to contaminate the soil, the air and the water. … The radiation-related diseases and the cancer — all of this came into my consciousness.”
Cecchini found a connection with her ministry in Asia.
“In Japan, I was very aware of the church’s response to A-bomb survivors. I was seeing this underside of the whole of the whole nuclear cycle,” she said. “That’s what brought me into relationships with Indigenous, environmental groups and organizations, and at the same time, similar-purpose groups, other Christian groups and organizations, being more aware of all these contemporary issues that we deal with.”
Cecchini works with New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light, whose executive director is Franciscan Sr. Joan Brown.
“This afternoon, for example, I will have a conversation with Gallup Solar, started 14 years ago,” she added. “We’re very concerned about the environmental challenges. About the fossil fuel industry and the nuclear industry assaulting the earth and its resources.”
She outlined examples of both the bad and the good.
The bad: “We have the largest methane gas cloud hovering over the Four Corners,” Cecchini said. “That is due to the oil and gas drilling and the lack of oversight of the release of methane that’s contributing to the climate crisis.”
The good: “New Mexico is one of the ideal locations — the second most ideal location in the U.S. — for solar energy. We wanted to focus especially on the realization that many of the Navajo — something like 14,000 households — have no access to electricity. They are miles from the nearest power line, and it costs $1,000 a mile to get a power line to your home.”
Slowly but surely, Cecchini and her many allies are chipping away at the lack of access to electrical power which hundreds of millions of Americans take for granted.
“We have a training program for the fifth year where we train 10 Native American men and women in the basics of solar energy. We have a 12-volt, 200-watt system,” she told CNS. “They are taught all the components and the power potentiality and safety measures and so forth.”
But during the pandemic, “we could not meet in person,” she noted.
Maryknoll Sr. Rose Marie Cecchini is seen in Church Rock, New Mexico, at the annual commemoration of the July 16, 1979, radioactive spill in this undated photo. (CNS photo/Maryknoll Sisters)
The 10 candidates chosen for the program each year “receive an iPad with all the lessons, basics in solar energy,” she said. “Every two weeks we have this phone conference call with the students to address their questions.”
“When they finish the curriculum sessions that they have one-on-one, they learn to wire the components together and they take the [solar] unit. And they identify whether they themselves will receive the system if they have no electricity or if they have a relative or friend who lives on the reservation and they will install it at their home,” Cecchini continued.
A solar tech oversees the candidate who is completing the program by installing the unit on a particular home in Navajo land, she said.
“They’re required to take photos and videos on what was installed and what was the experience like and how the family responds to it, and what appliances they have now that they didn’t have before.”
Cecchini says the Native people call it “energy sovereignty.”
Now 88, Cecchini said she thinks about her Maryknoll orientation “from the beginning.”
“I think it’s the willingness to go beyond borders, to have that heart of love, because we’re energized by God’s love which is flowing out through all creation and all people,” she said.
“By transversing the generated divisions and the racial boundaries, somehow, all that needs to be our terrain of mission. It keeps all of that as common to our vocation.”
Cecchini added, “When I came in ’96, there were about five Maryknoll sisters, so I’m the last of the Mohicans. But it’s been a glorious and wonderful gift. I can never thank God enough.”
“You talk about the American dream, our people that engage in mining of uranium did not reach that American dream,” – Phil Harrison, a former miner and a member of the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee
Tina Cordova holds up a picture of her niece who has been diagnosed with cancer. Cordova says her niece represents the fifth generation in their family to develop cancer due to the nuclear weapon testing in New Mexico. Photo Credit: Office of Sen. Ben Ray Lujan
As the years have passed and people have died of cancer, Navajo Nation communities impacted by uranium mining have lost hope that they will someday receive compensation for the medical conditions resulting from exposure to radioactivity, Phil Harrison said during a press conference on Wednesday.
“We are here in Washington to tell America how freedom was established,” Harrison, a former miner and a member of the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, said.
People like Harrison who were exposed to radiation as a result of uranium mining as well as the downwinders who were exposed to radiation after the Trinity nuclear detonation in areas like New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin are closer to receiving compensation than ever before after the U.S. Senate approved an expansion to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act earlier this year as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.
Now members of the U.S. House of Representatives including Teresa Leger Fernández, a Democrat from New Mexico and James Moylan, a Republican non-voting member who represents Guam, are pushing to have that body of Congress approve the expansion.
U.S. Senators Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico, and Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, hosted a press conference on Wednesday and were joined by their colleagues Leger Fernández, Moylan and Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri, as well as various people from communities impacted by the radiation exposure.
Many of the people who attended, including Harrison, wore yellow shirts that read: “We are the unknowing, unwilling, uncompensated victims of the Cold War.”
‘We’re dealing with death’
Harrison said the miners were largely uneducated and couldn’t read and write.
“You talk about the American dream, our people that engage in mining of uranium did not reach that American dream,” he said.
His father, who worked in the mines, died at age 43 of lung cancer and now Harrison has kidney problems because of the exposure to radioactive material. Hundreds of Navajo people who worked in the mines have died due to that exposure.
“People die very quietly,” Harrison said.
In the last two months, he has facilitated three funerals from deaths that were related to cancer and lung disease.
“The Navajo uranium miners, all those other miners, the Laguna miners, they provided that recipe for the bomb,” Harrison said.
When his kidneys failed, Harrison initially thought he had been bitten by mosquitos. A rash formed on his body and the doctors put him on dialysis. Looking back, he recalls drinking water in the uranium mine.
“Nobody told me ‘don’t drink that. Don’t wade in there,’” he said.
He said the mine companies “never gave anything that would be sustainable. We’re dealing with death.”
Navajo Nation Speaker Crystalyne Curley spoke about the debt that the country owes to the Navajo people. She said that debt occurred over decades with the uranium mining on Navajo Nation that has been “paid in the currency of their health and environment and, in some cases, their lives.”
Between 1944 and 1986, companies extracted nearly 300 million tons of uranium from Navajo Nation lands. This provided opportunities for Navajo people to build a better life for themselves and their families, but it also came at a cost, Curley said. She said her people were not aware of the dangers that uranium mining posed due to a lack of communication. Curley said the uranium mining has resulted in “generations of illnesses and death across Navajo Nation.”
Navajo community members herded livestock to drink contaminated waters, which children also played in. She said they also took lumber and supplies available from the mines to construct their houses.
Now they are paying the cost in medical conditions such as cancer and kidney disease.
‘The government ought to pay the bills’
After learning about the radioactive waste that was disposed of in Missouri and uranium processing that occurred in the St. Louis area that continues to impact people’s health, Hawley called Luján—who has been a long-time champion of expanding RECA—and the two of them worked together in a bipartisan effort to get 61 votes in the Senate.
“We are here to demand justice for the men and women across this country, from St. Louis, Missouri to St. Charles, Missouri to New Mexico and Utah and Guam and every place in between, who have been exposed by their government to radioactive waste radioactive material, and have not been compensated for it,” Hawley said. “Listen, this is a basic principle, if a government is going to create a disaster, the government should clean it up. If the government is going to expose its own citizens to radioactive material, radioactive waste, radioactive contamination for decades, the government ought to pay the bills of the men and women who have gotten sick because of it, they ought to pay for the survivor benefits of those who have been lost.”
In Missouri, radioactive waste led to the closure of Jana Elementary School and a community member who attended the press conference held a sign that read “Justice for Jana Elementary.”
Since the closure, more than 300 dump truck loads of contaminated dirt have been removed from the banks of Coldwater Creek near the school and the community has called for broader levels of testing.
This story is not unique and Hawley said he was able to secure the votes of his Republican colleagues by telling them about ways the expansion could benefit their own constituents.
“Every member of Congress should vote for this,” Hawley said, stating that all 50 states have people who have been impacted by radiation exposure.
“Now, we’ve been told for decades that that was just a coincidence. But we know now that’s not true,” he said, adding that federal officials knew that the water and soil in St. Louis had nuclear contamination starting as early as the 1950s and 1960s.
‘This is our history’
Luján spoke about the conditions that uranium miners faced as the mines were often filled with water to keep particulate matter down and the workers would leave with radioactive material on their clothing, which they would bring home to their families.
“Not only were those uranium mine workers getting sick, but then it was spreading to families and countless others,” he said.
The vast majority of the defense-related uranium mining—96 percent—occurred on Navajo Nation lands. Other uranium mining related to defense activities occurred on Pueblo of Laguna and Pueblo of Zuni lands in New Mexico.
He also spoke about downwinders in the Tularosa Basin who have not been compensated for the health impacts atomic weapon testing had on their families. That includes people like Tina Cordova who is the fourth generation in her family to develop cancer as a result of the testing and now has a niece who is fifth generation to develop cancer.
“There are generations behind us whose genes carry this legacy,” she said.
Cordova said there was no running water in her community at the time, so people collected rainwater for drinking, cooking and bathing.
“They didn’t have the decency to let us know that as that ash fell from the sky for days afterwards that it would completely contaminate our water supply,” she said.
There were also no grocery stores, so many people grew their own food, which was also contaminated by the fallout.
“This is our history. This is the legacy of the nuclear development and testing that took place in our country during the Cold War and before,” she said. “And it is time for justice.”
Both Luján and Leger Fernández spoke about the recent film Oppenheimer which documented the work to develop the atomic bomb.
“In New Mexico, the bomb was invented, the bomb was exploded, and the material for the bomb was mined,” Leger Fernández said.
She said the film left out a line that has been included in other documentation, including writings about the Manhattan Project.
“Those who are in charge of considering what the nuclear waste, what the fallout would do to New Mexicans, said, ‘Well, we’re pretty sure there was overexposure. But they can’t prove it. We can’t prove it. So I think we got away with it.’ We are not going to let them get away with it,” she said.
She said the government eventually chose to move that testing to another place in the country that “the United States thought was uninhabited” and then later to Guam and other Pacific Islands.
She said the people participating in the press conference were not making a statement about the value of the work to develop nuclear weapons. Instead, she said the statement they are making is that it is important to compensate those who were harmed in that process.
“It was a marvelous thing they did in 1992, where they recognized that the downwinders, the miners, the workers deserve the kind of specialized health care that they need to address the harm that is done when you are exposed to these materials,” she said, referencing the initial passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. “What was wrong back then was to inadvertently leave out the communities that are represented here behind me from that compensation.”
The original law did not include downwinders in New Mexico or Guam, nor did it include miners who worked in uranium mines after 1971.
“Justice is not complete until it is justice for all. And that is what we are asking for: justice for everybody who was hurt,” she said.
Leger Fernández said expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is about saving lives. She said it will allow people who were exposed to radiation to receive testing for various cancers.
“If we could actually get out to all of the miners who mined after 1971 and make sure that they get the health screening—do you have any of these cancers that can be caused from this mining—we could save their lives,” she said.
Commissioners See First-Hand Impacts from Uranium Mining & Milling to Pueblo and Diné Communities
Churchrock, NM—Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) and Red Water Pond Road Community Association, with support from NMELC, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE) and Southwest Research & Information Center (SRIC), hosted a four-person delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) during the last week of July at the Pueblo of Laguna, Churchrock and Crownpoint chapters of the Navajo Nation, and in Gallup, New Mexico.
The purpose of this unprecedented and historic “promotional visit” was for the Commissioners to see first hand the impacts uranium mining and milling have had on Indigenous communities in New Mexico and to provide information and education on the IACHR’s mission on behalf of 35 nations of the Western Hemisphere. IACHR is the adjudicatory arm of the Organization of American States.
IACHR Commissioner Roberta Clarke and Commissioner Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño and two IACHR Human Rights Specialists, Santiago Martinez and Laura Morelo, took a two-day tour through Laguna, Churchrock and Crownpoint to see the harmful impacts from uranium mining and milling. The tour was led by Chris Shuey from SRIC, along with Larry King, Jonathan Perry, Christine Smith, Edith Hood, Teracita Keyanna, June Lorenzo, Christine Lowry, Rita Capitan, and Eric Jantz. Spanish language translation to the Spanish-speaking IACHR commissioner was provided by Sylvia Ledesma.
The two-day tour included stops at the closed Jackpile Mine next to the Village of Paguate on the Pueblo of Laguna; the Homestake uranium tailings pile north of Milan, N; the site of the July 16, 1979 uranium mill tailings spill 10 miles north of Churchrock village; the Northeast Church Rock Mine (formerly operated by United Nuclear Corporation and now owned by General Electric Co.); the Quivira Churchrock I Mine site, and the Crownpoint Uranium Project processing plant in Crownpoint. (No uranium is being processed at this plant.)
The delegation also enjoyed a meal with a family in Seama, one of the six main villages of the Pueblo of Laguna, and watched traditional dances at the Seama Feast Day. The IACHR officials heard testimonials from Diné community members about the trauma of living for more than 50 years sandwiched among three uranium sites at a potluck gathering at the Red Water Pond shade house. The tour wrapped up in Gallup with a presentation by IACHR Commissioners Clarke and de Troitiño on “Inter-American Standards on Racial Discrimination and Indigenous Peoples Rights.” Please contact NMELC if you would like to receive a copy of the IACHR slideshow. The training was followed by a reception emceed by Jonathan Perry.
“It was clear the visit had a tremendous impact on the Commissioners,” said NMELC Senior Staff Attorney Eric Jantz. “They were able to see and better understand the toxic legacy of uranium mining our clients and communities have been dealing with for decades; how challenging the struggle is to protect clean water from uranium companies and weak regulatory agencies; and they saw the resilience and tenacity of the communities fighting for their right to enjoy a healthy life for their families, something every human being is entitled to. At some of the stops, uranium readings were twice as high as background, which understandably alarmed the Commissioners.”
After the promotional visit, on August 11, ENDAUM and NMELC submitted another request for a Thematic Hearing on impacts from uranium mining and milling on Indigenous peoples for the next IACHR 188th Period of Sessions, which will be held in Washington, D.C., October 30 through November 10, 2023.
Jonathan Perry, Director, ENDAUM, said, “Having the IACHR commissioners and staff come to our Diné communities for their promotional visit was crucial to their understanding the lasting impacts of the uranium mining legacy and to comprehend the complexity of our lands within Eastern Navajo Agency of the Navajo Nation. We intended to educate the IACHR delegation on how our communities are still in the midst of contamination that needs to be addressed while our efforts to prevent further threats from new proposed uranium extraction projects continue simultaneously.”
Edith Hood, Red Water Pond Road Community, said, “I am thankful to the IACHR Commissioners and staff for coming to see and hear us in Gallup, and also, better yet coming to the Red Water Pond Road community and seeing for themselves what we talk about. We urge our local tribal, state and federal leaders to do the same.”
Chris Shuey, MPH, SRIC, said, “The Commissioners got to see with their own eyes the close proximity of uranium mine wastes to Native homes and fields, and to listen to the stories of community members about health problems that date back three to four generations. They also learned how community members from Laguna to Churchrock and beyond are advocating for inclusion of Post-1971 uranium workers in expansion of the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. They were particularly moved by June Lorenzo’s talk on how the Federal Government forced uranium development on Pueblo and Navajo people without their free, prior and informed consent in the 1950s and ‘60s.”
Eric Jantz, Senior Staff Attorney, NMELC, said, “The Commissioners’ historic promotional visit to Laguna and the Navajo Nation was an important opportunity for the Commissioners and their staff to see firsthand the effects of the United States’ uranium development and cleanup policies on frontline communities. It was also an opportunity for community members to learn about the Inter-American human rights framework and how they can use it to hold governments accountable.”
Dr. Virginia Necochea, Executive Director, NMELC, said: “We are grateful to the IACHR for prioritizing this promotional visit to uranium-impacted communities and for taking the concerns of our clients and community members seriously. NMELC remains committed to working alongside our clients and the larger community in demanding appropriate clean up, in seeking remediation efforts, and in continuing to protect clean and limited water resources.”
Larry King, member of Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM), shows IACHR
Commissioners Roberta Clarke and Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño and IACHR Human
Rights Specialist Santiago Martinez landscapes near his home north of Churchrock that remain
contaminated from toxic uranium mining. The IACHR delegation was in New Mexico for a
historic two-day Promotional Visit.
Photo by Jené MontañoIACHR Commissioner Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño was one of the presenters during the
IACHR’s training held in Gallup on July 27, 2023. The training was entitled, “Inter-American
Standards on Racial Discrimination and Indigenous Peoples Rights.”
Photo by Jené MontañoLarry King, member of Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM), shows IACHR
Commissioners Roberta Clarke and Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño and IACHR Human
Rights Specialist Santiago Martinez landscapes near his home north of Churchrock that remain
contaminated from toxic uranium mining. The IACHR delegation was in New Mexico for a
historic two-day Promotional Visit.
Photo by Jené Montaño
Homestake/Barrick Gold Request for “Alternate Concentration Limits” at Grants Reclamation Project Not Accepted by NRC
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Media Contacts:
Eric Jantz, Senior Staff Attorney, New Mexico Environmental Law Center, ejantz@nmelc.org, (505) 980-5239
Susan Gordon, Coordinator, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE), sgordon@swuraniumimpacts.org, (505) 577-8438
Albuquerque, NM —The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently took the unusual step of denying a License Amendment Request from Homestake Mining Company for Alternative Concentration Limits, which allow corporations to avoid cleaning up contaminated groundwater to pre-operational conditions.
Alternate Concentration Limits were originally intended to be viewed as an exception to the general rule that mills must restore groundwater to pre-operational conditions, but the NRC has regularly approved ACL applications that make it possible for mill operators to walk away from their clean up obligations.
The denial is good news to nearby community residents, who greeted the NRC decision with cautious optimism. Homestake is a subsidiary of Barrick-Gold, a multi-billion-dollar global corporation with the financial means to fully remediate the groundwater plumes seeping from Homestake’s toxic waste piles. Homestake/Barrick-Gold operated a uranium mill and several uranium mines in the Grants Uranium District of New Mexico from the 1950s until 1990.
The Homestake Superfund site is located about 5 miles northwest of Grants, NM. Two massive tailings piles totaling 22 million tons cover more than 200 acres. The largest pile is approximately 100 feet high and adjoins San Mateo Creek.
During the NRC public meeting on June 15, 2023, NRC discussed Homestake/Barrick- Gold’s inadequate responses to the ACL application which included: Homestake’s lack of information about the buyout of property and residential homes adjacent to the Superfund site; missing data regarding precipitation, the rate of aquifer recharge, the percolation of water through the waste piles and seepage; and questionable groundwater modeling assumptions.
NRC acknowledges that widespread groundwater contamination across multiple aquifers at the Superfund site may pose a significant risk to future generations if it is left untreated. NRC stated that Homestake’s groundwater modeling may be failing to account for the potential movement of contaminated groundwater offsite. NRC disagrees with Homestake’s conclusion that future remediation efforts will not be beneficial when contaminants continue to be removed under the current groundwater treatment system.
Susan Gordon, Coordinator for the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, stated, “This should serve as a wake-up call to Homestake/Barrick-Gold. They have been scaring the neighbors with threats that they plan to walk away in two years. Surprisingly, agencies are beginning to do their jobs. Homestake will have to clean up the groundwater to a more protective level and continue to remove uranium from the waters they contaminated in perpetuity.“
Eric Jantz, Senior Staff Attorney with New Mexico Environmental Law Center, responded to the denial: “We applaud the NRC’s decision and hope this is a new era of hard-nosed skepticism of Homestake/Barrick-Gold’s attempt to walk away from their obligation to clean up their mess. We will continue to advocate with the NRC that community health and potable groundwater must be the guiding goals of clean up.”
The Homestake/Barrick-Gold uranium milling operation might be long-defunct, but the radioactive waste piles that remain continue to contaminate several groundwater aquifers, posing an imminent threat to nearby residents and downstream communities.
After promising concerned residents in the 1970s that the site would be cleaned up in ten years, Homestake now contends that further remediation of the site is “technically infeasible.” The company is attempting to buy out neighboring property owners and residences in an attempt to expand site boundaries and exempt the company from continuing its remediation efforts to contain and treat the mobile groundwater contaminant plumes seeping from the toxic waste piles to the current site groundwater quality standards.
Impacted community members want the regulatory agencies to isolate the sources of contamination—seepage from underneath the two unlined tailing piles. Moving the piles to a lined containment location may be the best available technology to isolate the contamination from the surface water and groundwater sources utilized by the surrounding communities for agriculture and municipal water supplies.
NRC’s May 17, 2023 letter (attached) to Homestake denying the ACL request can be accessed on ADAMS under the accession number: ML23119A006 The NRC’s talking points for the June 15, 2023 meeting can be accessed on ADAMS under the accession number: ML23160A024 or this link https://adamswebsearch2.nrc.gov/webSearch2/main.jsp?AccessionNumber=ML23160A 024
Red Water Pond Road Community Contact Info: Edith Hood (505) 905-0694 or Teny Keyanna (505) 979-0552 Pipeline Road Community Contact lnfo: Linda Jim (505) 519-8733
Signs warn residents in three languages to avoid the water in Church Rock, in 1979.
The 1979 Church Rock Nuclear Disaster is the largest radioactive accident in US history.
94 million gallons of radioactive water and 1,100 tons of uranium waste flooded out of a breached dam into the Rio Puerco.
The spill happened just four months after the Three Mile Island nuclear incident and released more than three times as much radiation.
In 1979, a dam holding millions of gallons of nuclear waste in Church Rock, New Mexico, collapsed.
In a matter of hours, 94 million gallons of radioactive water and 1,100 tons of uranium waste flooded into a nearby river.
The spill killed crops and cattle, and contaminated the surrounding land and the people who lived off it for decades to come.
It happened just four months after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. It was the largest accidental release of radioactivity in US history and third worst accident in history, after the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.
Despite this, perhaps because it happened in a rural, low-income area, or perhaps because it was primarily people from the Navajo Nation who were impacted, it was largely ignored.
Here’s what happened.
The Navajo Nation, which is the largest Native American territory, covers about 27,000 square miles across the boundaries of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Its people have lived in the region—known for its dusty, arid landscapes— for seven centuries.
Two women stand in plains in Navajo Nation in New Mexico, circa 1940.
Since the land was fairly inhospitable, the Navajo were mostly left alone in the 20th century. But that peace ended with the beginning of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. Underneath the dry earth was one of the largest uranium deposits in the world.
A Navajo man and a supervisor inspect some ore in a uranium plant in 1952.
For about 40 years between 1944 and 1986, the federal government and private companies mined the area and often used Navajo people to do it.
Over that period, about 30 million tons of uranium were extracted.
Now, according to the EPA, there are about 500 abandoned waste piles, mines and mills across the region.
Early on in this period, the government was happy to hire Navajo people to work in the mines, but it failed to warn them about the effects of radiation.
Navajo miners work in a uranium mine on a Navajo reservation in Arizona in 1953.
That was bad enough, but in 1968 the United Nuclear Corporation (UNC) began extracting from the country’s largest uranium mine, which was located in a small farming community called Church Rock.
Navajo Church near Fort Wingate
Its extraction process required nuclear waste to be stored in dammed lakes called tailings ponds.
The dams were between 50-75 feet high and made of earth.
In 1977, two years before the accident, UNC already knew about large cracks in its dam.
But even though the officials were aware of them, they continued to overfill the tailing ponds.
A report later released by the Army Corps of Engineers found UNC made three key failures—it failed to use recommended materials during construction, it failed to report the cracks to regulators and it ignored advice from consulting engineers that could have stopped the disaster.
It’s not like nuclear accidents hadn’t happened before. On March 28, 1979, a nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had a partial meltdown that exposed 2 million people to nuclear radiation.
Three Mile Island nuclear power plant while it was out of operation in 1979.
No one died, but about 140,000 people had to be evacuated.
CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite called it the “first step in a nuclear nightmare.”
Four months later, on July 16, 1979, UNC’s dam failed. Out of a 20-foot wide breach, 94 million gallons of radioactive water and 1,100 tons of uranium waste flooded into the Rio Puerco.
An environmentalist plants trees on the banks of the Rio Puerco in 2003.
One local named Larry King told Vice, “I remember the terrible odor and the yellowish color of the water.”
The spill contaminated a stretch of river about 80 miles long, passing the homes of about 1,700 people.
Because the area was so dry, locals relied on the river for drinking water as well as for their crops and livestock.
The spill caused crops to wither, contaminated sheep had to be killed and wells had to be closed off permanently. The water’s radioactivity level near the dam reached 7,000 times the safe radiation limit for drinking water.
The channel of the Puerco River in 2005.
Blisters and sores reportedly appeared all over the feet of locals who walked in the water that day.
The Church Rock spill was worse than Three Mile Island in terms of radiation. It released more than three times as much radiation. Yet while President Jimmy Carter visited Three Mile Island within days of the failure, Church Rock was basically ignored.
President Jimmy Carter with plant officials in Three Mile Island in 1979.
Newspapers described the region as “sparsely populated” and claimed there were no health hazards.
New Mexico’s Governor Bruce King refused to declare that the region was a federal disaster area.
Despite the local response, it was the third worst accidental release of nuclear radioactivity in the world, after the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986 and the Fukushima in 2011.
Inside the Chernobyl nuclear power plant a few months prior to the disaster in 1986.
While UNC sent Navajo employees out after the spill to let people know the danger, it wasn’t until a few days later that signs were erected and radio announcements made that warned locals not to drink from the river.
Signs warn residents in three languages to avoid the water in Church Rock, in 1979.
To make matters worse, after the spill no one was compensated, and the UNC only removed about 3,500 tons of sediment from the river—about 1% of the solid waste released in the spill.
A man stands in front of a 50-foot uranium waste pile from mining operations.
Their removal method was to send in workers with shovels and buckets.
By November 1979, the UNC had resumed operation at Church Rock. But instead of improving its practices, it discharged new waste into unlined ponds which led to intensive groundwater contamination.
Signs warning of health risks are posted outside the gates of abandoned uranium mine in 2020.
In 1982, the UNC abandoned its Church Rock operation.
In 1983, due to the groundwater contamination, the operation was placed on the EPA’s National Priorities List.
Yet that same year, federal and state authorities were still claiming the impacts the disaster had on people and the environment were minimal.
This wasn’t the first time authorities had got it wrong about people dying from working in the domestic nuclear industry.
During the Cold War, hundreds of Native American miners died from cancer and lung diseases after working in the industry.
These deaths were scientifically linked to working with uranium, yet for years government agencies claimed no one had died or was harmed from working in the industry.
UNC also continued to dismiss claims of hardship from the Church Rock spill.
In 1983, despite locals noting their cattle kept dying after drinking from the water, Stanley Crout, a spokesperson for UNC, told the New York Times, “We just don’t know of any substance to those claims.”
Crout noted the reason the Navajos were concerned was because they didn’t understand the effect of uranium.
In 1990, the government officially apologized to the Navajo people. Two years later, UNC was ordered to invest $16 million to do a better clean up job, but instead the money was paid to its parent company.
Indigenous community leaders gathered to protest the Uranium Recovery Conference in 2010.
In 2007, 28 years after the accident, a local research group called Church Rock Uranium Mining Project found water sources were still contaminated from the spill.
Dogs wander outside a community center located next to an abandoned uranium mine.
Although a comprehensive study wasn’t completed, a number of different studies noted people living in the Navajo nation nearby have had higher rates of birth defects, diseases and cancers.
Near the Church Rock Mine, Environmental Health Specialist Chris Shuey changes filters on a machine that tests uranium dust particles in 2006.
From the 2000s on, the EPA slowly started cleaning up the area, including other mines and waste sites. By 2015, about $100 million was spent on the clean up—and about 200,000 tons of contamination were removed— but the pollution was far worse than the agencies first thought.
Local Edith Hood stands outside the gates of an abandoned uranium mind in 2020.
EPA Pacific Southwest regional administrator Jared Blumenfeld told the New York Times, “It is shocking — it’s all over the reservation.”
He said, “I think everyone, even the Navajos themselves, have been shocked about the number of mines that were both active and abandoned.”
The repercussions of the spill and the mining are still felt today. As local resident Faith Baldwin told Vice in 2019, “Our generation is afraid of having children.”
A message about uranium mine cancer deaths is seen painted on an abandoned tank on the Navajo Nation near Cameron, Arizona.
She said, “Cancer runs in our family but it shouldn’t. Cancer, diabetes were non-existent in Navajo rez.”
Friday, May 26, 2023 8:54 AM Updated Friday, May. 26, 2023 8:54 AM
The view from Church Rock Chapter House overlooks a community concerned about future uranium mining and potential negative impacts to the area and the people who live there. (Hannah Grover/NM Political Report)
When a foreign company started exploratory drilling for the possible return of uranium mining near Church Rock, community members say they were not informed in advance.
“It was a complete shock,” Jonathan Perry, the director of Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, said of the process that started this winter.
The eastern Navajo Nation communities have stood largely in opposition to future uranium mining for decades.
“The majority of Diné people have been personally impacted by (uranium),” Leona Morgan, an activist and member of Navajo Nation, said.
The Navajo Nation has a moratorium dating back nearly two decades that prohibits uranium extraction, but the Eastern Agency consists of what is known as checkerboard. That means federal and state lands are intermixed with Navajo, or Diné, lands and allotment lands.
Laramide Resources, a Canada-based company, plans on extracting uranium from an area within the checkerboard that is not tribal land.
The work would occur near the same location where, in 1979, a dam breach released 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive water into the Rio Puerco, which the nearby Navajo communities relied upon for water.
Decades later, the spill, along with mine and mill sites in the area, remain unremediated. Earlier this year, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a record of decision as well as a license amendment that will allow the United Nuclear Corp. – which owned the site where the spill occurred – to dispose of mine waste from the old uranium mine at the old mill site.
Morgan said there are concerns that this disposal method in an unlined pit could lead to a second spill happening, especially as climate change increases the risks of extreme weather events like monsoon floods.
The history of uranium contamination serves as a backdrop as Laramide seeks to begin extraction and the Nation feels as if it has been excluded from the process in part because of the checkerboard of land and mineral jurisdiction.
In response to questions from NM Political Report, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren highlighted the moratorium imposed by the Nation in 2005 on uranium mining and processing. Uranium mining on the Nation ended in 1986, though about a quarter of the recoverable uranium reserves in the country are located on Navajo Nation lands.
Nygren said the Navajo Nation is highly concerned about new and planned activities for mining, excavating and drilling to get uranium resources out of the ground and to process it from the raw state to a more refined stage.
“We’d like to avoid those activities from happening in our home area again until we get a significant handle on all of the contamination,” he said.
Nygren said there are 524 sites where the Nation is still trying to address past uranium contamination.
The sole remaining uranium mill in the United States is just north of Navajo Nation’s lands in Utah and neighbors a Ute Mountain Ute community.
The Navajo Nation is also fighting a proposal to mine uranium near the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition, which includes the Navajo Nation, has called for President Joe Biden to use the Antiquities Act to establish a national monument that would block the proposed uranium mine near the Grand Canyon.
History of the project
Laramide Resources acquired the Crownpoint/Church Rock Uranium Project from Hydro Resources Inc. in 2015. HRI was already seeking a license renewal from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That license renewal was granted to Laramide in February 2017.
This winter, Laramide engaged in a drilling operation to determine the feasibility moving forward.
In a March update, Laramide stated that the recent drilling confirmed that “historical drilling results are suitable for resource estimations and agreed with previous studies showing that there is low risk of resource depletion of chemical uranium compared to radiometric uranium in the Church Rock mineralization.”
The update further stated that the drilling will also provide “core for the test work necessary to obtain the New Mexico Aquifer Discharge Permit, the final material permit needed for the project.”
Laramide has not yet applied for the discharge permit.
According to information NMED provided NM Political Report, the agency will perform an administrative and technical review of the application upon receiving it and will determine if the information the company provides is sufficient.
“NMED will then assess the technical feasibility of the activities proposed by the applicant and determine if the applicant has provided enough information to determine if the activities proposed in the application will be protective of human health and the environment,” Matthew Maez, the agency spokesperson, told NM Political Report.
Once a draft permit has been developed, it will be sent out for the public to review. People will then be able to issue comments on the draft permit or request a hearing.
Maez said NMED will work with tribal governments during the permitting process.
Maez said that any mining company wanting to begin or resume uranium extraction on lands that are subject to the state’s regulations must receive the groundwater discharge permit and must provide financial assurances before commencing the operations.
“To the extent resources allow, NMED will assure compliance with permits and state rules to protect groundwater and surface water,” Maez said.
He said that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has jurisdiction over uranium milling sites.
‘It’s Navajo Indian Country’
Should an incident occur resulting in contamination of land, air or water, the people who will be impacted are the Diné residents of the Eastern Agency. And it’s not just one community.
The production would occur north of Church Rock in an area that is already highly contaminated from past uranium mining, including the worst uranium spill in the country’s history. The extracted ore would then be transported nearly 50 miles to an area south of Crownpoint where Laramide would process the ore. This would impact communities like Smith Lake, which is at the junction of New Mexico Highway 371 and Navajo Service Route 49.
“Regardless of the land status, it’s Navajo Indian Country,” Perry said.
The Eastern Agency is not the only ones concerned about this.
Nygren said Laramide hasn’t provided assurances it would work with the Navajo Nation, instead choosing to work more with the state and the federal regulatory agencies.
“[Laramide wasn’t] willing to come forward and work with us directly,” Nygren said. “To identify themselves and to state what activities they were going to undertake. Even though the land is not Navajo Nation land, it’s right up against our Navajo Nation lands.”
Nygren said Laramide is aware of the Nation’s concerns and the history of the contamination because the Navajo Nation worked to educate its predecessor, HRI, on those topics.
“The way [Laramide] has decided to approach this project from their interests alone, without recognizing the Navajo Nation’s stance and positions, it’s more concerning than reassuring,” Nygren said.
Laramide did not respond to email and phone requests for comment.
Environment and cultural concerns
Nygren said the Nation’s primary concern is human health and safety.
“We have identified people that are living close to these abandoned uranium mine sites,” he said.
Those people, Nygren said, need to be the top concern and their homes need to be made safer.
“If they have any health conditions as a result of exposure in the past, they need to be provided with adequate health care,” he said.
In the late 2000s, researchers launched a birth cohort study focused on Navajo women. This study’s mission is to identify possible past uranium exposure that could create health issues for children. It has been going on for at least 12 years, Nygren said. “So public health and ongoing efforts to understand health impacts are one of the highest concerns,” he said.
But the Navajo Nation has other concerns as well, including the transportation of contaminants from abandoned uranium mines.
He said contaminants can reach the surface and get in soils at significant concentrations where they can register on detection devices. Much of the past mining was done underground and Nygren said that could put water resources at risk.
“Groundwater is always a very important resource,” Nygren said.
The lack of water access on the Navajo Nation received national attention during the COVID-19 pandemic and chapter houses, including the Church Rock Chapter House, set up hand washing stations outside their buildings to assist community members who didn’t necessarily have access to water.
There are also cultural concerns regarding uranium mining, including the impact on soil and plants.
Nygren highlighted the animals that rely on the landscape and rely on environments around abandoned uranium mines. He said this could have impacts on both wildlife and domesticated animals like horses, sheep and cattle. As they graze for food, they could consume plants that have taken in radioactive materials from water.
“Many of our people still have a subsistence way of life and will take one of their animals from their herds and eat them,” Nygren said. “So through these pathways, there are potential risks and concerns for our people.”
The plants that grow near uranium mines include some that historically have been used for prayers and ceremonies, he said.
“Often the prayers and ceremonies are addressing the mental stresses of living near abandoned uranium mine contamination in addition to any specific health conditions,” Nygren said. “Therefore it is critical that herbal medicines are also free from contaminants.”
Cleaning up contamination is not an easy process.
“It’s not like you can throw the dirt in a washer and it comes out clean,” Morgan said.
Economic opportunities weighed against past contamination
In January, Laramide contracted with Denver-based SLR International Corporation to conduct a preliminary economic assessment based in part on data gathered during this winter’s exploratory drilling.
When the company announced that contract, Laramide’s president and CEO Marc Henderson released a statement saying that the project “has the potential to become a meaningful contributor to future U.S. domestic security of supply.”
“This is an issue of increasing importance in U.S. energy policy considerations and one which appears to have bipartisan domestic support as witnessed by the recent passage of the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) in which nuclear power featured quite prominently,” Henderson said in the statement.
For the local community, mining could mean new jobs.
Not everyone opposes bringing uranium extraction back. Morgan said there are allottees who may support uranium extraction due to the limited economic opportunities in the region.
One of the reasons why discussions on the checkerboard can be so intense, Morgan said, is because the allottees own the “interest and say so” in the land that has been allotted to them. This is also present in debates over the future of oil and gas extraction to the northeast of the Crownpoint and Church Rock in the Chaco area.
Some of the allottees may turn toward extractive industries as a way to profit off their land.
“Some individuals think they can get rich overnight like the uranium boom in the 50s,” Morgan said.
But, she said, that boom did not create generational wealth.
Nygren said that any discussion of the economic benefits of uranium mining is premature considering the decadal problem of legacy pollution and unremediated sites.
“Our focus has been on addressing the past impacts of uranium mining from the 20th century. And that focus is on remediation, cleanup, and restoring health to our impacted people and to the communities that are impacted by these mine sites,” he said.
Nygren said the work to address uranium contamination goes back to when the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency was created in the late 1970s.
Despite decades of work, Nygren said “we still haven’t got a true or accurate estimation of what all these impacts have been.”
Those impacts include costs to clean up contaminated sites and to address the impacts of uranium mining on the health of people living on the Navajo Nation.
“So to take a look at potential economic benefits is still premature,” he said “Most of the discussion within the Navajo Nation government and coming to the position to place a moratorium on mining, new mining, and new processing has always been, ‘Let’s get a better handle on the past before we start looking at any kind of potential benefits for renewed uranium mining and processing.’”
Nygren said without any realistic cost estimates about the past impacts of uranium on Navajo Nation, there isn’t a framework to say what the potential economic benefits could be going forward.
“What if somebody says, ‘Well, you can make $5 billion over 20 years if you do get involved in new uranium mining.’ Would that cover the total cost of fixing what was contaminated in the past?” Nygren said. “Also would these potential economic benefits also adequately address the costs to assure a safer future?”
He said even if the price of uranium skyrocketed, he doesn’t think it would be compelling enough to allow future extraction “until we know that these past contaminated areas are adequately restored.”
Energy transition fuels drive for uranium
Perry said that those who oppose the resumed uranium mining are fighting against a misconception amid the energy transition.
He said projects like Laramide’s are “fueled by the misconception that nuclear energy is green energy.”
But uranium mining and milling can have dire health impacts on the communities where those activities occur.
Morgan said activists continue to fight for an expansion of the RECA benefits to include uranium miners who were employed after 1977 and developed health conditions associated with exposure to radioactivity.
Perry said there are 86 unremediated uranium mines in the Eastern Agency region where Laramide hopes to resume mining operations.
“In reality, the communities continue to suffer because of that misconception,” Perry said.
The role that New Mexico, and Navajo Nation, plays in the energy transition and uranium mining is set against a backdrop of legacy contamination both from nuclear and fossil fuels.
“Because of our uranium, it doesn’t matter whether it’s nuclear weapons or nuclear energy, we will always be hurt by the nuclear industry,” Morgan said.
Both the tribe and the state are concerned that future extraction could continue the legacy of radioactive pollution.
“While nuclear energy produces low-carbon energy, Congress must develop long-term solutions for the disposal of nuclear waste that follow a consent-based model,” Maez said. “Further, until the United States and associated mining companies address the legacy issues that continue to impact New Mexicans and tribal members, the nuclear industry has virtually no social license to operate.”
In an email, Maddy Hayden, a spokesperson for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, highlighted that three of New Mexico’s 15 Superfund sites were created by uranium mining. Given that fact, she said the governor’s office is concerned about any proposed mining operations.
“Rural and tribal communities have in the past been taken advantage of by uranium mining companies, which resulted in little to no effort to protect the environment during and after operations,” she said. “That is not acceptable. It’s imperative that mining operations are not only held to a high regulatory standard, but also a high standard for cooperation with affected communities, including tribal nations.”
Hayden said uranium is needed for a variety of purposes beyond just weapons and energy. For example, she highlighted medical imaging. She said uranium is needed just like other metals such as lithium and copper are needed.
“But we shouldn’t be causing pollution while we mine them,” she said. “While nuclear energy has potential as a low-carbon energy solution, until Congress identifies a permanent disposal method for waste, it’s a non-starter as far as we’re concerned.”
NM Political Report is a nonprofit public news outlet providing in-depth and enterprise reporting on the people and politics across New Mexico.
