The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is visiting the Red Water Pond Road Community (RWPRC) on Friday, April 22 at 2 pm, then hosting a public meeting in Gallup at 6:30 pm.
Please join and show support for RWPRC and advocate for uranium mine cleanup that is protective of the community, sacred waters and future generations.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
At 1 pm – Meet at the junction of Highway 566 and Frontage Rd, Highway 118, near Red Rocks State Park. We will have signs for you to hold along the road to the Red Water Pond Road Community. Bring your own signs, too!
At 2:30 pm – Join with RWPRC in their village to listen to the NRC Commissioners and hear testimony from the community. The Navajo Nation EPA will be broadcasting the meeting via a public address/sound system. MASKS ARE REQUIRED.
At 6:30 pm – NRC will hold a public meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn, 1530 W Maloney Ave, Gallup. Two panels – ‘Ten-Year Plan to Address Impacts of Uranium Contamination on the Navajo Nation’ and ‘Lessons Learned from the Remediation of Former Uranium Mill Sites.’
“Leetso Dooda”, which means “no uranium” in the Diné language, is a rallying cry in Navajo communities where abandoned uranium mines and mills dot the landscape. (Images provided by Bryant Furlow of a mill site in the Ambrosia lake mining district and Kalen Goodluck of signs near Church Rock, New Mexico)
Now head of the Navajo Nation’s Superfund program, Yazzie grew up near Monument Valley, Arizona, where the Vanadium Corporation of America started uranium operations in the 1940s.
His childhood home sat a stone’s throw from piles of waste from uranium milling, known as tailings. His grandfather, Luke Yazzie, helped locate the first uranium deposits mined on the Navajo Nation. His father was a uranium miner, then worked for Peabody Coal mine.
Yazzie, Diné, heard the family stories about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scanning his family’s home for radiation in 1974, when he was 4 years old, finding several high contamination readings.
“Nothing was done,” he said. Not until 32 years later, in 2006, when a new scan was done, leading to eventual demolition in 2009 of the home where he grew up.
His father now suffers from kidney failure and complications with his heart and lungs, ailments that can stem from uranium exposure, research shows. He received financial support through the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which provides lump sum payments to former uranium workers, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that he struggles with illness.
And it’s not just his dad. Yazzie has survived cancer, and now lives with the prospect that it could come back one day.
“We often hear about environmental justice, social injustice,” Yazzie said. “Flat-out racism is what the local perception is about these long-standing issues, almost 80 years in some areas. Lack of cleanup, lack of funding, lack of emphasis to prioritize cleanup.”
Dariel Yazzie, Diné, heads the Superfund program within the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, which includes overseeing uranium cleanup. His childhood home was eventually demolished after revealing high levels of contamination. (Photo by Marjorie Childress/New Mexico In Depth)
But yesterday’s injustices could mean jobs for the future.
Abandoned uranium mines are found in all corners of the Southwest. In New Mexico, about 1,100 sites where mining, milling or exploratory drilling occurred lie abandoned, mostly in the Grants Mineral Belt, which stretches more than 90 miles from Laguna Pueblo almost to Gallup. Hundreds more dot the greater Navajo Nation, in Arizona, Utah and Colorado.
An online interactive map maintained by New Mexico’s Mining and Minerals department pinpoints abandoned uranium sites in the Grants Mineral Belt, which was a booming uranium region until the mid-1980s. The area stretched from Laguna Pueblo almost to Gallup in New Mexico’s northwest checkerboard region. (New Mexico Mining and Minerals/Google Earth)A vast landscape in the Grants mineral belt, called the Ambrosia Lake mining district, is contaminated from past uranium mining and milling. (Photo by Bryant Furlow/New Mexico In Depth)
With big money flowing in the coming decade from settlements with large corporations and the U.S. government for contamination, cleanup of hundreds of abandoned mines will finally begin after decades of neglect.
And that means jobs for tribal citizens and businesses, providing an economic balm for areas that need work. One estimate concludes that about 1,000 jobs could be created over the next 10 years for every $1 billion dollars spent on cleanup, with an average salary of nearly $55,000 per year.
The New Mexico Legislature appears convinced. Lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year to develop a strategic plan for uranium cleanup and to focus economic development on reclamation.
“There are plenty of jobs that can be created cleaning up … abandoned uranium mining sites all across the area,” said Susan Gordon, coordinator of the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, a coalition of activist groups located in uranium-impacted communities.
But cleanup contracts issued recently by the Environmental Protection Agency have gone to out-of-state companies.
And reclamation brings its own troubles. Some cleanup involves little more than moving contamination from one site to another. The first major cleanup proposed, in Church Rock, New Mexico, exposes the shortcomings of bypassing local communities in the planning process.
Largest radioactive catastrophe in the U.S.
Most of the uranium mining and milling on and around the Navajo Nation occurred before environmental regulations were in place to safeguard human health. When the industry shut down in the 1980s, companies closed shop, leaving hundreds of abandoned uranium mines, extensive surface and groundwater contamination, Radon gas releases and vast amounts of radioactive soil and mining debris.
The U.S. government essentially created the industry in the late 1940s when the newly established Atomic Energy Commission announced it would purchase all uranium mined in the U.S. at a guaranteed price, which it did until 1966. The commission was established after World War II to transfer the nuclear energy assets of the secretive Manhattan Project to civilian control.
By 1967, New Mexico mines were producing half of the total U.S. uranium.
The dangers were significant. On July 16, 1979, the dam of a holding pond at the United Nuclear Corporation uranium mill in Church Rock failed, spilling 94 million gallons of watery, radioactive sludge into the Rio Puerco, running through the local community to Gallup and on to Sanders, Arizona. It is still the largest radioactive catastrophe in the United States.
Larry King, Diné, president of the Navajo Church Rock Chapter, remembers well the day of the spill. King worked at the UNC mine not far from the mill as an underground surveyor, beginning a few months after graduating high school in 1975 until the mine closed in 1983. He heard about the spill from miners coming in for their day shift.
“There was a huge gaping hole,” he said, about the breach at the dam.
The dam failed a few months after the meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor near Middleton, Pennsylvania. Three Mile Island led to minimal public health impacts but generated enormous national press coverage and galvanized opposition to the nuclear fuel industry. Much larger and consequential to public health, the Church Rock spill received little attention.
Larry King, Diné, on Feb. 27, 2022, at the United Nuclear Corporation mine and ill site in northern Church Rock, New Mexico, which operated from 1967 to 1982. King worked at the mine for years and was there on the day in 1979 when a dam breach caused a massive radioactive spill. An old building abandoned by the company sits at the mill site today. King approached a fence near the dam breach, and said he had never walked this close to the building before. (Photos by Kalen Goodluck for New Mexico In Depth)
The morning of the spill, the sound of rushing water puzzled people, because it was a clear day.
“I’ve heard from community members who live along the Rio Puerco wash, that’s where the mill waste flowed through, that it sounded like thunder,” King said.
Eventually they learned it was mill waste, he said, but not before people had let their livestock out and they themselves had crisscrossed the wash. Sheep died, crops withered, and at least one woman said it burned her feet. There were similar reports up and down the wash, he said.
The focus on the catastrophe obscured the fact that water had always trickled into the Rio Puerco from the uranium mining upstream, King said.
“Contaminated water did not only flow through the Rio Puerco that one day, on July 16, it was going on for years, 24/7,” he said.
His father’s livestock grazing area ran alongside the Rio Puerco, and his dad extended their fenceline into the wash to make it easier to water the cattle. He played in the water, too.
“There used to be a smell, a real terrible smell, yellow slime along the side… the water always flowed,” he said.
At that young age he thought it was a natural stream. But later, he said, he found out it was contaminated mine water that didn’t stop running until the mining company shut off pumps in the 1990s.
The industry collapsed shortly after the Church Rock spill because of cheaper uranium prices outside the United States. There were 6,800 people employed in 1979. That figure dropped to 2,613 in 1982, before the industry largely shut down completely over the next several years.
Indigenous voices not heard
Perry H. Charley has investigated the scope of uranium contamination for decades.
Recently retired from Diné College where he founded the Diné Environmental Institute Research and Outreach Program, Charley said official counts on Navajo land underestimate the number of abandoned mines — including exploratory mines, drilled shafts and buildings — resulting from the Atomic Energy Commission’s uranium program.
“They left it as it is; they just walked off,” said Charley, Diné, an expert on the health and environmental impacts of uranium contamination. “You have tons of radioactive material scattered all over the Southwest.”
Now, 40 years after the industry shut down, the UNC Church Rock mine that King worked at remains contaminated with debris, but that could change soon.
It’s the only one of 523 abandoned mines on or within a mile of the Navajo Nation nearing the beginning of cleanup, according to the EPA.
But that cleanup plan is controversial. The proposal, developed by the U.S. EPA office in San Francisco, calls for simply moving approximately one million cubic yards of contaminated uranium soil, rocks and other debris across a nearby highway to the reclaimed mill site where the dam breach in 1979 occurred. It’s on private land, but so close it’s still near the local Navajo community. A remaining amount of contaminated mine waste would still need to be cleaned up, through a separate EPA process.
The plan doesn’t reflect the wishes of the Navajo Nation and local residents that the waste be removed entirely. The community will still sit practically next door to the contamination.
“The position has always been off-site disposal. And taking it across the street, literally across the street, does not work for the Navajo people,” said Valinda Shirley, executive director of the Navajo Nation EPA, to state lawmakers at a hearing on uranium last September.
The mill site is regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the successor to the Atomic Energy Commission, so the EPA’s plan triggered the need for the agency’s approval. The NRC issued an environmental impact statement for public comment in 2020, and is expected to finalize its decision this summer.
But public education and opportunities for input from the local community about the environmental impact statement were insufficient, Yazzie said.
Direct person-to-person outreach to people living near the site was needed, he said, because many people don’t have phones or reliable internet. Instead the NRC held one in-person meeting in Gallup, and several more online meetings, he said.
“They should have knocked on every door, with the whole plan, bring copies,” he said, “and be fluent in Navajo to go over the entire packet. That never happened. The limited amount of information they shared, over the radio, over internet platforms, they were speaking oftentimes too technical, in English, that some didn’t understand. So, is this an environmental justice issue? Or is this a racism issue?”
The lack of community voices and input is concerning, Yazzie said, because the northeast Church Rock mine cleanup will set the stage for how community members are included in future cleanups.
The Church Rock proposal comes despite the EPA’s 10-year plan requiring that traditional ecological knowledge and Diné Fundamental Law, a set of principles that guide Navajo decision-making, inform its remediation decisions.
The Native view of cleanup is based on ecological restoration, Charley said, but Indigenous perspectives are often missing from non-Native approaches to cleanup, which can lead to reclamation projects failing.
“Modern Western science risk assessment leaves out so much from the Diné viewpoint,” he said. “It leaves out sacredness, livingness, the soul of the earth.”
From the perspective of the Diné people, the traditional belief is that illness and the imperfections of life are an imbalance, and the underlying toxins, such as radioactive waste, are disrespectful to the environment, or Mother Earth, he said.
Holistic healing, he said, is maintained by a “delicate interconnectedness” between the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual existence of human beings.
To bridge non-Native and traditional approaches to reclamation, it’s important to include traditional Navajos and scientists, like him, who live in impacted communities, Charley said.
Failing to incorporate Native ecological knowledge at the beginning of the process can mean certain communities are overlooked for cleanup because the full impact of toxic exposure they experience is missed. A medicine man, for example, might gather plants for their medicinal properties or for traditional ceremonies from a contaminated area 30 miles away that wasn’t prioritized for cleanup. Taking the plants back home would spread contaminants, a risk that could be missed by non-Native scientists, Charley said.
The result is a high certainty that rural communities that are sparsely populated won’t be prioritized for cleanup when they should be, he said.
New generation of workers
Kirby Morris, Diné, stands in the Red Rock State Park in Church Rock, New Mexico, on Feb. 27, 2022, with Dr. Abhishek RoyChowdhury, right, an assistant professor of environmental science at Navajo Technical University. Morris is studying mine reclamation under a program operated by RoyChodhury, and hopes to be able to use her knowledge with uranium cleanup. (Photo Kalen Goodluck for New Mexico In Depth)
Yazzie said the reclamation field needs a new generation of Indigenous workers to help ensure proper remediation in the decades ahead. It needs people not only trained in reclamation but who understand local perspectives and can communicate effectively with community members.
People like Kirby Morris.
Every week, Morris, Diné, drives 35 miles east from her home in Coyote Canyon to Navajo Technical University in Crownpoint where she studies environmental science and learns to clean up abandoned, hardrock mines.
As a child, Morris would visit her grandmother in Coyote Canyon, on the Navajo Nation in northwest New Mexico, and climb to the top of the mesa behind her grandmother’s house.
“They always said there’s abandoned mines back there,” she said. “You can just see it — a doorway that’s closed up into the hillside.”
After looking at maps of abandoned mines, Morris, now 39, realizes the mine she saw had been used to unearth uranium decades ago.
“We shouldn’t even be near it, but it’s so close, you know,” she said, “just on top of the mesa from the communities down there.”
Morris works on a Navajo Technical University team trying to transform soil from an abandoned coal mine near Socorro so that it can grow plants and vegetation. The idea is to come up with the right “recipe” that can then be used back at the mine to grow ground cover.
Morris and the other Navajo students working on the project could one day employ what they’re learning in uranium remediation jobs.
At the root of her work is a desire to teach her four children about the environment and protecting it for them and Navajo communities.
“I do see it as a career,” she said. “This is something that is, you know, needed here not only on the Navajo Nation but the state of New Mexico as well. It would be a benefit for all of us.”
Dr. Abhishek RoyChowdhury, an assistant professor of environmental science and natural resources at NTU, leads the soil cleanup project for the Socorro coal mine and is working to prepare future environmental scientists from Navajo communities for the reclamation field.
Along with colleagues, he’s building a radiation health physics associate science program that will train students to handle radioactive waste, a specialized process regulated by the government.
“We believe if we can train our local workforce, they will be the main force to solve this issue,” said Roychowdhury, who is non-Native. “If we can provide the education, if we can provide the training, we can build a future workforce who can work for the Navajo Nation, who can work for these external companies who are always looking to hire local people.”
Looking ahead
New attention to environmental cleanup comes after a string of bad economic news for the region, which is made up of a checkerboard of Navajo, federal, state and private lands.
In 2020, big employers near the city of Gallup – a Marathon oil refinery and the Escalante coal-fired power plant in Prewitt – shut down. Three hundred people lost their jobs.
In metropolitan Farmington, another city near the Navajo Nation, the closing earlier this year of the San Juan Generating Station will worsen a steady decline in the labor force. On the horizon looms the expected 2031 closure of another large employer, the Four Corners Power Plant in Fruitland.
Corporate interests and New Mexico elected officials, including Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, hope to tap the region’s vast natural gas reserves to create a new hydrogen fuel industry and replace lost jobs.
Another job-creation idea sailed through the New Mexico Legislature earlier this year: cleanup of abandoned uranium mines. Lawmakers hope mine reclamation can help workers and businesses access jobs if the state helps to coordinate training and fosters relationships.
The idea began to take shape during a 2018 struggle over a uranium mining permit at Mount Taylor, which pitted a need for jobs against desecration of a sacred site of the Navajo Nation and many of the state’s pueblo tribes.
It then bloomed into an influential economic study by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of New Mexico. In a legislative presentation last year, bureau researcher Rose Rohrer estimated cleanup projects could create 1,000 jobs for every $1 billion spent on cleanup over 10 years, with an average salary of $54,633 per year. Jobs would include general labor, trucking, environmental science, architecture and engineering.
New Mexico lawmakers ran with the idea, passing a law that directs state agencies to develop a strategic plan for mine cleanup, and create or promote programs for worker training and business development. It also created a revolving fund specifically for uranium remediation with hopes for future funding from the state and federal governments and the private sector.
And it created uranium reclamation positions in the state’s Mining and Minerals agency and Environment Department. That gives the agencies additional resources to address legacy uranium mining and mill site contamination through holistic strategic planning, Environment Department spokesman Matthew Maez said.
The effort complements the Environmental Protection Agency’s 10-year plan for uranium remediation on Navajo land, which includes a workforce development component intended to ensure cleanup money flows to Navajo companies and workers.
So far, however, cleanup contracts the EPA has awarded have gone to non-Navajo-owned companies. The EPA doesn’t give preference to Navajo companies in awarding contracts, according to EPA Press Officer Joshua Anderson, but each contract includes an employment plan and training requirements, and companies must file an annual report about how they created “meaningful job opportunities” for Navajo businesses and the Navajo Nation.
In an $85 million contract with Tetra Tech, Inc. in 2017 to assess uranium contamination, the EPA built in criteria to encourage the company to procure services and supplies from Navajo companies, and to partner with NTU to train Navajo students, like Morris, in career paths related to assessment and cleanup. The plan also calls for industry job fairs and advertising to get the word out about contract opportunities.
Cleaning up abandoned mines costs a lot of money. Regulations, laws, and safety issues must be considered when planning for uranium remediation. Millions of tons of radioactive soil will likely be moved to designated repository sites, and workers will need specialized training for handling chemicals or radioactive material and to master guidelines they must follow while on the job.
The economic study singled out time-consuming, costly training as a barrier to small companies breaking into the uranium remediation industry.
Funding for reclamation has been a long time coming, though it got a recent boost through large, corporate settlements and new funding that U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, attached to last year’s federal infrastructure bill.
But the expected explosion of jobs could be snatched up by out-of-state companies and out-of-state workers as more reclamation money flows into the state, Rohrer said.
“These are lifetime issues,” Rohrer said, “and they can bring jobs and opportunities for lifetimes.”
Susan Gordon, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment www.swuraniumimpacts.org 505.577.8438, sgordon@swuraniumimpacts.org
Linda Evers, Post 71 Uranium Workers Committee 505.287.2304, leversredfence123@gmail.com
Larry King, Eastern Navajo Against Uranium Mining 505.979.411, l_king2013@yahoo.com
New legislation offers hope – and urgency – for uranium mining survivors
September 22, 2021: Today, Sen. Crapo (R-ID) and Sen. Lujan (D-NM) and Rep. Leger Fernández (NM-03) introduced new legislation to extend and expand the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). Joined by bipartisan co-sponsors, this bill strengthens the existing RECA program which provides compensation to uranium mill and mining workers, atomic veterans, (military personnel who were exposed to nuclear tests to study their effects), and “downwinders” of nuclear tests in some affected states. Without Congressional action, RECA will expire in July 2022.
“As a former underground and surface mine worker, I worry about my health daily. It is past time to show all uranium workers that their sacrifices for their country have not been forgotten. The RECA Amendments will provide compensation for workers like me that contributed to the Cold War effort with my health and life,” said Larry King, Church Rock, Navajo Nation.
The expansion of coverage under the new bill will include the post 71 uranium workers who have been excluded by the original bill.
“The government and uranium industry made millions in profits while knowingly killing workers, and this injustice has gone on for over 20 years now. When can the dying workers expect the government to own their part of the devastation of lives they have caused and compensate ALL the uranium affected people?” stated Linda Evers, a former uranium worker from Grants, NM.
Other updates to the bill would include expanding coverage to downwinders in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Guam, New Mexico, and additional counties in Utah, Nevada, and Arizona; adding new compensable diseases; and including medical benefits for other affected groups.
“The extension and expansion of compensation in the RECA amendments will help many New Mexicans that have been harmed by the uranium industry,”says Susan Gordon, coordinator for the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment. “From the Laguna and Acoma Pueblos west to the Navajo Nation, our communities have been left with radioactive contamination, polluted waters, and deadly health impacts. RECA is a small step forward to address the environmental injustice from the legacy of uranium mining.”
Under RECA, eligible participants go through a claim process with the Department of Justice, to review their history of exposure. Those that are found eligible can receive between $50,000 and $150,000. The new bill would raise that compensation to $150,000 for all claimants.
The bipartisan bill will move forward through the Judiciary Committee (which held a hearing on the program earlier this year. Advocates are cautiously optimistic about their chances.
“Congress is slow to act even in the face of great need. New Mexico has been greatly impacted by the nuclear weapons programs.With the deadline looming, perhaps the politicials will step up and do what is right,” says Susan Gordon.“There is growing awareness that this is a national issue and one that everyone needs to support.”
To be put in touch with experts and advocates for further information on the proposed legislation, introductions to affected community members, or background on the history and effects of uranium mining please reach out to Susan Gordon, sgordon@swuraniumimpacts.org
This story is an excerpt from Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands, by Jonathan Thompson forthcoming from Torrey House Press in August 2021.
In late August 2018, in the heat of one of the warmest and driest years on record in the Four Corners country, under a blanket of smoke emanating from wildfires burning all over the place, I piloted the Silver Bullet — my trusty 1989 Nissan Sentra — to the quiet burg of Monticello, Utah. I was on my way from one camping site on the Great Sage Plain to another on Comb Ridge, where I would feed my misanthropic side with a searing hike down a canyon, seeking out potholes that still had a smidgen of stagnant water left over from the last rain.
I took a detour through Monticello to look into one of the most contentious fronts of the long-running public-land wars, the battle over uranium mining and milling and even radioactive waste disposal. San Juan County’s public lands played a major role in what I call the Age of the Nuclear West, which reached its multi-decade apex during the Cold War and hasn’t ended yet. It was an era of innovation and greed, of hope and harm, of faith in technology and the threat of annihilation, of an almost miraculous source of energy, and of indelible wounds on the land, water and people. Today, the ghosts of that age lurk everywhere in the county. In Monticello, where for decades a uranium mill churned out poisons, residents are still grappling with the long-term health effects. And the last operating uranium mill in the nation, located just outside Blanding, has yet to give up the ghost.
THE NUCLEAR WEST dates back to 1898, long before anyone had thought of nuclear power or nuclear bombs, when Marie Curie discovered radium in unrefined pitchblende. Radium is a radioactive “daughter” of uranium that was once seen as a sort of miracle substance, so much so that just one gram of the stuff could fetch upwards of $100,000. Paint it on watch numbers or even clothing, and they’d glow in the dark. It purportedly could cure cancer and impotence and give those who used it an “all-around healthy glow,” as one advertisement put it. During the early 1900s, it was added to medicines, cosmetics and sometimes even food. The Denver-based Radio-Active Chemical Company added radium to fertilizers. The Nutex Company made radium condoms. Makers of the Radiendocrinator instructed men (and only men) to wear “the adapter like any ‘athletic strap.’ This puts the instrument under the scrotum as it should be. Wear at night. Radiate as directed.”
Shortly after Curie’s discovery, she received a sample of uranium ore from western Colorado. Curie found that it, too, contained radium, and she named the ore carnotite. A boom erupted in western San Miguel County, Colorado, just along the Utah border. Hundreds of mines were dug into mesas and extraction plants built along the rivers to get at the high-dollar miracle substance.
Early uranium mining in Colorado and Moab area, 1918. Utah State Historical Society
The boom busted in the early 1920s when huge mines opened up in the Belgian Congo that were able to supply the globe’s radium hunger far more affordably. Radium’s glow dimmed soon thereafter when the women who painted it onto watches began dying, and the inventor of the Radiendocrinator was stricken with bladder cancer.
Since uranium ore also contains vanadium, a metal that is used to harden steel and to color glass, a few mines were able to stay afloat throughout the 1930s. The Shumway brothers of San Juan County staked claims on the public domain in Cottonwood Wash and elsewhere during this time under the General Mining Law of 1872, which, like the Homestead Act, is a federal government land-giveaway. After staking the claims, the brothers were able to patent them, thereby taking ownership of public lands. Today, those parcels are private rectangles surrounded by public land.
When the Manhattan Project was launched to build the first atomic bomb, the carnotite-mining infrastructure was brought back to life, and the mines began kicking out ore once again. The old extraction plants also were revived and new ones built. In 1941, the Vanadium Corporation of America — the company that ran many of the mills across the plateau, including at Shiprock, New Mexico, and Durango, Colorado, and was therefore responsible for poisoning the earth and waters around those mills — constructed a mill on the edge of the small town of Monticello in cooperation with the Defense Plant Corporation. The mill was purportedly built to extract vanadium from uranium ore to supply the war effort. The real target was the uranium. Throughout the war, the Vanadium Corporation secretly processed it for use in the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombs that would be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Uranium processing mill at Monticello, Utah, owned by the government and operated for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission by the National Lead Company, Inc. This is the only government-owned uranium mill. c. 1957
U.S. Department of Energy
After the war ended, the mill — having served its purpose — shut down, along with many of the other facilities across the region. But when the Cold War and the arms race beckoned, the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission set out to manufacture a new uranium boom to provide the fuel for a massive nuclear arms arsenal and the nuclear reactors that would power cities, submarines and even airplanes. The Monticello mill was retooled with a nearly $2 million upgrade and churned through about 100 tons of uranium ore per day, crushing and grinding it up, then treating it with sulfuric acid, tributyl phosphate and other nastiness. One ton of ore yielded about five or six pounds of uranium, meaning that each day nearly 200,000 pounds of tailings were piled up outside the mill, in or next to a branch of Montezuma Creek, along with the liquid waste, or raffinate, which is not only radioactive, but also chock-full of heavy metals and other toxic material.
The federal government offered prospectors a cornucopia of subsidies, including bonuses of up to $35,000 for initial uranium ore production and grubstake loans to finance mining operations. Most significantly, the government agreed to be the exclusive purchaser of ore and yellowcake, and guaranteed a price to be paid for it, thus eliminating financial risk from what otherwise would have been a high-risk, high-return proposition.
A frenzied boom erupted on the Colorado Plateau, and San Juan County, which until then had been a fairly quiet place, was suddenly abuzz with humanity and greed. The mid-century equivalent of the gold rush infused popular culture. A 1949 cover story in Popular Mechanics instructed readers how to build their own Geiger counters, and in 1953, a New Yorker feature article was devoted to an “alert-looking man named Calvin Black,” who was working as a foreman at a uranium mine at the time. “Uranium is all I’ve bothered with since I left high school five years ago,” Black — who, two decades later, would come to be known as the father of the Sagebrush Rebellion — told the reporter, “and I guess I’ve been lucky so far.” A board game called Uranium Rush included a “Geiger counter” that “lights and buzzes your way to fun and fortune.” Prospectors from across the demographic spectrum descended on the sparsely populated region, Geiger counters in hand, combing public lands in search for the next bonanza. In the mid-1950s, some 750 mines were active across the Colorado Plateau. Ranchers were pushed off ancestral grazing lands, and quiet little Mormon towns erupted into boisterous, whiskey-soaked ones almost overnight.
Typical small mining operation in early days of uranium production. This sort of manual activity was soon replaced by efficient, mechanized mining. This photo was taken in 1956 near Moab, Utah.
Utah State Historical Society
To facilitate the craze, the Atomic Energy Commission, county bulldozer crews and prospectors cut roads up cliffs, across mesas and through washes. They didn’t even need to ask permission, thanks to a provision in an 1866 federal mining law, known as Revised Statute 2477, which gave anyone the right to build a road across Bureau of Land Management land to anywhere or, for that matter, to nowhere, without getting a permit or even informing the federal land agency. A vast expanse that in 1936 was declared the largest roadless area in America was soon covered with a web of roads.
San Juan County’s population exploded, relatively speaking, as did the assessed valuation, going from about $4 million to nearly $140 million. Ranching was no longer the main economic driver; uranium was, followed by oil. If the shift from farming to ranching in the 1880s represented a deviation from Brigham Young’s collectivist leanings, then the side-by-side uranium and oil booms pretty much nuked everything for which Young and Joseph Smith had stood. The Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition, sent to the corner of Utah in order to repel the advancing forces of greed and unbridled capitalism and act as stewards of the land, was no more; the Hole-in-the-Rockers themselves were now fully invested in the avarice-driven society, and the county rose from one of the poorest to one of the wealthiest in the state.
The transformation in San Juan County — which would become the heart of the Sagebrush Rebellion — mirrored a similar one happening simultaneously within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, itself. When McCarthyism infected the nation in the 1950s, church leaders started an effort — perhaps concerted, perhaps not — to change their public image from borderline theocratic communists to full-on capitalists.
View of the Mormon temple in Monticello, Utah.
Luna Anna Archey / High Country News
The ideological leader of this new, free-market Mormonism was Ezra Taft Benson, a rabid anti-communist who served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of Agriculture and was LDS president for 14 years beginning in 1985. Benson was a contemporary, friend and ideological twin of W. Cleon Skousen, the ultra-conservative political theorist whose teachings would influence the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, the wise-use and patriot movements of the 1990s, and the violent right-wing uprisings of the mid-2010s, including the armed occupation led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016. Benson and Skousen both were strong supporters of the John Birch Society, which was considered extreme even by the likes of hardcore conservatives such as Barry Goldwater. The society’s founder, Robert Welch, derided Eisenhower as a communist, and Benson concurred. And in 1963, Benson predicted that within the decade the United States would be ruled by a communist dictatorship, which would include military occupation, concentration camps and the like. He then said, in what sounded like a call for violent revolution: “Words will not stop the communists.”
Neither Benson’s nor Skousen’s rhetoric was accepted by the entirety of the church leadership, by any means, but over time, the resistance to it waned, and the church and its membership moved much further to the right, thereby abandoning many of the principles of both Young and Smith.
The government stopped buying ore in the 1960s and yellowcake in the 1970s, but continued to prop up the nuclear industry as a whole with a slew of subsidies. Many of the smaller uranium mines and mills shut down or were purchased by larger corporations and consolidated into big operations. The Monticello mill was among those that perished in 1960, much to the dismay of the local business community, after having processed 900,000 tons of uranium ore, churned out more than 800,000 tons of tailings, contaminated the soil and groundwater with a litany of toxic and radioactive materials, and left a permanent stain on the land and on the collective health of local residents.
By the late 1970s, the prospecting boom was long gone, and many of the smaller mines had shut down, giving way to larger strip mines in Wyoming or Grants, New Mexico. A handful of mines and mills across the Colorado Plateau were still operating at the time, but their days were numbered. In March 1979, one of the reactors at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania experienced a partial meltdown, thanks in part to a stuck valve. While a devastating catastrophe was narrowly averted, the accident was enough to spark fear in a populace among which an anti-nuclear-weapon movement was already growing. A few months later an even more damaging, yet far less visible, accident occurred on the Navajo Nation, when a uranium mill tailings dam owned by the United Nuclear Corporation was breached near Church Rock, New Mexico, sending more than 1,000 tons of tailings and 94 million gallons of radioactive liquid into the Puerco River, affecting livestock and contaminating the drinking-water wells of countless people downstream. The China Syndrome hit theaters that same year, and a rousing, star-studded No Nukes concert rocked Madison Square Garden, with Jackson Browne, Carly Simon, John Hall and Bonnie Raitt imploring the world to “take all your atomic poison power away.”
Aerial view of Three Mile Island.
Penn State
Even as public perception of nuclear power dimmed and U.S. utilities stopped building new reactors, uranium mining and milling operations were ramping up in other countries, leading to a global glut and a uranium price crash. With cheaper yellowcake flooding in from overseas, the domestic industry withered. Uranium production in the United States peaked in 1980, then fell precipitously after that.
MONTICELLO STARTED LIFE as a Gentile cow town,not becoming a mill or mining town of any sort until World War II. Though it is the county seat, and though there is an LDS temple there, it still retains a smidgen of that non-Mormon cowboy, mining-town flavor, with the only real bar in San Juan County — a speakeasy sort of place with a Mormon teetotaler mixologist who throws together complicated cocktails, including one called “The Best Blow Job Ever.” It is home to the Four Corners School of Outdoor Education, started here in 1984, and the Canyon Country Discovery Center, founded in 2015. At the time, San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman called the center a Trojan horse for the pro-wilderness crowd, and others said it was a gateway drug that would lead to Monticello becoming a new Moab. Monticello also is home to Uranium Watch, founded years ago by a woman named Sarah Fields, who is currently the watchdog’s sole employee.
Monticello is the county seat for San Juan County, Utah.
Luna Anna Archey / High Country News
During my 2018 stop in Monticello, I looked Fields up and invited her to lunch on a shady café patio to talk about the nuclear West. The wind had blown the smoke away and the air was clearer than it had been for much of the summer, but the heat was as intense as ever.
In 1987, Fields and her husband and kids moved from San Luis Obispo, California — just a couple miles inland from the then-new Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant — to Moab. There, the Atlas uranium mill, located on the edge of town along the banks of the Colorado River, was about to shut down for good, thanks to the crash of the domestic uranium market. The owners and the federal government had to figure out what to do with the 16 million tons of radioactive tailings that sat onsite and that was leaching into the river — and the water supply of millions of people downstream. Fields jumped into the fray, watchdogging the process for the Sierra Club and Friends of Glen Canyon before starting Uranium Watch in 2006.
With a shy smile, big blue-gray eyes and straight silver hair, Fields is tireless in her activism, most of which is funded by her. She puts countless miles on her decades-old Toyota station wagon driving to hearings and conferences and site visits. She has learned the art of activism on the fly, brought herself up to speed on the myriad technical complexities of her focus issue. She’s often the only member of the public to attend public hearings held to consider permit renewals for uranium mines and mills. When others do show, they tend to make emotional pleas against permit renewal, recounting uranium-related health problems that have plagued their families, or for renewal, due to the economic boost it could bring. Fields’s comments, by contrast, are always based in science, can be highly technical, and typically are aimed not at getting permits revoked, but at making sure that the facilities do as little harm as possible while still operating. And she’s an expert at badgering agencies with Freedom of Information Act requests to get them to cough up pertinent documents, such as letters concerning the 26,000-ton pile of uranium tailings now inundated by Lake Powell. Over the years, Fields has continued to monitor the Atlas mill cleanup — which won’t be completed until approximately 2030 — and fought hard to stop a proposed nuclear plant in Green River, Utah, while keeping an eye on the lingering pollution and health problems left behind by the Monticello mill.
View of the former site of the Monticello Mill, in Monticello, Utah.
Luna Anna Archey / High Country News
In the late 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy came to Monticello and spent $250 million in taxpayer dollars to clean up the mill mess — a mess that was made by the feds, too, and financed with taxpayer dollars. Mills all over the West were remediated at around the same time, from Uravan, Colorado, to Grand Junction to my hometown of Durango. Today, you can find the former mill sites by studying satellite maps on Google Earth and looking for the telltale tombs — big, gray, featureless monoliths in which the tailings reside — out among the sage or the sandstone. You can find the memories of that time stored up in the silt of Lake Powell and the San Juan River. And the bodies and the cells remember, too — the bodies and cells of those who worked in the mines and the mills or lived nearby, and who played on the tailings piles, swam in the raffinate ponds, and put the sandy, radioactive tailings in their vegetable gardens.
A 1997 public health assessment found that in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, white men in Monticello suffered from tracheal, bronchial, lung and pleural cancer at rates three to four times higher than in the general U.S. population, and white women had similarly elevated incidents of breast cancer. A follow-up study in 2014 found, again, “evidence of significantly elevated risks for lung and bronchus cancer in residents of the City of Monticello … consistent with known exposures and are biologically plausible with prolonged exposures to the contaminants from the MMTS (Monticello Mill site).” An informal survey found 600 incidents of people with cancer, 26 of which were leukemia.
Citing these grim statistics, residents of Monticello and victims of the mill’s pollution went after the federal government, demanding that it fund a cancer screening center in Monticello and create a fund for offsetting health care costs for victims. Many of the victims were uninsured or underinsured and were unable to pay the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical treatment. Some were forced to take out mortgages on their homes or even go bankrupt. Residents here had yet another reason to be disdainful of the government. Indeed, when the BLM was looking to build a new headquarters in town, it originally chose the old mill-site, since federal officials had told townsfolk that it was no longer hazardous. They chose another location after Department of Energy officials verbally warned them away from the site — a courtesy they did not extend to the locals.
Sign showing the different agencies responsible for the remediation of the Monticello Mill site. Luna Anna Archey / High Country News
Studies in Shiprock have found elevated levels of birth defects, kidney disease, cancers and other persistent health problems. In Durango, a local doctor raised alarms in the ’70s regarding what he saw as a lung cancer cluster in neighborhoods adjacent to the mill and the abandoned tailings piles. A recent study in Moab showed relatively high levels of lung cancer. Yet in almost every case, the researchers stop short of putting the blame on the obvious culprit, the nearby mill or the mines. They call for more monitoring. They attribute the illnesses to higher levels of naturally occurring radiation, or to cigarette smoking, even in a predominantly Mormon town like Monticello, where smoking is rare. And then they move the tailings, ship them off to where they can’t be seen, “reclaim” the site, build dog parks or golf courses or wildlife refuges there, and hope that people will forget.
Yet no matter how many millions of tons of tailings are removed, and how many millions of dollars are spent to “reclaim” the land, the toxic legacy endures, somewhere, somehow. Radioactive, heavy-metal-laden water continues to seep into Many Devils Wash, adjacent to the site of the Shiprock mill, and then into the San Juan River, flummoxing scientists. Groundwater beneath the Durango dog park still swims with high levels of uranium, lead and other contaminants. And, in Monticello, shallow groundwater is still contaminated with elevated levels of uranium, arsenic, and manganese, and every effort to clean it up has failed.
It’s no wonder, then, that people like Fields are worried about what messes might yet be made by the industry, even one that appears to be dying. In 2019, U.S. uranium producers kicked out a record low of just 86 tons of uranium concentrate, less than 5% of the fuel consumed by domestic nuclear plants (and 95% less than they produced a decade earlier). The industry employs about 265 people nationwide; it’s not exactly a job-creator. Nearly all of the fuel for U.S. reactors is imported, mainly from Canada, Australia, Russia and Kazakhstan. These countries can supply uranium for far cheaper, in part thanks to government subsidies like those that propped up the U.S. uranium industry from the 1950s to the 1980s. Plus, because of uranium’s high energy density, it is relatively cheap to ship overseas. Energy Fuels, the owner of the White Mesa Mill outside Blanding, has lobbied the federal government to limit uranium imports in order to jack up the price and keep it in business. At the same time, the company has resorted to importing and reprocessing nuclear waste from Estonia to keep the mill clinging to life.
The fence surrounding White Mesa Uranium Mill, San Juan County, Utah.
Luna Anna Archey / High Country News
The Trump administration balked on the import limits, in part because it would hurt the nuclear power industry by increasing prices. Instead, it proposed infusing the industry with cash by purchasing large quantities of uranium for a national reserve and asked Congress for $150 million for that purpose in 2021. If that proposal were to survive into the Biden administration, and if Congress gave it the go-ahead, it could immediately and substantially up demand and prices for domestic uranium, potentially raising production to levels that haven’t been seen in decades. Meanwhile, a movement to turn to low-carbon-emitting nuclear power as a tool for fighting climate change is gaining steam, and the development of smaller, cheaper nuclear reactors could lead to a miniature nuclear-power boom.
If any of these developments were to breathe new life into the domestic uranium industry, it would be felt in San Juan County and the greater Four Corners region. Energy Fuels’ Daneros Mine, located on the edge of Bears Ears National Monument in the White Canyon drainage, is currently in standby mode and would surely be put back into operation, along with Energy Fuels mines near the Grand Canyon and La Sal, Utah. Residents of White Mesa, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe nearest to the mill, have fought alongside Fields and other environmental activists to get the company to implement better safety measures at the mill to ensure that it doesn’t contaminate their groundwater. And the neo-Sagebrush Rebels have been there as well, cheering on the industry. “I think it is a beautiful industry,” said Lyman, in a hearing on the White Mesa Mill’s permit renewal in 2017. “I think it holds the key to a peaceful and clean world and in the future, we will be a nuclear-powered civilization. … Claiming to shut down the mill to protect the environment is akin to turning Bears Ears to an industrial tourism mecca in order to protect cultural resources.”
This story is an excerpt from Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands, by Jonathan Thompson forthcoming from Torrey House Press in August 2021.
Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News and runs the Land Desk. He is the author of River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster. Email him at jonathan@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor.
There Is Not Enough Time for Nuclear Innovation to Save the Planet
By Allison Macfarlane
July 8, 2021
Diving into the sea near a nuclear power plant in Fukui, Japan, July 2011
The world is almost out of time with respect to decarbonizing the energy sector. Doing so, experts agree, is essential to forestalling some of the most alarming consequences of climate change, including rising sea levels, droughts, fires, extreme weather events, ocean acidification, and the like. These threats have helped generate fresh interest in the potential for nuclear power—and, more specifically, innovative nuclear reactor designs—to allow people to rely less on carbon-spewing electricity sources such as coal, natural gas, and oil. In recent years, advanced nuclear designs have been the focus of intensive interest and support from both private investors such as Bill Gates—who founded TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company, in 2006—and national governments, including that of the United States.
Advocates hope that this renewed focus on nuclear energy will yield technological progress and lower costs. But when it comes to averting the imminent effects of climate change, even the cutting edge of nuclear technology will prove to be too little, too late. Put simply, given the economic trends in existing plants and those under construction, nuclear power cannot positively impact climate change in the next ten years or more. Given the long lead times to develop engineered, full-scale prototypes of new advanced designs and the time required to build a manufacturing base and a customer base to make nuclear power more economically competitive, it is unlikely that nuclear power will begin to significantly reduce our carbon energy footprint even in 20 years—in the United States and globally. No country has developed this technology to a point where it can and will be widely and successfully deployed.
STRUGGLING FOR VIABILITY
Nuclear power currently provides the United States with about 20 percent of its electricity, but the industry has struggled for decades to remain economically viable. When New York’s Indian Point power plant shut down its last nuclear reactor on April 30 this year, it was the 12th such closure since 2013. At least seven more U.S. reactors are slated to close by 2025.
An October 2020 analysis by Lazard showed that in the United States, capital costs for nuclear power are higher than for almost any other energy-generating technology. There are multiple efforts underway to make nuclear reactors more efficient and, ultimately, more competitive with other forms of energy production that can cut down on carbon emissions. Each of these designs faces its own set of logistical and regulatory hurdles, however.
The power reactors currently in operation or under construction in the United States, France, Japan, and a number of other countries are all variations on the light-water reactor, a plant that is powered by low-enriched uranium fuel and cooled and “moderated” by water. (“Moderation” reduces the energy of neutrons released in a fission reaction to improve the likelihood of causing further fission in uranium fuel.) Canada operates reactors that use slightly enriched uranium fuel and are cooled and moderated by heavy water, which contains deuterium, a type of hydrogen isotope. The United Kingdom operates a single light-water reactor, as well as some gas-cooled reactors. These types of reactors are all large, capable of generating between 600 and 1,200 megawatts of electricity.
New reactor makers propose to make reactors smaller and to use different types of fuels, coolants, and moderators. One of these new designs, the NuScale reactor—a small, light-water reactor that is capable of generating 77 megawatts of electricity and emphasizes passive safety features—is in the midst of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing process. The first customer for the NuScale design is Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, which has plans to begin operating a plant in Idaho by 2027. The U.S. Department of Energy has backed this project with a $1.355 billion award.
NuScale has shown that it is possible for vendors of innovative new reactor designs to engage in the licensing process. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whose approval of new designs carries considerable weight in other countries, is working on a new regulation to license some of the more exotic designs.
Capital costs for nuclear power are higher than for almost any other energy-generating technology.
NuScale is further along in the approval process than other, more unconventional reactor designs, such as the sodium-cooled fast reactor. This is the holy grail of nuclear power—a design that creates more fuel than it uses. Eight countries have built multiple versions of this type of reactor over the last six decades at a cost of over $100 billion, but none have proven reliable enough to produce electricity competitively. Nonetheless, the Department of Energy has decided on this design for its Versatile Test Reactor, to be constructed at the Idaho National Laboratory in conjunction with GE Hitachi and TerraPower. The Versatile Test Reactor, estimated to cost between $3 billion and $6 billion, is slated to start testing fuels by 2026.
Other startup vendors are also considering two other designs. The first is for molten salt reactors, only a few of which have ever operated. These use either fluoride or chloride salts, often mixed with lithium or beryllium. More promising are high-temperature gas reactors that use helium as a coolant and graphite, rather than water, as a moderator. The United States built and operated two of these power reactors between the 1960s and the 1980s. China, Germany, and Japan have all built and operated test versions of high-temperature gas reactors.
Another major challenge is that these new reactors must also use new fuels, which must be licensed as well as produced, managed during use, and stored and disposed of when spent. Some new reactor designs depend on the use of fuels that require higher enrichments of uranium—material that the United States currently has little capability to produce. The higher enriched fuels have set off concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation and would require international safeguards.
Even if these tricky fueling problems could be solved, unconventional reactor designs also face formidable construction challenges. Many of the new advanced designs rely on the availability of adequate sites and efficient construction to achieve profitability. But the nuclear industry has been plagued by long construction times and cost overruns. Since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the construction time to build most reactors in the United States has surpassed 10 years. Meanwhile, costs have skyrocketed. The Vogtle plant in Georgia is the only new build of reactors in the United States. The plant’s two reactors were initially priced at $14 billion and expected to start in 2016 and 2017 after five years of construction. Instead, construction is still ongoing and the plants may not start until 2022 at a final cost of $25 billion. And the recent new build experience in Europe is similar: the French EPR reactor design has experienced multiple delays and large cost overruns in both France and Finland. These megaprojects face challenges in program management and quality control and regulatory issues that result in lengthy delays.
The United States is hardly an outlier in this regard. Nuclear reactors worldwide are aging and, for the most part, are not being replaced as they are shut down. In 2019, for instance, six reactors started operations and 13 units were shut down. The average age of the world’s 408 operating reactors in 2020 was 31 years, with 81 of them over the age of 41 years.
NO SILVER BULLET
For all these reasons, nuclear energy cannot be a near- or perhaps even medium-term silver bullet for climate change. Given how many economic, technical, and logistical hurdles stand in the way of building safer, more efficient, and cost-competitive reactors, nuclear energy will not be able to replace other forms of power generation quickly enough to achieve the levels of emission reduction necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
Innovations in reactor designs and nuclear fuels are still worthy of significant research and government support. Despite its limitations, nuclear power still has some potential to reduce carbon emissions—and that is a good thing. But rather than placing unfounded faith in the ability of nuclear power to save the planet, we need to focus on the real threat: the changing climate. And we need strong government support of noncarbon-emitting energy technologies that are ready to be deployed today, not ten or 20 years from now, because we have run out of time. We cannot wait a minute longer.
Larry J. King, Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM), (505) 979-1411, l_king2013@yahoo.com
Jonathan J. Perry, ENDAUM Director, (505) 979-1027, jonjperry@yahoo.com
Eric Jantz, Staff Attorney, New Mexico Environmental Law Center (NMELC), (505) 980-5239, ejantz@nmelc.org
International Human Rights Body to Hear Case Alleging U.S. Violated Human Rights of Navajo Communities When Licensing Uranium Mine in Church Rock & Crownpoint, New Mexico
Crownpoint and Church Rock, NM (Navajo Nation)—Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) announced today that their petition to the Inter-American Commision on Human Rights against the United States has been declared “admissible.” In admitting all ENDAUM’s allegations, the Commission stated that: “if proven, the facts of the petition could characterize violations of the right protected in Articles I (life and personal security) and XI (preservation of health and well-being, XIII (benefits of culture), XVIII (fair trial) and XXIII (property) of the American Declaration.” The IACHR Report on Admissibility can be found at this link: http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/decisions/2021/USAD654-11EN.pdf
The petition alleges that the United States, “by its acts and omissions that have contaminated and will continue to contaminate natural resources in the Diné communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock… has violated Petitioners’ human rights and breached its obligations under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.” The petition can be accessed at this link https://nmelc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/endaum_final_petition_with_figures-1.pdf.
The petition was filed by ENDAUM, a grassroots nonprofit organization formed in 1994 in response to concerns in the Crownpoint and Church Rock communities about the proposed in situ leach (ISL) uranium mines by Hydro Resources, Inc. (HRI), now owned by Canadian mining company Laramide Resources, Inc.. The NRC granted a source and byproduct materials license to HRI (now Laramide) to conduct uranium mining using ISL technology at four sites in the Navajo communities of Church Rock and Crownpoint in northwestern New Mexico.
The Commission’s decision to hear the case, ENDAUM et al. v. United States of America, is only the second time that the human rights body, the autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS) based in Washington, D.C., has found admissible a case of environmental justice against the United States. The first case was Mossville Environmental
Action Now’s petition for failure to address continuing environmental racism in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.”
“The petition marks the first time the NRC has been forced to account for its decades of human rights violations,” said attorney Eric Jantz, of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center.
The proposed uranium mining project threatens life, health, water, cultural practices and property. Larry King, a resident of Church Rock, is a former uranium miner and ENDAUM member. Mr. King and his family live on one of the proposed mine sites; if the mining proceeds as the NRC has licensed it, Mr. King, his family and his livestock will be forcibly removed from his land for the duration of the mining operation.
The NRC’s decision to license HRI/Laramide’s project is particularly egregious because Church Rock has already suffered disproportionate damage from historic uranium development. Church Rock is a low-income community of color and also the site of the largest nuclear disaster in U.S. history. On July 16, 1979 the tailings dam at the United Nuclear Corporation uranium mill broke and released 93 million gallons of radioactive liquid into the Puerco River, a river which runs through Church Rock. The flood of radioactive and toxic liquid killed livestock and destroyed crops. It also left a wake of radioactive waste and heavy metals in the Puerco River’s bed and banks that has yet to be remediated.
The Navajo Nation hosts 520 abandoned uranium mine sites and three uranium mill sites that are Superfund sites. These sites are the source of contamination for tens of millions of gallons of groundwater and countless acres of land.
There are 13 sites within 6 miles of the proposed mine in Church Rock where uranium was mined and processed, all of which still have radiation levels much higher than undeveloped areas. The proposed site is above the Westwater Canyon Aquifer that is used by 15,000 people. Hundreds of people live within 5 miles of HRI’s Church Rock sites, and many are exposed to radon up to 42 times higher than background. The proposed sites in Crownpoint are located extremely close to schools, municipal drinking water supply wells, and homes.
According to recent research, residents living within half a mile of abandoned uranium mines experience a significantly increased risk for kidney disease, diabetes, hypertension, auto-immune disease.
The ISL mine also threatens the Diné’s distinct cultural and spiritual ties to the land and environment within their traditional homeland. Contamination from the HRI/Laramide mine would render the land unsuitable for plant gathering, food cultivation, and ceremonial purposes.
“This is a major step bringing forth accountability of the federal government in terms of theirpolicies toward Indigenous People,” said Jonathan Perry, ENDAUM Director. “We, the Diné, willcontinue to stand our ground against any uranium mining activities on or near the NavajoNation.”
“The priority of the U.S. government should always be adequately addressing the 523 clustered contaminated sites on the Navajo Nation, not licensing any new extraction projects,” said Perry.
“Especially any ISL mining proposals that threaten the well-being of our people, aquifers, andhomelands,” Perry added.
The ISL industry has a poor track record of spills and leaks that even the NRC acknowledges. The industry also has a very poor record of remediating groundwater contaminated by the ISL process. In fact, the US Geological Survey said, after 30 years of ISL mining in Texas, that no ISL uranium mine restored groundwater to pre-mining conditions. NRC admits that “restoration to background water quality …has proven to be not practically achievable.”
Written arguments are due in August, with a possible 60-day extension, and then a hearing in Washington, D.C. will be scheduled likely in the Spring of 2022.
and Chris Shuey (sric.chris@gmail.com) Southwest Research and Information Center
July 15, 2021
Every year at this time, the Red Water Pond Road Community Association (RWPRCA) of the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico gathers to remember the impacts of the largest release of radioactive waste, by volume, in U.S. history.An estimated 94 million gallons of toxic uranium mill tailings wastewater spilled into the Puerco River from a breach in a dam at the United Nuclear Corp. (UNC) uranium mill on July 16, 1979.
RWPRCA families live between two abandoned uranium mines and the UNC mill and tailings facility in Coyote Canyon Chapter.To the south of them, the Northeast Church Rock (NECR) mine, located in Church Rock Chapter, operated from 1968 to 1982, producing about 3.5 million tons of uranium ore, making it one of the largest producing uranium mines on the Navajo Nation. The uranium ore from the NECR mine was processed at the adjacent UNC uranium mill, which is located in Pinedale Chapter. Mill tailings are the wastes left over from processing of uranium ore to extract uranium oxide, a metallic yellow powder.The tailings were stored in unlined evaporation ponds near the mill, causing localized groundwater contamination.
At 5:30 am on July 16, 1979, a 30-foot breach in the tailings dam opened, sending radioactive wastewater into the Puerco River.The spill fluids traveled more than 75 miles downstream into Arizona, passing through numerous Navajo communities and the city of Gallup, NM.The acidic wastewater (pH=1.5) was so toxic it caused burns on the feet and legs of livestock and some people who unknowingly waded into the stream immediately after the spill. Livestock and plants died alongside the banks of the Puerco River while elevated levels of uranium and radium were detected as far as 60 miles downstream. The Church Rock tailings spill ranks as the third largest radioactive waste release after the Fukushima disaster (2011) and the Chernobyl meltdown (1986), and larger than the Three Mile Island partial meltdown (1979).
Impacts of the spill were exacerbated by between nearly 30 years of dewatering of three large underground mines in the Church Rock mining district located 12 miles northwest of Gallup.Over the years, the mine water contributed nearly six times more radioactivity to the Puerco River system than the one-time tailings spill.Ongoing uranium contamination of alluvial groundwater has been documented in wells located near the Puerco River in the Sanders, AZ/New Lands region of the Navajo Nation. The role of the mine water in the contamination of the groundwater under the Puerco River is still being investigated some 50 years later.
Research has shown that Native Americans are disproportionately impacted by contamination of the land, water and air by mine wastes spread out over 15 Western states.RWPRCA and other grassroots communities on the Navajo Nation are holding corporations and the Federal Government responsible for the cleanup of abandoned uranium mines that date back to the beginning of uranium mining in the early 1940s.Native communities spanning three to four generations have had to live with the dangers of uranium waste affecting their families, their homes, their livelihoods and their sacred cultural practices.
On this day, we also remember the first atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon, called the Trinity Blast in the Tularosa Basin of south-central New Mexico on July 16, 1945.Like uranium miners of the Four Corners Area, the people of the Tularosa Basin continue to seek compensation for illnesses they connect to the Trinity Blast.The bomb, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the Manhattan Project, paved the way for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945.
We remember these unconscionable and horrific events that shaped nuclear history over the past 80 years so that we don’t repeat them now and in the future.As the clock on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reminds us, the world remains only 100 minutes from a cataclysmic nuclear exchange.Please, teach your children this history so they become the vanguards of peace and prosperity for future generations.
In just a year from July 11 the compensation program created under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) will come to an end. We need our elected representatives in Congress to extend and expand that program to help all of those in our state who have been effected by radiation.
Starting in 1945, right here in New Mexico, the United States government began testing nuclear weapons. Hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests would occur between then and 1962 when they were moved underground. Thousands of nuclear weapons were built as well. To support this project uranium mining and processing began across the US, including here. These projects were done with inadequate safety measures and exposed civilians living near the testing sites – as well as military service members deployed there – and workers in the mines and processing centers to deadly amounts of radiation.
Congress enacted RECA in 1990. The law provided a one-time benefit payment to people who have likely developed cancer or other specified diseases after exposure to radiation. That exposure could have come through uranium mining, milling, or transport, or from radioactive fallout from atomic weapons testing in certain areas of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona.
In 2000, the program was expanded to compensate additional uranium workers and unsuspecting civilians who were also exposed to radiation. However, uranium workers from after 1971 were not included. They are still not eligible for compensation, despite most of the work taking place after 1971.
Recent research conducted at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center suggests there is no differences in exposure and illnesses between the pre-1971 uranium workers and the Post 71 uranium workers. All uranium workers should be compensated for their illnesses due to radiation exposure.
That’s why we are calling on Senators Lujan and Heinrich – and the entire New Mexico Congressional delegation – to extend RECA beyond its current July 2022 end date and expand it to better care for those affected. This could be done in a few simple steps:
Extend RECA for an additional 23 years (through 2045);
Increase compensation for all claimants to $150,000;
Expand eligibility to ALL uranium workers who were active from 1972-1990;
Expand the geographical eligibility for compensation for exposure to atmospheric atomic testing to cover all of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah;
Expand the geographical eligibility to cover persons present in Guam during atmospheric testing in the Pacific and making veterans who participated in the cleanup of Enewetak Atoll eligible for compensation.
Despite its limitations, the RECA program is very important to the workers that unknowingly gave their lives during the Cold War. Our own government was and still is responsible for worker safety, and from the early 1940’s right up to today, they still are not protecting uranium workers properly. The government and uranium industry made millions in profits while knowingly killing uranium workers. Now they must at the very least provide adequate compensation to those who faced the greatest risk.
Linda Evers with Post-71 Uranium Workers Committee in Grants, NM
Larry King, President, Church Rock Chapter, Navajo Nation
Susan Gordon, Coordinator, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment
By Susan Gordon / Coordinator, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, Larry King / Church Rock Chapter, Navajo Nation and Former Uranium Worker, Linda Evers /Post 71 Uranium Workers Committee and Former Uranium Worker
Albuquerque Journal
Tuesday, July 13th, 2021
A warning sign at the old Kerr-McGee uranium mill site is shown on open land in the foreground with Mount Taylor in the background near Grants, N.M. (Susan Montoya Bryan/Associated Press)
This time next July we are going to lose a key federal program, and you hardly even hear about it. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) will come to an end on July 11, 2022. We need our elected representatives in Congress to extend and expand that program before it runs out.
Congress first passed RECA in 1990. The idea was to help cover health costs for many of the communities exposed to nuclear radiation through U.S. nuclear weapons programs. Those programs began in the 1940s, most notably here in New Mexico with the first nuclear test in 1945. Above-ground nuclear tests would continue until 1962, and to support the thousands of new nuclear weapons being built an expansive uranium mining and processing program began in our state and elsewhere.
RECA provides a one-time benefit payment to people who have likely developed cancer or other specified diseases after exposure to radiation from this nuclear project. That exposure could have come through uranium mining, milling or transport, or from radioactive fallout from atomic weapons testing in certain areas of Utah, Nevada and Arizona.
The program was expanded by law in 2000. Now it offers compensation to some additional groups of uranium workers and civilians who were also exposed to radiation. But not everyone. Uranium workers after 1971 were not included.
Most of the uranium mining production happened after 1971, yet most uranium workers have been excluded from RECA. There were no safety improvements for miners.
Recent research conducted at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center suggests there are no differences in exposure and illnesses between the pre-1971 uranium workers and the post-71 uranium workers. All uranium workers should be compensated for their illnesses due to radiation exposure.
We need New Mexico’s congressional representatives and Sens. (Ben Ray) Luján and (Martin) Heinrich to end that arbitrary distinction and extend the program so everyone can benefit from it. Broadly this looks like:
Extending RECA for an additional 23 years, through 2045;
Increasing compensation for all claimants to $150,000;
Expanding eligibility to all uranium workers who were active from 1972-1990;
Expanding the geographical eligibility for compensation for exposure to atmospheric atomic testing to cover all of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah;
Expanding the geographical eligibility to cover persons present in Guam during atmospheric testing in the Pacific and making veterans who participated in the cleanup of Enewetak Atoll eligible for compensation.
We cannot roll back the clock on what happened. But we can prevent it from happening again and take care of those who were most affected. If we don’t, we are dishonoring their sacrifices and abandoning them.
One year from now will mark the end of the limited compensation available from the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Our New Mexico Congressional delegation must lead in continuing and expanding the RECA programs before it sunsets on July 11, 2022.
From 1945-62, the U.S. government conducted hundreds of atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. The very first one took place here in New Mexico. Uranium mining and processing began in many areas, especially in Western states like ours, to fuel the development of the nuclear arsenal. In the process, individuals living near atmospheric testing sites, workers in uranium mining and processing, and military service members were exposed to radiation for many, without their consent.
In 1990, Congress enacted RECA. This piece of legislation provides one-time benefit payments to persons who have likely developed cancer or other specified diseases after exposure to uranium mining, milling or transport, and from radioactive fallout from atomic weapons testing in certain areas of Utah, Nevada and Arizona.
The act was broadened in 2000 to provide compensation for additional uranium workers and unsuspecting civilians who were also exposed to radiation. Uranium workers after 1971 are not eligible for compensation, despite most of the uranium mining production happening after 1971.
Recent research conducted at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center suggests there is no differences in exposure and illnesses between the pre-1971 uranium workers and the post-’71 uranium workers. All uranium workers should be compensated for their illnesses due to radiation exposure.
Communities throughout the Western states continue to suffer serious health consequences from the government’s nuclear program, but the RECA program and trust fund will terminate in next year if Congress does not act to extend the legislation.
We call on Sens. Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich to demand extension of RECA and adoption of amendments that will:
Extend RECA for an additional 23 years (through 2045).
Increase compensation for all claimants to $150,000.
Expand eligibility to all uranium workers who were active from 1972-90.
Expand the geographical eligibility for compensation for exposure to atmospheric atomic testing to cover all of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah.
Expand the geographical eligibility to cover persons present in Guam during atmospheric testing in the Pacific and making veterans who participated in the cleanup of Enewetak Atoll eligible for compensation.
While RECA is at risk of going away, these impacts from radiation exposure are not. It is up to our New Mexico representatives and Congress to extend RECA for those already covered and expand it to all of those affected.
Susan Gordon is the coordinator, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment; Larry King is the president, Church Rock Chapter, Navajo Nation; and Linda Evers is president, Post 71 Uranium Workers Committee. Both Larry King and Linda Evers are former uranium workers.
