Environmental Justice Policy Statement:
The Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE), a coalition of local groups within the Grants Uranium Mining District (GMD) of Northwest New Mexico, is founded upon principles of environmental justice which seek to protect our air, land, water, and health for present and future generations.
To this day, residents within the GMD continue to be over-burdened with legacy contamination throughout our environment since the advent of uranium mining and milling in the 1950s. Initially, the mining industry in this region operated with minimal regulatory oversight until the late 1970s, when state and federal authorities began to adopt and enforce more stringent regulations designed to protect human health and the environment from the adverse impacts of mineral extraction.
In fact, our regulators have allowed the mining industry to lower cleanup standards – below what is required to adequately protect our health from continuing radioactive exposure.
MASE members are committed to working with the New Mexico Environment Department, US Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and other regulators as equal partners to ensure that they strictly enforce all regulations which protect our health and the environment.
MASE will work towards the elimination of all exemptions and waivers that impose unjustifiable risks on human health and the environment. For too long, the mining industry has been exempted from shouldering the true costs of mineral development at the expense of our communities – permanently lacing our air, water sources, and soil with radioactive and toxic contamination.
Environmental Justice Principles:
1. The Grants Mining District must be designated as an Environmental Justice Zone by all regulators to ensure that uranium-impacted populations are treated the same as non-impacted communities.
2. The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and other federal and state environmental laws require public disclosure of all uranium mining project risks to human health and the environment.
a. Communities exposed to unacceptable health and environmental risks must give their free, prior, and informed consent to new uranium extraction projects.
3. All regulations should be based on the best available science, and their implementation guided by the best available technology, with the expertise of the affected community.
a. The hydrogeologic features of all uranium project sites should be characterized prior to the startup of any new projects, including the existence of all potential drinking water supplies and seismic risks.
b. Baseline surface and groundwater quality should be established to safeguard past, present, or future regional drinking water supplies prior to the startup of any new projects.
i. Standards should be maintained to protect drinking water sources and the public health, not relaxed to reduce the cost of clean-up efforts.
ii. The burden of proving the need for waivers and exemptions from regulatory requirements must be science-based, not cost-based.
iii. Cost-effective measures must not be tolerated if they pose unacceptable risks to human health.
4. All hazardous and radiological waste produced by any past or present uranium project must be inventoried, characterized, and monitored by industry and the regulators.
a. Notice of all past and present releases of contaminants to workers and members of the public should be made available by the regulators to the public in order to obtain their informed consent to keeping hazardous and radiological waste within our communities.
5. Uranium project operators and regulators must ensure a safe, healthy work environment for all uranium workers.
Conclusion:
MASE will continue to seek the cleanup of all uranium legacy sites within the Grants Uranium District and to eliminate all sources of toxic contamination. MASE will seek adequate compensation and medical treatment for all uranium workers and residents whose health has been harmed.
MASE will further work in solidarity with other groups to eliminate environmental injustice and to achieve sustainable uses of our public lands – prioritizing the use of renewable resources over finite reserves that waste water, pollute our environment, and compromise our health.
Our membership values less consumption of the Earth’s resources in order to ensure the health of the natural world for present and future generations.
May 2015
Read complete Environmental Justice Statement EJ statement
NUCLEAR FREE ZONE DECLARATION
for Northwest New Mexico/Grants Uranium Belt
Uranium mining and milling of the Grants Mineral Belt in New Mexico forms a critical link in the nuclear fuel chain that supplies nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons development.
Radioactive releases occur at every stage in the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium mining and milling to the storage, transport and final disposal of nuclear waste.
The 1872 Mining Act, originally created to help small miners has become a form of corporate welfare, turning cultural landscapes throughout the United States into National Sacrifice Areas where local communities have been disregarded and the need for ongoing reclamation has resulted in a legacy of contaminated air, water and soil.
Legacy contamination from historic mining and milling in the Grants Mining District has not been completely assessed, nor has the region has been restored to pre-mining and milling conditions.
Whereas:
Uranium legacy contamination poisons our water, land, and lives through ongoing radioactive releases that will continue to plague our cultural landscape and future generations,
There are better job opportunities for local populations in cleaning up the existing legacy of contamination and exploring alternative energy economies,
A 2011 National Academy of Science report has made it clear that there is no “safe level” of human exposure to radiation,
Past and present generations residing in the Grants Mining District have been disproportionately affected by uranium mining and milling activities that went unregulated for at least two decades,
Aquifers and waterways contaminated by uranium mining and milling can never be fully restored to pre-mining and milling conditions,
The continued removal of uranium from regional aquifers will result in a permanent loss of water from these deep aquifer reserves,
Renewed uranium mining in the Grants Mining District will jeopardize the public health, natural ecosystems, and traditional cultural landscapes by further degrading our air, soil, and water quality, endangering our Environmental Justice communities,
The toxic waste generated from new uranium mines, and mills, and the potential transport and disposal of spent fuel from nuclear reactors across the nation in New Mexico will create additional legacies for present and future generations,
Uranium mining violates our basic human rights to a clean and usable water supply, endangers our many traditional cultures, the public health, and interferes with the natural cycles of Earth and Water,
We are committed to protect and restore our shared water and natural resources that are so critical to our continued survival in an arid desert environment, our quality of life, and multi-cultural preservation.
Therefore:
We, the undersigned, join a growing global movement to limit the use of nuclear power and weapons, transforming National Sacrifice Areas into Nuclear Free Zones.
We endorse the development of renewable energy sources that sustain- not destroy- our public lands, multi-cultural landscapes, and natural ecosystems.
We do not consent to the transport of high level radioactive nuclear waste across our treasured landscapes, homelands and watersheds or to the consolidated storage of high level nuclear waste in New Mexico.
We will provide direction to our lawmakers and private industry to invest in renewable, clean energy that conserves and protects our forests, watersheds and cultures.
We further encourage investment and job creation in the cleanup of the historic uranium legacy contamination that still exists within our shared watersheds.
We further urge all federal and state regulators to promote our rights to a clean, sustainable water sources as an element of their public trust to further the best interests of the public welfare, including Environmental Justice populations already overburdened by legacy contamination from uranium mining and milling in the Grants Mining District.
We urge the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division not to approve any new mining plans of operation in New Mexico until the complete reclamation of water, soil, and air contamination from historic uranium mining in the Grants Mining District is fully achieved.
In Conclusion,
We, the undersigned, pledge to work in solidarity with all people who wish to break free of their nuclear fuel chains and dependency on non-renewable, polluting sources of energy and move towards the development of renewable and sustainable energy that does not threaten the public health, public water supplies, or our special landscapes.
Adopted by Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment on October 12, 2012.
Amended in 2018