Press Release: July 15, 2017 Uranium Tailings Spill Commemoration
Red Water Pond Road Community: 38 Years Since North East Church Rock
Uranium Tailings Spill That Was Never Investigated Nor Cleaned Up
Uranium Tailings Spill Commemoration, Saturday, July 15, 7 am to 3 pm, 12 miles North of Red Rock State Park on State Highway 566 near Churchrock, NM
The Red Water Pond Road Community on Navajo Nation will be hosting their 38th annual commemoration of the 1979 Uranium Tailings Spill that is the largest uranium tailings spill in the United States.
On July 16, 1979, an earthen dam that held liquid uranium waste broke, releasing 1,000 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and more than 90 million gallons of acidic and radioactive liquids into the Rio Puerco. The contaminants flowed downstream through Gallup, NM and across nine Navajo chapters. Several days after the spill, United Nuclear Corporation sent a handful of people out with shovels and buckets in an attempt to remediate the mess. To this day there has been no reclamation, no study to see how far the contamination went and its impacts on local water systems and people’s health. United Nuclear Corporation has not been held accountable for the spill.
The commemoration is part of the first Cross-Border Anti-Nuclear Action, commemorating the uranium spill and the explosion of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in NM. https://swuraniumimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/17.06.27-Press-Release-Cross-Border.pdf
