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The Navajo Times Online - Uranium miners, widows get warm reception
It was a very belated thank-you, but appreciated nonetheless.
Some 300 former uranium workers and their family members braved an icy wind Oct. 30 to gather at tiny Cove Chapter and celebrate the first ever National Day of Remembrance for the nation's "Cold War patriots."
Cove was one of 13 communities selected from across the country to host the historic celebration in response to a Senate resolution in March setting aside Oct. 30 as a day to honor those who worked in the country's uranium mines and mills.
The House has yet to pass similar legislation, but is being lobbied heavily by the Cold War Patriots, an organization that advocates for uranium workers of the 1940s-70s.
Native American Uranium Miners Still Suffer, As Industry Eyes Rebirth - Working In These Times
On the Navajo Nation, almost everyone you talk to either worked in uranium mines themselves or had fathers or husbands who did. Almost everyone also has multiple stories of loved ones dying young from cancer, kidney disease and other ailments attributed to uranium poisoning.
The effects aren’t limited to uranium miners and millers; whole families are usually affected as women washed their husbands’ contaminated clothes, kids played amidst mine waste and families even built homes out of radioactive uranium tailings.
A new demand for uranium power brings concerns for Navajo groups - washingtonpost.com
Uranium from the Grants Mineral Belt running under rugged peaks and Indian pueblos of New Mexico was a source of electric power and military might in decades past, providing fuel for reactors and atomic bombs.
Now, interest in carbon-free nuclear power is fueling a potential resurgence of uranium mining. But Indian people gathered in Acoma, N.M., for the Indigenous Uranium Forum over the weekend decried future uranium extraction, especially from nearby Mount Taylor, considered sacred by many tribes. Native people from Alaska, Canada, the Western United States and South America discussed the severe health problems uranium mining has caused their communities, including high rates of cancer and kidney disease.
Navajo Yellowcake Woes Continue | Mother Jones
When the EPA evacuates your town for Superfund cleanup, what happens to the people left behind?
After decades of uranium mining turned the tiny town of Church Rock, New Mexico, into a Superfund site, in August the EPA moved seven resident Navajo families to Gallup apartments, where they'll wait for five months while the EPA scrubs their town of radioactive waste. But as the EPA hauls away the uranium tailings and radium-infused topsoils that have been permanent fixtures since mining ceased in the 1980s, Church Rock's remaining residents are asking why they have been left behind. In 1979, the largest spill of radioactive waste in US history occurred in Church Rock when 94 million gallons of mine waste were accidentally released into a stream. Children swam in open pit mines and the community drank water from local wells as recently as the '90s. (Now they haul in drinking water.) Cancer rates and livestock deaths remain higher than they should be. As for the families who remain, Church Rock evacuee and local activist Teddy Nez says the agency "drew an imaginary line in the sand" that excludes a residential area half a mile west of the Superfund site.
Development of Risk Maps to Minimize Uranium Exposures in the Navajo Churchrock Mining District - Articles
Background: Decades of improper disposal of uranium-mining wastes on the Navajo Nation has resulted in adverse human and ecological health impacts as well as socio-cultural problems. As the Navajo people become increasingly aware of the contamination problems, there is a need to develop a risk-communication strategy to properly inform tribal members of the extent and severity of the health risks. To be most effective, this strategy needs to blend accepted riskcommunication techniques with Navajo perspectives such that the strategy can be used at the community level to inform culturally- and toxicologically-relevant decisions about land and water
use as well as mine-waste remediation.
Independent: Making them sick: Forgotten People seeks state of emergency over contaminated water
Some residents in the Black Falls/Box Springs area have been drinking uranium- and arsenic-contaminated water for nearly 40 years. Another month or two, while they wait on the Navajo Nation to declare a state of emergency, probably won’t kill them. Then again, maybe it will.
During a July 11 meeting at the Box Springs home of Rolanda and Larry Tohannie, more than 80 people — many of them cancer victims — traveled miles of washboard roads in the summer heat to meet with representatives of the Navajo Nation and voice concerns about their illnesses, their need for safe drinking water, and what they view as a lack of assistance by Window Rock.
EPA to oversee contaminated Navajo soil cleanup
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reached an agreement with United Nuclear Corp. and its parent company, General Electric Co., to clean up soil near the most badly contaminated former uranium mine on the Navajo Nation.
Rain and flash floods carry the radium-contaminated soil from the abandoned Northeast Church Rock Mine near Gallup, N.M., down an arroyo where children play and livestock graze.
Long-term exposure to such soil can lead to cataracts, fractured teeth and cancer, according to the EPA.
Under the agreement announced this week, United Nuclear will remove 3 to 13 feet of soil from the arroyo and surrounding areas and bring in clean dirt. The company also will regrade a uranium waste pile so that it drains back to the mine instead of where people live.
Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country | Ocala.com | Star-Banner | Ocala, FL
It was one year ago that the environmental scientist showed up at Fred Slowman’s door, deep in the heart of Navajo country, and warned that it was unsafe for him to stay there.
The Slowman home, the same one-level cinderblock structure his family had lived in for nearly a half-century, was contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal land known as the Navajo Nation. The scientist advised Mr. Slowman, his wife and their two sons to move out until their home could be rebuilt.
Native American Times - “The Navajo Nation is going to greatly benefit from that,” she said.
“The Navajo Nation is going to greatly benefit from that,” she said.
Among other programs the Navajo EPA is working on with federal funding is:
• Drinking Water – $3 million for phase 1 for Sweetwater-to-Shiprock drinking water.
This will serve 93 homes without piped water near three unregulated water sources that have been contaminated with uranium, 845 homes served by public water systems that exceed the arsenic drinking water standard, and 982 homes with inadequate water supply.
• Waste Water – $9.7 million through the global Interagency Agreement through HIS.
• Tribal Drinking Water Set Aside Funding Projects:
Dennehotso New Water System – $2 million from U.S. EPA and $2 million from HUD to construct a new 50-mile water system to serve 102 homes without piped water, near 2 unregulated water sources contaminated with Uranium.
• Water Hauling Feasibility Study/Pilot Project to serve 4,000 homes without piped water.
USEPA is expected to soon provide funding to the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources to develop a water hauling feasibility study and pilot project to serve residents in uranium-impacted areas, and to develop safe water hauling guidelines and conduct outreach.
• Black Falls Water Line Extension – U.S. EPA provided $830,000 to construct a water line and safe water hauling point to serves 40 homes without piped water near four unregulated water sources contaminated with uranium.
• Clean Water Act/Wastewater Tribal Set Aside Projects:
$1.75 million award – $1 million will be in a direct grant to NTUA's Stimulus proposal submitted for Window Rock Wastewater Treatment plant upgrades; $752,867 into inter-agency agreement with IHS to fund other wastewater treatment facility projects.
Navajo homes razed - uranium contamination
The federal government plans to spend as much as $3 million a year to demolish and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where Cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its Navajo counterpart are focusing on homes, sheds and other buildings within a half-mile to a mile from a significant mine or waste pile. They plan to assess 500 structures over five years and rebuild those that are too badly contaminated.
Independent: Churchrock Mine cleanup plan available
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released its proposed cleanup plan for the Northeast Churchrock Mine, kicking off a 30-day public comment period.
Two public meetings to discuss the cleanup alternatives will be held at Pinedale Chapter House on June 23 and July 7. Both are scheduled 6-8 p.m.
EPA’s preference for addressing potential exposure risks from radium- and uranium-contaminated soils is to move all the contaminated waste material from the mine to an existing disposal cell at the United Nuclear Corp. mill site or to a newly constructed cell at the UNC mill facility. Any cell would be lined and capped and would receive long-term monitoring.
Associated Press: EPA to rebuild uranium-contaminated Navajo homes
The federal government plans to spend up to $3 million a year to demolish and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where Cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its Navajo counterpart are focusing on homes, sheds and other buildings within a half-mile to a mile from a significant mine or waste pile. They plan to assess 500 structures over five years and rebuild those that are too badly contaminated.
Radioactive Revival in New Mexico
Mitchell Capitan points to a flock of sheep grazing in the shadow of a sandstone mesa. The sheep belong to Capitan's family, along with a few head of cattle and twelve quarter horses standing in a corral near his mother-in-law's house in Crownpoint, New Mexico.
Shelley Smithson: Navajos say "No!" as the return of uranium mining threatens to despoil their lands and health.
"All of this area," Capitan says, gesturing to the valley of sage and shrub brush below, "there's a lot of uranium underneath there. That's what they're after."
Capitan and his Navajo neighbors are battling a license granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Hydro Resources Inc. (HRI)--a subsidiary of a Texas company, Uranium Resources--one of several firms that have laid claim to the minerals beneath thousands of acres on and around the lands of the Navajo Nation and three American Indian pueblos in northwestern New Mexico. A group called the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining is suing the NRC to block mining in Crownpoint and another Navajo community. A panel of federal judges in Denver heard the case in May 2008 but has yet to issue a ruling.
Independent: Deadly water: Black Falls: Water sources, but none to drink
The Navajo Nation has weathered severe drought conditions for about the last 20 years, so when a water source presents itself, the last thing usually considered is whether it might be contaminated.
“Water is precious,” said Eleanor Peshlakai, 67, of Black Falls. “Last year I was hauling water in my truck during the middle of a real dry spell. As I was filling up at a water trough, some of the water sprayed out from the hose and out of nowhere the lizards came running. They were thirsty.
They, too, are suffering the drought, just like the humans, waiting for any form of moisture.”
Gallup Independent: Deadly water: Elders recall forced removal to contaminated land
Katherine Peshlakai, Faye Willie and Elsie Tohannie have a lot in common, besides their years.Following the Long Walk in the 1860s and the imprisonment of Navajos at Bosque Redondo, their families settled in an area later known as Wupatki National Monument. Recognition of Navajo occupancy was not included in enabling legislation that created the park, and in the early 1960s, the families were kicked out.
Driven from their winter sheep camps at Wupatki and across the Little Colorado River to make way for the national monument near Flagstaff, they settled in Black Falls, an area contaminated in the 1950s by radioactive fallout from above-ground atomic testing at Nevada Test Site.
Tribes press government to clean up nuclear waste | Indian Country Today | Southwest
Two American Indian tribes say their pleas to have the federal government remove medical, uranium and other radioactive waste from their land near Tuba City have been ignored, and they want it cleaned up.
Navajo and Hopi officials say the waste is contaminating the land and threatening water supplies.
The Hopi Tribe has put the federal government on notice that it plans to sue over the cleanup. On May 26, the Navajo Nation filed a motion to intervene in a 2007 lawsuit that was brought against the federal government by the operator of a uranium mining mill where some of the waste originated.
“I think everybody is starting to come together to accept the conclusion that there are contaminants affecting the shallow groundwater,” said Stephen Etsitty, director of the Navajo Environmental Protection Agency. “But we still have differences in what the tribes believe and what the U.S. government is willing to accept, how grave the situation is and what the remedy should be in the end.”
El Paso Natural Gas Co. claims that the federal government is responsible for the cleanup of the mill, the Tuba City open dump and another landfill north of U.S. Route 160. The mill and the U.S. 160 landfill are on Navajo land. The 30-acre Tuba City dump is on Navajo and Hopi land.
Appeals court upholds uranium mining curb on Navajo lands | Indian Country Today | National & World News
The Navajo Nation’s anti-uranium mining ban scored a victory April 17 when the 10th Circuit Court upheld federal, rather than state, control over a permit for a proposed in situ leach uranium mine in a mixed-ownership area of northwestern New Mexico.
Hydro Resources Inc. asked the federal appeals court to overturn an Environmental Protection Agency determination that HRI’s proposed mine near Church Rock was in “Indian country” as legally defined and therefore must be permitted by EPA and not by the state.
Independent -: Contaminated ground water near Navajo boundary
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, in Dallas will discuss ground water cleanup efforts at the former United Nuclear Corp. mill site May 5 at a community meeting in Pinedale.
In short, cleanup efforts are no longer working.
Contamination from the UNC site — which is in Pinedale Chapter right in the middle of Indian Country — is nearing the Navajo Nation boundary. And though the cleanup remedy at the Superfund site is no longer effective, because no one is drinking the contaminated water, the remedy is still considered protective of human health and the environment.
Independent: Navajo celebrates HRI ruling: Company says they are still moving forward to mine uranium in Indian Country
Ever since Johnny Livingston was a little boy, he remembers seeing Navajo families grazing their livestock on a portion of land within Churchrock Chapter known as Section 8, now owned by uranium mining company Hydro Resources Inc.
In 2006, as part of his declaration to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regarding jurisdictional issues over the land, the former Churchrock Chapter president identified Navajo families having Bureau of Indian Affairs grazing permits for the disputed area.
Navajo uranium mine workers seek health assistance - Farmington Daily Times
A grassroots effort to help uranium mine workers' children affected by diseases and birth defects is picking up steam on the Navajo Nation.
The Navajo Nation Dependents of Uranium Workers Committee will meet for the second time in a month to update community members and hear feedback from residents who suffer from cancer, kidney disease, birth defects and other illnesses resulting from prolonged radon exposure from uranium mines.
The health problems date back to work in the 1950s and '60s, said Phil Harrison, Council Delegate for Red Valley/Cove Chapter of the Navajo Nation. During that time, uranium mine workers were exposed to high levels of radon, which has caused inter-generational bouts of illnesses in communities across the Navajo Nation.
"A lot of people don't want to talk about this in the public," Harrison said.
By holding public meetings, organizers hope to garner enough support to lobby government officials in Washington, D.C., to amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
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