Reprinted with permission:
Reply-To: sds@cutter.sincom.com
To: sovernet <sovernet-l@speakeasy.org>
Subject: Nuking the Navajos
Please post this article from On Indian Land Newspaper so that the nuking can be stopped.
"I hereby issue this Executive Order to reiterate and formally recognize that a moratorium is placed on uranium mining activity until such a time that the Navajo people can be assured that all safety and health hazards related to such activity can be addressed and solved."
- Excerpt from the 1992 Executive Order issued by former
Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah
Despite the existing Navajo Nation moratorium on uranium mining on Navajo lands,the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in March 1997 issued a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on proposed uranium mining and processing by Hydro Resources, Inc. (HRI) in Navajo Country in northwestern New Mexico. HRI intends to produce and market fuel for nuclear power plants. Claiming any project impacts can be mitigated, the NRC recommended that HRI be allowed to build and operate three uranium solution mines and a uranium processing plant near the Navajo communities of Church Rock and Crownpoint. Although uranium mining has never occurred in the town of Crownpoint, previous uranium mining and milling in the Church Rock area had devastating effects on water resources, land and many local people. On December 4, the NRC issued a required Safety Evaluation Report along with a press release stating that the agency intends to issue a license for the whole project within 30 days.
HRI proposes to extract uranium by pumping water containing chemicals into a uranium bearing underground rock formation which also serves as the principal water source of Crownpoint and surrounding Navajo communities. The chemicals will dissolve the uranium into the water, which would then be pumped to the surface where the uranium would be extracted at a central processing plant in Crownpoint. This process, called in situ leach mining (ISL), will contaminate the groundwater in the area where it occurs, contamination which HRI would be required to clean up after the mine closes. Billy Martin of ENDAUM (Eastern Navajo Dine' Against Uranium Mining), an organization formed by Navajos opposed to the mining, who raises sheep near Crownpoint states, "When we say water, we mean a long and everlasting life," and he asks, " How will we live if our water, which is precious, is destroyed?"
In Crownpoint there are five water wells, serving an estimated 10,000 people, that take water from the uranium bearing aquifer HRI proposes to mine. The wells are within .5 to 1.5 miles of the Crownpoint mine and, apparently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not trust HRI to mine safely so close to the community's water supply. They are proposing that HRI pay to relocate the whole Crownpoint water system - drilling new wells and connecting up the existing system. Some scientists claim, however, that there may be no available water source uncontaminated by past mining.
According to the FEIS, the NRC may not require HRI to restore the water to its original pristine condition. If the NRC accepts HRI's approach, radium-226 will be allowed in the "restored" water at a level 13 times higher than the federal drinking water standard and 65 times higher than the town's current water supply. The NRC's restoration standard for uranium in the water is 63 to 100 times the amount now present. It is also 20 times the Department of Energy's proposed allowable level for drinking water and 14 times the level required by the DOE in cleanup of other uranium waste sites.
It may not even be possible to restore the water to pre-mining conditions. A test mine operated by Mobil Oil in 1979-1980 near Crownpoint was not able to restore contaminated water to its original condition and HRI was unable to do so under controlled laboratory conditions. Few of the approximately 20 past and present ISL mines have been able to restore contaminated water to drinking water standards.
The proposed mining and processing will be done, not in outlying areas, but within existing Navajo communities of the Eastern Navajo Agency and radioactive materials will be transported through these communities over heavily traveled, narrow, winding roads often in poor condition. Processing of radioactive material will be done next door to and across the street from churches and homes and there are four schools less than a mile from the Crownpoint processing plant. The Safety Committee of the Indian Health Service Crownpoint Healthcare Facility says that the small community lacks the personnel and facilities to deal with the hazard of potential accidents. HRI's parent company, Uranium Resources Inc., has a history of contamination at other ISL mines in Texas - leaking of radioactive materials outside the mining area, spills from holding ponds, and alleged license violations, including unauthorized disposal and transporting of radioactive materials. HRI and the NRC claim accidents would be rare.
Nuclear power production is expensive and unsafe. In the 1980s the residents of Washington state voted against a nuclear power facility, largely because of the expense of the energy produced. More recently, the Northwest Power Planning Council excluded nuclear power as a potential energy resource for the Pacific Northwest. In 1994 the people of Minnesota decided to phase out Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant and to use renewable energy to replace its electricity. Three years into the 10 year phase-out the state has replaced almost half the energy needed and is now getting bids for the rest at rates lower than originally expected.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission states that storage sites for the spent fuel rods used in nuclear power plants are limited. Casks of irradiated fuel assemblies sit at the Prairie Island plant and their allotted storage space will be filled early in the next century. Storage sites are likely to remain scarce as attempts to site radioactive dump facilities in Indian Country face strong opposition. The low price of uranium, around $11 per pound as of June 1997, indicates there is already an ample supply to fuel existing nuclear power plants. This price is below production costs of HRI's parent company's Texas mines and below the estimated cost of production at Church Rock. Industry analysts expect the price to continue to fluctuate between $10 and $12 per pound for the foreseeable future. In the next decade the U.S. Department of Energy will be marketing 80 million pounds of surplus uranium, and, under terms of the 1993 U.S.-Russia trade agreement, utility companies will be able to purchase 100 million pounds of fuel, from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons, for nuclear power plants. HRI's parent company, URI, does not even have supply contracts beyond 1998 for its current production capability in Texas. Hence ENDAUM insists there is no need for new uranium mines in Crownpoint and Church Rock.
Anna Frazier of Dine' CARE (Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment) says, "As Navajo people, we are still living the nightmare of past uranium exploration on our lands. We ask that history not be repeated."
Ms. Frazier was referring to a long list of uranium mining impacts on Navajo Lands and people. For instance, in the Church Rock area, groundwater under and surface water in the Rio Puerco was contaminated by a 1979 spill of 94 million gallons of radioactive liquid and more than 20 years of discharges of untreated and poorly treated uranium mine wastewater. Groundwater is also contaminated in the area around closed underground uranium mines and a uranium mill tailings dump.
The Navajo Nation is already spending millions dealing with the hazards of more than 1,100 abandoned uranium mines that still exist throughout Navajo Country in northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. Many Navajos who worked in those mines have died of lung cancer and other mining-related illnesses.
Navajo Nation jurisdiction over the area involved has been ignored by both HRI and the NRC. Although the proposed mining and processing would be done outside the current external boundaries of the Navajo Nation, it is within the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation, an area inhabited mostly by Navajo - Indian Country. HRI must obtain underground injection control (UIC) permits for each mine from either the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), acting on behalf of the Navajo Nation, or from the state of New Mexico. The Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency (NNEPA) has told NRC that it expects EPA to issue the permits only until the Navajo Nation adopts its own permit regulations.
In July the EPA issued a ruling that the Church Rock mining site is indeed Indian Country and subject to federal and Navajo Nation jurisdiction. The area will remain under federal jurisdiction until the Navajo Nation gets federal approval to regulate UIC operations on the reservation and in Indian Country. Both HRI and the state of New Mexico have sued the EPA over this ruling.
ENDAUM and Southwest Resource and Information Center (SRIC) filed petitions with the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP), in 1994 and 1995, seeking an evidentiary hearing on the proposed mining and processing. ASLBP Judge B. Paul Cotter, Jr. refused to rule on the hearing requests until after the NRC issued its Safety Evaluation Report, released on December 4. If he approves an evidentiary hearing, the proposed mining will be scrutinized far more stringently than has occurred so far.
Mitchell Capitan, president of ENDAUM who lives less than 1/2 mile north of the uranium processing plant at Crownpoint asks, "For more than 20 years, we will be exposed to 'acceptable' levels of additional radiation to which we are not now exposed, in places where we live, pray, hold ceremonies, work, buy food, haul water, educate our children, and seek medical care and wellness. In the face of this clear and unjust risk, why should anyone expect us to sit by quietly and happily embrace our new neighbor, the uranium processing plant?"
Write or call the following people and tell them you oppose uranium mining and processing at Crownpoint and Church Rock in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation. You can use the talking points below in your letter.
ENDAUM and SRIC need financial help to support their work on this issue.
For more information or to make a donation contact ENDAUM, PO Box 471, Crownpoint NM 87313, or call Mitchell Capitan at (505) 786-5341; or contact SRIC, PO Box 4524, Albuquerque NM 87106, phone: (505) 262-1862, email: cshuey@unm.edu.
Reprinted, with permission of the author, from the Winter 1997/98 issue of On Indian Land, PO Box 2104, Seattle WA 98111. Phone: (206) 525-5086.
