Navajo Nation Battles Against Corporate Uranium Mining
Friday, July 11 2008 | Comments (0)
Navajo Tribe Head, President Joe Shirley Jr.
at March 29th Flagstaff City Hall hearing
Morgan Spurlock did an episode about his month-long stay at the Navajo Reservation this week. He showcased how proud the people he met were of their heritage and how they want to pass their knowledge and history on to their children. Yet there is something that Morgan didn’t touch on at all during the show- Uranium mining on reservation soil.
Uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation happened five decades ago and damage from it is still manifest in the form of contaminated soil and hundreds of uncleaned and abandoned uranium mines. Not much research had been conducted on the effects of this type of mining had on the reservation people but there are high cancer rates and respiratory problems. According to sprol.com, one study has indeed found out that Navajo teenagers living near the old mines has cancer 17 times higher than the national average.
A company named Hydro Resources Inc.has been lobbying with the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a few years to have permission to mine near the Navajo communities in New Mexico called Church Rock and Crownpoint. Hydro wants to circumnavigate the ban on uranium mining set by Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. because they estimate that the uranium on those sites are worth millions of dollars. The Southwest Research and Information Center and the Eastern Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining have been fighting against Hydro Resources Inc for years in court and many fear that HRI will get the greenlight from the federal government along with many other companies who want to mine near reservation lands.
A big subject in this fight is something called “in-situ” which is the process of extracting uranium deposits from sandstone. Hydro wants to do this and proposed that it was less invasive than mining However, it can still be harmful. The World Information Service on Energy (WISE), an organization against nuclear energy, reported this on the “in-situ” method: "in-situ leaching releases considerable amounts of radon, and produces certain amounts of waste slurries and waste water during recovery of the uranium from the liquid.". This is very important, because the area that the company wants mine offers the only drinking water source for over 14,000 reservation residents, many who live under the poverty level.
a sample of Uranium
The Navajo are not especially keen on allowing uranium mining to restart. In 1979, Church Rock in particular was made vulnerable when tailings from a uranium mine had bursted through a dam that was there. Because of that, Church Rock was the scene of the largest accidental release of radioactive waste in this country. The Navajo understandably don’t want to relieve that. Environmentalists agree.
"The impacts on the region's seeps and springs may last for thousands of years," said Larry Stevens, an ecologist with the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council. He testified at a hearing against uranium mining at the Flagstaff City Hall in Arizona on March 29th this year. "The long-term consequences and the uncertainties are what I'm most concerned about."
President Shirley, spoke out against a federally approved company VANE Minerals LLC. for doing exploratory drilling for uranium near the Grand Canyon at the same Flagstaff City Hall hearing. "We do not want a new generation of babies born with birth defects”, he stated to a town hall audience of 200 people. “We will not allow our people to live with cancers and other disorders as faceless companies make profits only to declare bankruptcy and then walk away from the damage they have caused, regardless of the bond they have in place."
President Shirley mentioned that many corporations have come to offer money to the reservation claiming that their mining methods were safe. "They have promised us newer and cleaner methods of mining that they say will not harm the land, the water, or the people," he said. "We have repeatedly declined their offers."
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