Uranium Mines an 'Overwhelming Problem' in the Navajo Nation

An 'Overwhelming Problem' in the Navajo Nation

 

     A look at one uranium mine shows how difficult it

     will be to clean up the reservation's hundreds of

     abandoned Cold War-era mines

 

By Francie Diep |

Posted December 30, 2010

http://www.scienceline.org/2010/12/an-%E2%80%9Coverwhelming-problem%E2%80%9D-in-the-navajo-nation/

 

There's an old uranium mine on rancher Larry Gordy's

grazing land near Cameron, Arizona. Like hundreds of

other abandoned mines in the Navajo Nation, the United

States' largest Indian reservation, it looks as if it

might still be in use-tailings, or waste products of

uranium processing, are still piled everywhere, and the

land isn't fenced off."It looks like Mars," said Marsha

Monestersky, program director of Forgotten People, an

advocacy organization for the western region of the

vast Navajo Nation, which covers 27,000 square miles in

Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently

embroiled in a massive effort to assess 520 open

abandoned uranium mines all over the vast reservation.

(Forgotten People says there are even more mines on

Navajo land: about 1,300.) Earlier this month, the

cleanup got a boost from a bankruptcy settlement with

Oklahoma City-based chemical company Tronox Inc., which

will give federal and Navajo Nation officials $14.5

million to address the reservation's uranium contamination.

 

During the Cold War, private companies like Tronox's

parent company, Kerr-McGee Corp., operated uranium

mines under U.S. government contracts, removing four

million tons of ore that went into making nuclear

weapons and fuel. When demand dried up with the end of

the era, companies simply abandoned their mines as they were.

 

The remediation work started ten years ago, when the

EPA mapped the mines by investigating company records

and surveying the land with helicopters equipped with

radiation detectors. They are now halfway through

visiting mines to determine their radiation levels.

"It's an overwhelming problem," said Clancy Tenley, EPA

assistant director for the region.

 

The mines expose Navajo Nation residents to uranium

through airborne dust and contaminated drinking water.

Many residents' homes were built using mud and rocks

near mines, and some of that building material is

radioactive. There are few published studies on the

effects of uranium mines on nearby residents, but

researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention and the University of New Mexico are working

on health assessments, according to EPA officials.

Researchers have known for decades that uranium

exposure increases the risk of lung and bone cancers

and kidney damage.

 

In July, the leaders of Forgotten People began pushing

the EPA to begin cleanup in Cameron because they were

worried about the effects of the mines there on

ranchers like Gordy, whose cattle drink and graze on

uranium-contaminated land. Their tussle with the agency

highlights the difficulties the EPA faces in all stages

of its cleanup, which will likely take decades. The

uranium mine Gordy found wasn't even included in the

EPA's original atlas. "We're grateful to [Monestersky]

for pointing that out to us," said Tenley, the agency

spokesman. He initially said the EPA would visit the

site within six months but publicity over conditions

there apparently prompted a change of heart.

 

Instead, EPA contractors assessed the site November 9.

A scientist who participated wouldn't discuss what he

found without EPA officials present, and agency

officials couldn't be reached for comment.  However,

Lee Greer, a biologist from La Sierra University in

Riverside, California, was part of a conference call

about the assessment's results. Greer has been working

with Forgotten People to record radiation levels at

sites that interest the advocacy group. He said the EPA

contractors found radiation levels at the mine that

were higher than the EPA's Geiger counters could measure.

 

The accelerated assessment of Gordy's ranch came six

days after Greer presented his radiation results from

the site to the Geological Society of America. A

geologist who was present at the society meeting said

that, based on Greer's findings, a cleanup of the mine

should be a high priority. "The sooner, the better,"

said Michael Phillips, a professor at Illinois Valley

Community College. Because the uranium at this mine is

on the surface of the land, people and animals are more

likely to come in contact with it, he added.

 

But the preliminary assessment of the site is just the

first step on a long road to a cleanup that is years

and possibly even decades away. The time lag between an

assessment and a remediation job depends on what

scientists find at a particular mine, said Andrew Bain,

EPA remediation project manager. The U.S.'s five-year

plan for the Navajo Nation's uranium mines only covers

assessment, not cleanup.  The EPA started remediating

the reservation's largest mine, the Northeast Church

Rock Mine in New Mexico, in 2005, and doesn't expect to

finish until 2019. "We have no estimate for how long

it'll take to clean up all the mines," Tenley said.

 

As for the price tag, the recent Tronox settlement will

only cover a fraction of the overall cleanup. Just

assessing the uranium mines in the Navajo Nation costs

the EPA about $12 million every year, said Tenley.

Remediation would cost more, he added. How much more?

"In the hundreds of millions," he said.

 

All this means a long wait for residents like Gordy,

though they've already waited more than twenty years

since the close of the Cold War. "It's taking forever

to get it cleaned up," said Don Yellowman, president of

Forgotten People. "It seems like everyone's aware but

nobody's taking notice. We don't understand."

 

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