Navajos: Old uranium tailings leave land radioactive,
people sick
By Thomas Burr, Salt Lake Tribune
10/24/2007
WASHINGTON - The Navajo Nation representative waved
an instrument over the small pile of dirt. Beep, beep,
beep it went, in a radioactive crescendo.
The bit of soil - shipped from the Four Corners region
to the Capitol - underscored Stephen Etsitty's point:
This was only a minuscule sample of the tailings left
behind from decades of uranium mining.
Much larger pieces, he said, can be found in the homes
of American Indians, in watering holes for grazing animals,
even pressed into a public highway.
"The sounds that you have heard come from an instrument
called a Ludlum 19 and show that Navajo families are
living within a few hundred yards of materials that
we're told we shouldn't be exposed to for longer than
an hour," said Etsitty, executive director of the
Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency.
Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee stared at the small tub of dirt, which was
then sealed off and escorted out of the building by
Capitol Police.
The demonstration on Tuesday came during testimony on
the problems faced by those living in the Navajo Nation
- 27,000 square miles across Arizona, Utah and New Mexico
- where more than 500 former uranium mines were abandoned
after the rush to find nuclear material during the 1940s
to the 1970s.
Representatives of the Navajo Nation say the U.S. government
has not done enough to clean up the aftermath of the
uranium mining, an effort that one committee member
said could cost more than $500 million.
Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., declared at the start
of the hearing that it is the federal government's responsibility
to see that the contamination is cleaned up. And he
decried the lack of work on restoring the land on the
Navajo reservation.
"If a fraction of the deadly contamination the
Navajos live with every day had been in Beverly Hills
or any wealthy community, it would have been cleaned
up immediately," Waxman said. "But there's
a different standard applied to the Navajo land."
Ray Manygoats lives near Tuba City, Ariz., where a uranium
mill sprang up during the Cold War, and he says radioactive
waste is still strewn all over the area.
"Our land today is poisoned," Manygoats said.
"Today, I am a man who has lost his health, his
family and his ancestral way of life because of uranium.
I am here today to ask you to act to stop the suffering
and needless deaths of my people."
Etsitty, who says the presence of hazardous waste violates
America's treaty with the Navajos, noted that the federal
government is planning to reclaim a tailings site near
Moab just outside the Navajo Nation.
"Why is this not happening on the Navajo reservation,"
he said. "Are we seeing environmental injustice
in action once again?"
Because of the health and environmental problems that
have plagued tribal members since the last boom, the
Navajo Nation has passed a resolution prohibiting new
uranium mining on the reservation.
In 2001, the EPA razed Mary Holiday's hogan in Monument
Valley because of gamma radiation readings 25 times
higher than the level considered safe and radon 44 times
above the "safe" level. Exposure to high radiation
sometimes causes lung cancer, the disease that killed
Holiday's nephew, Leonard Begay, a non-smoker who had
lived in the hogan for many years. He died in 2003 at
age 38.
Wayne Nastri, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency region that covers the Navajo Nation,
said there have been efforts made to reclaim some of
the now-contaminated land. The agency has built an inventory
of 520 abandoned mines and the Navajo government is
now helping to prioritize the sites for cleanup, Nastri
said.
"The challenge posed by uranium mine sites in the
Navajo Nation will need to be addressed through federal,
state and tribal efforts," Nastri said, adding
that the agency provides $3.9 million annually to the
Navajo government and that during the last 16 years
it has spent $7.8 million specifically for a superfund
program.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of Interior
also is helping the Navajos reclaim the land, its director,
Jerry Gidner, testified. His agency is providing assistance
to the tribal government to address the hazards at the
mines and also helping to seal some mine openings and
remove physical hazards at others.
Waxman, who plans more hearings on the subject, called
for a comprehensive study of the health risks posed
by the tailings and suggested the EPA conduct detailed
site assessments at the priority mine sites right away.
Once that's done, he added, the cleanups need be "initiated
and accelerated."
tburr@sltrib.com
The key issues
* The Navajo Nation says the
federal government is dragging its feet on cleaning
up radioactive tailings.
* The federal EPA says it needs cooperation from state
and tribal leaders.
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