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President Joe Shirley Jr. says "the American people need to be educated and reminded of the disproportionate sacrifices made by Navajos."AP Photo / Cable Hoover, The Gallup Independent

Navajos Observe 30th Anniversary of Uranium Spill

By Andi Murphy

CHURCH ROCK, N.M.—Community members and environmental activists commemorated July 16 as the 30th anniversary of a massive uranium tailings spill that Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. called "the largest peacetime accidental release of radioactive contaminated materials in the history of the United States."

The accident occurred when an earthen dam, operated by the United Nuclear Corp., failed and let loose 94 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the north fork of the Rio Puerco on Navajo Nation lands. Within days, contaminated tailings liquid was found 50 miles downstream in Arizona.

About 100 Navajos and non-Navajos, including members of the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE) and other environmental groups, walked a five-mile stretch through the remote mesa lands of Church Rock to the site of the July 16, 1979 spill. They stopped at Larry King's ranch along New Mexico Highway 566 for a speech by the Navajo president.

Shirley read and signed a proclamation designating the day as "Uranium Legacy Remembrance and Action Day ... to remember and honor the Diné communities" affected by the uranium spill and to "reaffirm the Navajo Nation's ban on uranium mining and processing."

In 2005 the Navajo Nation Natural Resources Protection Act was enacted. Presently, the tribe is seeking funds  for cleanup of radioactive materials and abandoned mines, Shirley said. The tribe has asked Congress for a half-billion dollars to clean up more than 500 abandoned mines on Navajo land as well as contaminated areas, homes and water sources.

'We Will Stand Our Ground'

["We will stand our ground until the terms of the Dine Natural Resources Protection Act are met," the Associated Press quoted Shirley as telling the crowd. Substantial progress has been made in cleaning up one site, the Northeast Church Rock mine, Shirley said. However, he said, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to move the bulk of that contaminated material to a nearby Superfund site at a former United Nuclear Corp. mine. That would not be considered a final solution by the Navajo tribe, Shirley said.]

[Shirley said the spill — the same year as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania — barely registered on the consciousness of the United States but will not be forgotten by Navajo and non-Navajo residents "who still worry today about the potential impacts of this tragic accident," the AP quoted him as sayinig.]

"The American people need to be educated and reminded of the disproportionate sacrifices made by Navajos so that the United States of America could win the Cold War," Shirley said. "Navajos are not asking for reparations, all we are seeking is justice."

The state usually votes against cleanup, said Rep. Sandra Jeff, D-N.M., who is Navajo and originally from Crownpoint, N.M. — a site where uranium was processed years ago. "It's about money," she said. "We need more Native American leadership in office."

Educating the youth is a major step to providing the tribe with leaders who could make a difference in situations like this, she said

First Nuclear Bomb Test

In 1945 the first nuclear bomb was tested at the Trinity Site and White Sands Missile Range, N.M., said Candace Head-Dylla, a member of Bluewater Valley Downstream Alliance. On August 6 and 9 of that year, Hiroshima and Iwo Jima were bombed, killing 220,000 people.

"It's a circle of death," Head-Dylla said. "Nothing good ever comes out of uranium mining. ... It's used for horrible weapons that we should all be ashamed of."

At a later public discussion at the Church Rock Chapter house, George Author, chairman for the Navajo Nation Resources Committee, said, "They develop this tragic weapon. They still sit idle with no intentions of addressing our needs. Why is that?"

After the bombings, the United States immediately addressed the health of survivors but didn't do anything about the situation on the Navajo reservation, Author said. He said he is indignant over the United States' and "responsible" industry's lack of action for the past 30 years. It shouldn't have been this long and the Navajo shouldn't have been affected so, he said.

"Young people: stay strong, keep focused ... make it known," Author said. "Don't take a backseat on what you believe."

People Share Experiences

Earlier, at King's ranch, several people spoke of their experiences and the effects of the tailings spill.

Lifelong resident Robinson Kelly remembers it like it was yesterday, he said. He woke up about 6:45 a.m. The water from the Rio Puerco was rushing unusually fast with an addition of foul water.

"It smells. It's not good. It's yellow in color," Kelly said, who is also the Church Rock Chapter vice president.

Thousands of Navajo livestock including Kelly's mother-in-law's sheep got sick and died from being exposed to the contaminated Puerco. When butchered, the stock's flesh and intestines were yellow. Animals and people were burned when they trekked through the acidic water.

Kelly said his uncle went in the water and later got a sore, got cancer and died.

"We're right in the middle of the radiation," said Dennison Eskeets as he pointed a little to the south at his house on top of a hill.

Eskeets worked in the uranium mines and said he had to get rid of his livestock after the spill. He blamed the constant redness and tearing in his eyes, arthritis, body aches and weakness on the effects of being exposed to the underground ore.

A water well on his land was contaminated and is useless, like many water wells in the area, he said. He has to haul water from Gallup, N.M., for his livestock

Increased Risk of Kidney Disease

Ongoing studies by the University of New Mexico showed that long-term exposure to uranium increased the risk of kidney disease for people in 20 Navajo Nation chapters on the Eastern Agency.

"I'm against it right now," Eskeets said about the talk of future ISO mining in Crownpoint. "I'm hurting right now."

The Associated Press reported:

New Mexico was a leading producer of uranium from the 1950s into the 1980s, when the price of uranium plummeted and mines and mills closed. The era's legacy remains in hundreds of abandoned uranium mines in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation.

Uranium mined from the 1940s into the 1970s went to the United States' defense, and many say history obligates the federal government to help reclaim areas the mines damaged.

No Recent Water Quality Studies

There have been no significant water quality studies of the Rio Puerco since the late 1980s or early 1990s, said Chris Shuey of the Southwest Research and Information Center, an Albuquerque-based environmental organization.

Studies have shown high radioactivity in runoff and flood waters, but "whether that can be traced to mining has not been determined," he said.

Impacts downstream are less certain, Shuey said.

Studies earlier this decade under the auspices of the Southwest Research and Information Center, the Church Rock Navajo Chapter and others found high concentrations of uranium in soils around mine sites but only background conditions - what's considered normal radiation levels - away from those areas, Shuey said.

An ongoing federally funded health study with the University of New Mexico's Community Environmental Health Program, Crownpoint's Indian Health Service hospital and Southwest Research is looking into health impacts of living near a mining district.

Shuey said decades of mining activity in the Church Rock area "contributed more radioactivity than the spill did," adding to the difficulty of tracking the effects of uranium mining and milling and discharges over a long period of time.

Andi Murphy, Navajo, is a journalism student at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. A graduate of the Freedom Forum's 2007 American Indian Journalism Institute, Murphy has interned as a reporter at The Daily Times in Farmington, N.M., and the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune. This summer she was editor of the Crownpoint Baahane', a community newsletter in Crownpoint, N.M.