Voices from the Earth: Current Issue

SRIC Friends

In the News

Table of
Contents
SRIC's Continuing
Commitment
From The President
Did you say "Groundwater Contamination?" What's That?
For 25 Years,
The Workbook
Call to the Land,
the Past, the Soul
Molycorp Clean-up
Far from Over
Border Plan for
Sustainability
Uranium Mining on Eastern Navajo
Black Ranch
Driveway to Sprawl
Los Alamos Fire
Book Reviews
Glossary

"Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth…that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamt would have come his way."

— W.H. Murray in
The Scottish Himalayan Expedition.

In May 2000, Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) and SRIC achieved a significant victory when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) ruled that Hydro Resources, Inc. (HRI) is prohibited from mining at its proposed Church Rock site unitl it files and receives NRC approval of a financial assurance plan that would guide cleanup at the end of mining. The NRC stopped short of revoking HRI's license, but amended it so that no mining can occur.

And in July, the NRC ordered further briefing on the effect of a January 2000 decision by a U.S. appeals court that upheld a 1997 determination by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that HRI must obtain a federal underground injection permit before it can begin mining at the Church Rock site. These two achievements were by no means an overnight success for ENDAUM and SRIC.

Over the last six years, grassroots opposition has grown steadily to proposed new uranium solution mines in the predominantly Navajo communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock in northwestern New Mexico. Today, the vast majority of communities located in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation, together with the region's leading healthcare and water supply institutions, now oppose either the proposed Hydro Resources, Inc. (HRI), Crownpoint Uranium Project, or more generally, any new uranium development.

This groundswell of Diné resistance to new uranium mining has its roots in the widespread impacts of uranium development on the Navajo people since the 1940s. Many Navajo communities, including Church Rock, experienced the devastating effects of underground uranium mining in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, before the U.S. uranium market collapsed in the early 1980s. Land and water were contaminated in many communities where some of the more than 1,100 uranium mines that dotted the Navajo Nation were abandoned.

Navajo miners developed lung cancer and other respiratory diseases, and died from those illnesses, at rates many times that of the general population. To compensate for these diseases, the U.S. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) in 1990 to make $100,000 payments to sick underground miners and the families of deceased miners. Ten years later, on July 11 of this year, President Clinton signed the RECA Amendments Act of 2000, which extends compensation to above-ground miners, millers and other uranium workers, and eases the eligibility requirements for Native American miners.

Fearing that a new round of uranium mining would cause similar problems in a new generation of Navajos, residents of Crownpoint, Church Rock and other Eastern Agency communities formed Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) in late-1994. ENDAUM's founders had three principal concerns about the HRI project:

• The the solution mining method, called in situ leach (ISL) mining, would contaminate the region's high-quality groundwater, which is the only source of drinking water for an estimated 15,000 residents
• that uranium processing at a plant in Crownpoint would unnecessarily expose thousands of local residents to radioactive materials; and
• that the adverse effects of past mining had not been adequately addressed.

In late-1994 and early-1995, ENDAUM, SRIC and several other groups and individuals asked the NRC to hold a "hearing" to address these and many other technical, economic, and cultural concerns about the proposed mines. In January 1998, the NRC staff, ignoring the concerns raised by ENDAUM and SRIC (and, even by the Navajo Nation) granted a license to HRI to construct and operate the Crownpoint Uranium Project. In May 1998, ENDAUM, SRIC and two Navajo individuals were granted a hearing before an NRC administrative judge. Since then, the groups have filed lengthy legal briefs, bolstered by the testimony of 15 different experts and thousands of pages of supporting documentation, in an effort to have the HRI license overturned. Attorneys with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, along with noted citizens' attorney, Diane Curran in Washington, D.C., have represented ENDAUM and SRIC before the NRC. If the NRC ultimately upholds the HRI license, the battle will move to the federal appeals courts.

During the past few months, opposition to the HRI project has become stronger and more public. In March, the Crownpoint Chapter passed a resolution opposing the HRI project, and in June, the Church Rock chapter adopted a resolution opposing any new uranium development. Both communities advocated for aggressive cleanup of abandoned uranium sites and new environmental and health monitoring to measure the effects of past uranium development. Thus, Crownpoint and Church Rock joined a long list of Navajo communities and institutions opposed to new uranium mining, including the Eastern Navajo Agency Council, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority Management Board, and the Crownpoint Healthcare Facility Safety Committee.

ENDAUM leaders have since turned their attention to the next big task — convincing the Navajo Nation Council to take a firm position against the HRI project specifically, or to any new uranium development generally.

The fight is by no means over.

ENDAUM article