A federal agency has declared a former uranium mill site in western New Mexico to be a public health hazard, nearly 20 years after the Homestake Mining Co. operation shut down and 25 years after the area was designated as a Superfund site.



The problem is in the water, according to the report issued May 19 by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), which is a branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Water wells in the area are suspect because of rising uranium concentrations, the agency says, and neighbors of the Homestake mill are advised to make sure their water is clean before using it to drink, bathe in or water their vegetable gardens.

The information is not exactly news to longtime residents of the area, said Jerry Schoeppner, a geologist with the New Mexico Environment Department’s Ground Water Quality Bureau. Homestake processed uranium at the site, located several miles northwest of Grants, from 1958 to 1990, leaving behind some 30 million tons of mill waste in two huge piles.

Chemicals in the tailings piles leach directly into the ground, and over time the piles have contaminated the underlying groundwater with uranium and other toxic substances, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Test wells showed that the contamination spread as it reached aquifers deep underground, polluting nearby water wells.



Homestake Mining Co. started remediation efforts to clean up the contamination in 1977, according to the EPA’s Sai Appaji. In 1983 the company was required to provide water to nearby residents who could no longer use their own wells. The village of Milan, about 5 miles south of the site, has extended water service to many homes in the mill area, but not all.



Starting in 2005, surveys by the EPA and the state’s Ground Water Quality Bureau found that some residents continued to use their wells for drinking, bathing, watering vegetable gardens and other domestic uses. Testing found that while contamination levels had fallen in some wells, it had risen in others.



Because exposure is still possible in some of the private wells, ATSDR categorized the site as a public health hazard.



The agency directed the state Environment Department to:

  • Advise residents who have moved to the area since 1995 of the contamination in the wells, and advise those who are using well water to have their water supply tested before using the water for household purposes.
  • Advise residents who are not using the alternate source of drinking water to have their well sampled, to use bottled water if concentrations are greater than the [Maximum Contaminant Level], or to arrange for connection to the Village of Milan water supply.
  • Advise residents who have vegetable gardens to wash vegetables thoroughly before cooking or eating them. This is especially important for root vegetables, because roots absorb uranium at a greater rate.
  • Determine why uranium concentrations are increasing in the Middle Chinle aquifer.
  • Because of increasing concentrations of uranium in the Middle Chinle aquifer, anyone who has a well in this aquifer should refrain from using the well.

 

Homestake has already spent millions of dollars on remediation at the site, officials said. Work is not expected to be complete — meaning contamination levels return to normal, background levels — until 2015 at the earliest, said the water quality bureau’s Schoeppner.

In the meantime, the company is pumping about 2.1 millions gallons of fresh, clean water daily out of a nearby aquifer and flushing it through the tailings pile. The water picks up contaminants, then is pumped back to the surface for treatment, Schoeppner said.

The ATSDR report comes at a time when renewed interest in nuclear power has also dredged up unpleasant memories of its bitter legacy. Rising uranium prices have spurred a boom in mining claims in the Four Corners states, and countries that once spurned nuclear power are building plants or at least talking about them as a way to produce carbon-neutral energy.