I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Here’s a brief update on the uranium mining story we published yesterday. A panel of federal judges "expressed surprise" at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to allow a mining company to extract uranium from an aquifer that supplies drinking water to thousands of Navajos in northwestern New Mexico, the Associated Press is reporting:
Eric D. Jantz, a lawyer for the citizens group Eastern Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining and for the Southwest Research and Information Center, told the judges experts have calculated the proposed in-situ mining operations would generate enough radiation that, when combined with existing radiation from past mining, would exceed federal human exposure limits.
Jantz also said the company proposes to leach uranium "in the same aquifer where the town of Crownpoint gets its water." In response, Judge David M. Ebel said, "I can’t even begin to understand that."
AP writer Ben Neary, who covered the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing in Denver yesterday, reported that an NRC attorney insisted that drinking water would be safe, disputing Jantz’s assertion that radiation would exceed federal exposure limits.
The community and environmental groups challenging the NRC decision to license mining operations near the Navajo communities of Church Rock and Crownpoint say they are the first to fight the agency in federal court over an in-situ leach mining permits. The groups asked the court yesterday to overturn the permits. The AP also reported on a separate hearing Monday over whether the proposed uranium mining sites should be considered Indian land.
The court will issue its decisions at a later date.
