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.
Thirty years ago today, an earthen tailings dam near the United Nuclear Corp. Church Rock Uranium mine collapsed, spilling ninety million gallons of liquid radioactive waste and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes into the Rio Puerco.
The spill contaminated water, land and air at least 50 miles downstream on Navajo Nation land in New Mexico and Arizona.
It is believed that more radiation was released in the spill than in the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, making the Church Rock spill the largest release of radioactive waste ever in the U.S. — and second only to the Chernobyl meltdown globally. The privately-owned site of the Church Rock spill is a Superfund site — and it is still leaking radioactive waste throughout Indian lands to this day.
Yet few people today have ever heard of it.
A coalition of nearly 20 local Native American and environmental groups called MASE — Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment — is trying to make sure no one ever overlooks it again by holding a daylong remembrance of the spill today at several key sites. The ceremony will start with a five-mile-long prayer and health walk from the abandoned Church Rock mine to the spill site at the mill, and will end with discussions and a film festival later that evening.
But the groups also want to use today’s remembrance as leverage to thwart plans in the works right now for a private company’s plans to build an in-situ uranium mine near the site.
That’s why, at noon, at the site of the spill, Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley will be on hand to reaffirm the Navajo Nation’s 2005 ban on uranium mining.
I think using the memory of the epic spill to reinforce opposition to new uranium mining is an incredibly symbolic gesture.
I only learned about the Church Rock spill a few days ago — and I wondered why I’d never heard of it.
With help from event organizer Nadine Padilla, I connected with Teddy Nez, a Navajo Vietnam veteran who lives near the Church Rock spill site.
“I am sandwiched between two abandoned uranium mines — to the south, about 500 feet away, is the UNC mine. And then on the north is the Kerr-McGee mine,” Nez told me.
Seven generations of his family have lived on that spot, and the land — though contaminated — remains important to them for spiritual and familial reasons, Nez said.
Four generations of the family currently live there — and each has their own manifestation of symptoms the family believes is related to the uranium contamination, he said. The ailments include skin rashes and respiratory problems.
“We do have health problems, both physically and mentally — me, my family, my neighbors,” Nez added.
Nez said he has seen doctors but finds that if the symptoms don’t fit into one of two “buckets,” the problems go untreated and uncured.
“If the Western medicine doctors can’t put us in the cancer bucket or the diabetes bucket, than they can’t diagnose us,” said Nez. “And then the Western doctors say ‘You guys don’t have any documented illnesses.’”
I also spoke with Paul Robinson, research director of the New Mexico-based Southwest Research and Information Center, about why the Church Rock spill hasn’t gotten more attention. The nonprofit center, which was founded in 1971 to provide information to the public on the effects of energy development and resource exploitation on the people and their cultures, lands, water and air, has spoken out about the spill since it happened and maintains a huge archive of information at its Web site.
Possible reasons, Robinson said, include the fact that, unlike the Three Mile Island incident, the spill happened in a very rural area that was not served by major media.
Uranium mines were also not a “backyard issue,” Robinson said, meaning that, unlike with nuclear plants, few people had ever heard of uranium mines or were worried that they’d become an issue in their cities.
And finally, the spill happened in Native American country, among a community of people who, back then, were not predisposed to speaking out, Robinson said.
Today’s event — and the years of environmental activism that have preceded it — are welcome proof that that is beginning to change.
