Post by blackcrowheart on Oct 17, 2006 13:44:51 GMT -5
Yellowcake Blues
By Laura Paskus
Published: October 11, 2006
sfreporter.com/articles/publish/cover-101106-yellowcake-blues.php\
?ref=rss
Cover art ©Cathleen Toelke, www.cathleentoelke.com
cover design by Angela Moore.
The Navajo Nation has learned a lesson about uranium, has anyone
else?
"At the time, the compensation was fair enough for me"
William Lopez, an elderly Navajo man who, 40 years ago, worked as shift
foreman at the Rare Metals Corporation mill in Tuba City, says. He was
first hired in 1959, when few other jobs existed on the reservation.
�"I made a little more money there than I could get at any other job
in that locality."
For almost eight years, Lopez and his brother-in-law, George Brown,
crushed uranium ore, separating it into different grades, then mixing
slurry and leaching uranium from the liquid. Until the plant closed in
late 1966, the men worked each day enveloped in a cloud of uranium dust,
returning home to their families each afternoon with uranium caked
beneath their fingernails and stuck within the divots of their shoes.
Beginning with the discovery of uranium near Grants, NM, in 1950, the
Navajo reservation hosted four mills and more than 1,000 mines. But by
the early 1990s, when the price of uranium busted out at $7 per pound,
the boom had ended and many of the companies vanished, leaving the
reservation
Photo by Jared Boyd.pocked with mines and mills that were both
radioactive and toxic. Dry tailings piles blew dust through homes and
hogans and, when it rained, sent torrents of poisonous water down
normally dry arroyos.
It was only decades after the Tuba City mill closed that Lopez, Brown
and others learned they had been exposed to radioactive uranium and
toxic chemicals, putting them at risk for diseases such as lung cancer
and pulmonary fibrosis, and perhaps kidney disease and lymphoma.
�"There should be a penalty for not letting people know," Brown
says, obviously still angry with the US government. "You put all
these years in for them and then they turn their back."
But while the Navajo Nation has decided it's better off without
uranium, the industry is eager to use new technology that will extract
ore from beneath the reservation using water and chemicals rather than
strip mines and tunnels. And while the state of New Mexico dodges issues
of tribal sovereignty, the federal government is poised to approve a
whole new generation of uranium mines on the Navajo reservation.
Stories passed down from generation to generation warn that certain
substances are better left alone. For the Navajo, uranium is one of
those substances. Last April, the tribal council banned uranium mining
and processing from the reservation. The resolution, which passed by a
vote of 63 to 19, acknowledges the harm uranium
With traditional mining, uranium ore is extracted from the ground, then
sent to a mill, where it's processed into a fine powder called
"yellowcake." From the mill, the powder is sent off to a
conversion plant that produces uranium hexafluoride for use in nuclear
power plants has caused to people's health, the environment
and the tribe's economy and asserts the tribe's sovereign
right to control its own natural resources.
President Joe Shirley, Jr. who frequently uses the word
"genocide" when talking about uranium mining's legacy on
the reservation signed that resolution, then followed it with an
executive order that bans anyone from even negotiating with companies
proposing to mine uranium.
"Week in and week out, uranium seems to be an issue [President
Shirley], the Navajo Nation, has to deal with, at a sacrifice,"
George Hardeen, communications director for the tribe's president
and vice president, says. "But the
Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., signs a resolution that bans
uranium mining and processing on the reservation. (Photo by George
Hardeen.)greater sacrifice is the loss of lives, loss of knowledge, of
wisdom, songs, ceremonies. There were medicine people who were also
miners [who have] passed on. This is a cultural loss, not just a loss to
individual families."
The most recent chapter in the Navajo battle opened in 1988 when the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted a license to
Albuquerque-based Hydro Resources, Inc., (HRI) to begin mining at four
sites within the Navajo communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock. Local
activists, with help from the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and
Information Council and the Santa Fe-based New Mexico Environmental Law
Center, have spent the past eight years requesting hearings, filing
challenges and, essentially, keeping the mining company at bay. But the
adjudication process is nearing its end, Dave McIntyre, NRC spokesman,
says. "So once the commission has issued its final rulings, and the
staff and HRI have complied with any requirements the commission might
impose, the license will become valid from NRC's point of
view."
The proposed mine does more than threaten the eastern Navajo and their
drinking water, according to Eric Jantz, staff attorney with the New
Mexico Environmental Law Center. "We're on the cusp of a
uranium boom," he says. He believes that HRI is just the first of
many companies that want to mine uranium in the area, and its
Dr. Bruce Baird Struminger has screened more than 1,750 former uranium
workers trying to receive federal compensation and is an outspoken
critic of RECA. (Photo by Eve Todacheenee.)case before the NRC is a test
case for other companies to watch: "Can they push around the
community? What standards will they have to meet?"
Everything in Jantz' office suggests he is a man if not obsessed,
then at least consumed: His laptop computer claims the only flat surface
on his desk; an old yellow couch is piled high with papers and folders.
He's currently representing activists before the NRC in the New
Mexico Court of Appeals and before the US Environmental Protection
Agency. Before coming to Santa Fe, he worked in Crownpoint; before
becoming an attorney, he received a bachelor's degree in
anthropology. Straddling all these different worlds can be mind-numbing.
But this work, he knows, is important: "This isn't about four
mines," he says. "This is potentially about hundreds of mines
in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah.
If anyone has watched the Navajo struggle with the
psychological burden of uranium, it is Dr. Bruce Baird Struminger. As
the medical director of the federal Radiation Exposure Screening and
Education Program on the Navajo reservation, Struminger has screened
more than 1,750 former uranium workers, most of them two or three times,
in order to help them apply for federal compensation.
In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
The legislation compensates those who can prove they are sick because of
their work in the uranium mines and mills between 1947 and 1971, when
the US government was the
Under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA),
"downwinders" must only prove they lived in certain parts of
Utah, Arizona or Nevada between January 1951 and October 1958 or between
June and July 1962, when the government tested nuclear bomb tests in the
Nevada desert.sole purchaser of the metal for nuclear bombs and
reactors. Those who worked in the industry following 1971 are not
eligible for federal compensation.
Those workers who can prove they have lung cancer or pulmonary fibrosis
are eligible to receive a payment of $150,000 from the Department of
Justice. And now the Department of Labor will compensate sick workers up
to an additional $250,000 if they can prove they lost wages due to their
illnesses. "It's an awkward and awful situation,"
Struminger says. "When we find out someone's lungs are in
great shape, some are happy, but most are not because they're not
going to get any compensation."
It's obvious that four years of this work has taken a toll on
Struminger. Unlike most members of the medical profession who often
remain apolitical and stick to keeping their mouths shut. Struminger
is an outspoken critic of the law that created his program. Even before
resigning as medical director in June, Struminger questioned those who
Neither George Brown nor William Lopez both of whom worked in the
Tuba City mill are sick enough to qualify for federal compensation.
Both see RECA as another policy that fails Native Americans. (Photo by
Dr. Bruce Baird Struminger.)wrote the original legislation, needled
Department of Justice officials for exact numbers concerning
compensation claims and, in general, refused to play the role of the
quiet doctor.
"Today I saw the children of a miner, who asked me, `Do you
think anything was passed on to us genetically?' Struminger
said in May 2005 from Shiprock. "That was a real worry for
them."
There's no evidence to prove that uranium miners suffered genetic
damage but that's because the government has never undertaken
a"statistically significant" study. It's the same with
birth defects, kidney disease and neuropathy, diseases that may or may
not be linked with the uranium industry and the aftermath of the boom.
"My guess is [genetic damage] will never be studied,"
Struminger says. And there's the issue of trust. "If the
government funded it," he says, "people [on the Navajo
reservation] wouldn't believe the results. But if the government
doesn't do it, no one will."
Fueling further distrust of the government is the fact that
"downwinders" must only prove that they lived in the Arizona,
Utah or Nevada counties eligible for compensation under RECA. And
despite recent studies that show people in Idaho and New Mexico were
exposed to fallout as well, RECA does not include residents outside
Utah, Arizona or Nevada. This poses a particular challenge to the
Navajo; those living
Eric Jantz is staff attorney with the New Mexico Environmental Law
Center, which has spent nearly a decade fighting legal battles to stop
uranium mining. (Photo courtesy New Mexico Environmental Law Center.)in
Chinle or Teec Nos Pos might be eligible, while those living on the New
Mexico side of the reservation are not.
"A huge benefit of the doubt is given to the downwinder
population," Struminger says. "For whatever reason, they set
it up that way originally but that needs to change. "Last year
the National Research Council released an evaluation of the Radiation
Exposure Screening and Education Program that concluded that many people
who received high doses of radiation were ineligible for compensation
simply because they lived outside the boundaries set up by the 1990 law.
Although the report presented 22 recommendations to improve the program,
thus far there has been no official response to the report.
"My first take on that is Congress hasn't done the oversight
it needs to do," US Rep. Tom Udall, D-NM, says. In the 16 years
since RECA was passed, Congress has never held hearings to review the
program, nor has it called for witnesses to testify about its
effectiveness. The law is due for a close look, but that's not
likely to occur while Republicans hold the majority in Congress; only
the chair of the committee that created the law can call for hearings
and investigations into the program, and, sadly, Udall says,
"Oversight has not been a strong point of Congress since
1994,"
By Laura Paskus
Published: October 11, 2006
sfreporter.com/articles/publish/cover-101106-yellowcake-blues.php\
?ref=rss
Cover art ©Cathleen Toelke, www.cathleentoelke.com
cover design by Angela Moore.
The Navajo Nation has learned a lesson about uranium, has anyone
else?
"At the time, the compensation was fair enough for me"
William Lopez, an elderly Navajo man who, 40 years ago, worked as shift
foreman at the Rare Metals Corporation mill in Tuba City, says. He was
first hired in 1959, when few other jobs existed on the reservation.
�"I made a little more money there than I could get at any other job
in that locality."
For almost eight years, Lopez and his brother-in-law, George Brown,
crushed uranium ore, separating it into different grades, then mixing
slurry and leaching uranium from the liquid. Until the plant closed in
late 1966, the men worked each day enveloped in a cloud of uranium dust,
returning home to their families each afternoon with uranium caked
beneath their fingernails and stuck within the divots of their shoes.
Beginning with the discovery of uranium near Grants, NM, in 1950, the
Navajo reservation hosted four mills and more than 1,000 mines. But by
the early 1990s, when the price of uranium busted out at $7 per pound,
the boom had ended and many of the companies vanished, leaving the
reservation
Photo by Jared Boyd.pocked with mines and mills that were both
radioactive and toxic. Dry tailings piles blew dust through homes and
hogans and, when it rained, sent torrents of poisonous water down
normally dry arroyos.
It was only decades after the Tuba City mill closed that Lopez, Brown
and others learned they had been exposed to radioactive uranium and
toxic chemicals, putting them at risk for diseases such as lung cancer
and pulmonary fibrosis, and perhaps kidney disease and lymphoma.
�"There should be a penalty for not letting people know," Brown
says, obviously still angry with the US government. "You put all
these years in for them and then they turn their back."
But while the Navajo Nation has decided it's better off without
uranium, the industry is eager to use new technology that will extract
ore from beneath the reservation using water and chemicals rather than
strip mines and tunnels. And while the state of New Mexico dodges issues
of tribal sovereignty, the federal government is poised to approve a
whole new generation of uranium mines on the Navajo reservation.
Stories passed down from generation to generation warn that certain
substances are better left alone. For the Navajo, uranium is one of
those substances. Last April, the tribal council banned uranium mining
and processing from the reservation. The resolution, which passed by a
vote of 63 to 19, acknowledges the harm uranium
With traditional mining, uranium ore is extracted from the ground, then
sent to a mill, where it's processed into a fine powder called
"yellowcake." From the mill, the powder is sent off to a
conversion plant that produces uranium hexafluoride for use in nuclear
power plants has caused to people's health, the environment
and the tribe's economy and asserts the tribe's sovereign
right to control its own natural resources.
President Joe Shirley, Jr. who frequently uses the word
"genocide" when talking about uranium mining's legacy on
the reservation signed that resolution, then followed it with an
executive order that bans anyone from even negotiating with companies
proposing to mine uranium.
"Week in and week out, uranium seems to be an issue [President
Shirley], the Navajo Nation, has to deal with, at a sacrifice,"
George Hardeen, communications director for the tribe's president
and vice president, says. "But the
Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., signs a resolution that bans
uranium mining and processing on the reservation. (Photo by George
Hardeen.)greater sacrifice is the loss of lives, loss of knowledge, of
wisdom, songs, ceremonies. There were medicine people who were also
miners [who have] passed on. This is a cultural loss, not just a loss to
individual families."
The most recent chapter in the Navajo battle opened in 1988 when the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted a license to
Albuquerque-based Hydro Resources, Inc., (HRI) to begin mining at four
sites within the Navajo communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock. Local
activists, with help from the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and
Information Council and the Santa Fe-based New Mexico Environmental Law
Center, have spent the past eight years requesting hearings, filing
challenges and, essentially, keeping the mining company at bay. But the
adjudication process is nearing its end, Dave McIntyre, NRC spokesman,
says. "So once the commission has issued its final rulings, and the
staff and HRI have complied with any requirements the commission might
impose, the license will become valid from NRC's point of
view."
The proposed mine does more than threaten the eastern Navajo and their
drinking water, according to Eric Jantz, staff attorney with the New
Mexico Environmental Law Center. "We're on the cusp of a
uranium boom," he says. He believes that HRI is just the first of
many companies that want to mine uranium in the area, and its
Dr. Bruce Baird Struminger has screened more than 1,750 former uranium
workers trying to receive federal compensation and is an outspoken
critic of RECA. (Photo by Eve Todacheenee.)case before the NRC is a test
case for other companies to watch: "Can they push around the
community? What standards will they have to meet?"
Everything in Jantz' office suggests he is a man if not obsessed,
then at least consumed: His laptop computer claims the only flat surface
on his desk; an old yellow couch is piled high with papers and folders.
He's currently representing activists before the NRC in the New
Mexico Court of Appeals and before the US Environmental Protection
Agency. Before coming to Santa Fe, he worked in Crownpoint; before
becoming an attorney, he received a bachelor's degree in
anthropology. Straddling all these different worlds can be mind-numbing.
But this work, he knows, is important: "This isn't about four
mines," he says. "This is potentially about hundreds of mines
in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah.
If anyone has watched the Navajo struggle with the
psychological burden of uranium, it is Dr. Bruce Baird Struminger. As
the medical director of the federal Radiation Exposure Screening and
Education Program on the Navajo reservation, Struminger has screened
more than 1,750 former uranium workers, most of them two or three times,
in order to help them apply for federal compensation.
In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
The legislation compensates those who can prove they are sick because of
their work in the uranium mines and mills between 1947 and 1971, when
the US government was the
Under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA),
"downwinders" must only prove they lived in certain parts of
Utah, Arizona or Nevada between January 1951 and October 1958 or between
June and July 1962, when the government tested nuclear bomb tests in the
Nevada desert.sole purchaser of the metal for nuclear bombs and
reactors. Those who worked in the industry following 1971 are not
eligible for federal compensation.
Those workers who can prove they have lung cancer or pulmonary fibrosis
are eligible to receive a payment of $150,000 from the Department of
Justice. And now the Department of Labor will compensate sick workers up
to an additional $250,000 if they can prove they lost wages due to their
illnesses. "It's an awkward and awful situation,"
Struminger says. "When we find out someone's lungs are in
great shape, some are happy, but most are not because they're not
going to get any compensation."
It's obvious that four years of this work has taken a toll on
Struminger. Unlike most members of the medical profession who often
remain apolitical and stick to keeping their mouths shut. Struminger
is an outspoken critic of the law that created his program. Even before
resigning as medical director in June, Struminger questioned those who
Neither George Brown nor William Lopez both of whom worked in the
Tuba City mill are sick enough to qualify for federal compensation.
Both see RECA as another policy that fails Native Americans. (Photo by
Dr. Bruce Baird Struminger.)wrote the original legislation, needled
Department of Justice officials for exact numbers concerning
compensation claims and, in general, refused to play the role of the
quiet doctor.
"Today I saw the children of a miner, who asked me, `Do you
think anything was passed on to us genetically?' Struminger
said in May 2005 from Shiprock. "That was a real worry for
them."
There's no evidence to prove that uranium miners suffered genetic
damage but that's because the government has never undertaken
a"statistically significant" study. It's the same with
birth defects, kidney disease and neuropathy, diseases that may or may
not be linked with the uranium industry and the aftermath of the boom.
"My guess is [genetic damage] will never be studied,"
Struminger says. And there's the issue of trust. "If the
government funded it," he says, "people [on the Navajo
reservation] wouldn't believe the results. But if the government
doesn't do it, no one will."
Fueling further distrust of the government is the fact that
"downwinders" must only prove that they lived in the Arizona,
Utah or Nevada counties eligible for compensation under RECA. And
despite recent studies that show people in Idaho and New Mexico were
exposed to fallout as well, RECA does not include residents outside
Utah, Arizona or Nevada. This poses a particular challenge to the
Navajo; those living
Eric Jantz is staff attorney with the New Mexico Environmental Law
Center, which has spent nearly a decade fighting legal battles to stop
uranium mining. (Photo courtesy New Mexico Environmental Law Center.)in
Chinle or Teec Nos Pos might be eligible, while those living on the New
Mexico side of the reservation are not.
"A huge benefit of the doubt is given to the downwinder
population," Struminger says. "For whatever reason, they set
it up that way originally but that needs to change. "Last year
the National Research Council released an evaluation of the Radiation
Exposure Screening and Education Program that concluded that many people
who received high doses of radiation were ineligible for compensation
simply because they lived outside the boundaries set up by the 1990 law.
Although the report presented 22 recommendations to improve the program,
thus far there has been no official response to the report.
"My first take on that is Congress hasn't done the oversight
it needs to do," US Rep. Tom Udall, D-NM, says. In the 16 years
since RECA was passed, Congress has never held hearings to review the
program, nor has it called for witnesses to testify about its
effectiveness. The law is due for a close look, but that's not
likely to occur while Republicans hold the majority in Congress; only
the chair of the committee that created the law can call for hearings
and investigations into the program, and, sadly, Udall says,
"Oversight has not been a strong point of Congress since
1994,"