[CPEO-MEF] INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, URANIUM: "Navajo Nation Calls Out Feds Over Shoddy Uranium Mine Cleanup Plans"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Navajo Nation Calls Out Feds Over Shoddy Uranium Mine Cleanup Plans

By Leona Morgan
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2021
AUGUST 2, 2021


“From 1944 to 1986, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands,” according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website “Navajo Nation: Cleaning Up Abandoned Uranium Mines.” Some remediation has been done through two five-year cleanup plans, but is severely underfunded, and the sites are never restored to pre-mining conditions.

The EPA frames the cleanup of 524 abandoned uranium mines on Navajo Indian Country as a collaborative effort between the US federal agencies charged with the cleanup — US EPA, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Navajo Area Indian Health Service, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry — and the Navajo Nation (Navajo). Over the course of the public comment period for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the proposed cleanup of the United Nuclear Corporation/General Electric (UNC/GE) Northeast Churchrock uranium mine, it has become glaringly clear that the federal government is not in collaboration or negotiations with Navajo at all, but rather dictating how to proceed.

Navajo EPA Superfund Director Dariel Yazzie and staff have been working to uphold the requests of the Diné Red Water Pond Road Community Association (RWPR) which will be most impacted if the controversial Churchrock cleanup plan is approved. UNC/GE proposes to “cleanup” the uranium mine by placing one million cubic yards of mine waste atop an existing mill waste disposal site, which is the same site as the 1979 Churchrock spill. For over a decade, RWPR has called for moving all radioactive wastes out of the area entirely. RWPR is opposed to the cleanup plan, despite the US EPA threatening that it may take several years before another is proposed.

…

For the entire article, see
https://nukewatchinfo.org/navajo-nation-calls-out-feds-over-shoddy-uranium-mine-cleanup-plans/

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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