Navajo Nation finally rejects uranium mining.
After a half-century of watching mining companies dredge its land for riches, often with devastating effects, the Navajo Nation has had enough.
On April 19, in a decision certain to have powerful implications throughout Indian Country,
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the Navajo tribal government voted to prohibit uranium mining and processing on its land.
The vote comes in the midst of a legal battle by environmental groups, including the Santa Fe based-New Mexico Environmental Law Center, to stop a Texas company from mining for uranium in aquifers used by the towns of Church Rock and Crownpoint.
"The Navajo government has shown it's determined to protect its people's fundamental right to use a natural resource on its own land," says Eric Jantz, an attorney for the NM Environmental Law Center.
Representing the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining and the Southwest Research and Information Center, the NM Environmental Law Center has been fighting the mining since 1998, when Hydro Resources Incorporated applied for licenses from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to open four uranium mines in Church Rock and Crownpoint and use the controversial 'in situ leach' (ISL) uranium mining process.
ISL mining involves injecting chemicals into aquifers which helps release hidden uranium to the surface; despite mining companies' attempts to re-purify the water, environmentalists say ISL can cause lasting pollution.
The Westwater Canyon aquifer-which pumps water into nearly 30 water wells and seven municipal wells and is the sole drinking source for up to 15,000 people on Navajo land-would be contaminated in seven years, says Chris Shuey, a scientist with the Southwest Research and Information Center.
"We're talking about land that's already been adversely affected by long legacy of mining," Shuey said.
Numerous health and environmental studies have shown that Navajo uranium miners working on government nuclear weapons programs have developed lung cancer at a far higher rate than normal over the past 50 years. In 1983, former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall leveled a civil damage suit on behalf of 85 Navajo uranium miners against the Department of Energy, which helped spawn the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program in 1990.
In this case, legal wrangling has kept Hydro Resources in limbo as it awaits approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees ISL mining under the Atomic Energy Act. Regardless, the new legislation, which passed 63 to 19 and which Navajo tribal president Joe Shirley is expected to sign, could nullify any federal decision on mining on Navajo land.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Spokesman David McIntyre says his agency has not seen the bill yet, and an official with Uranium Resources Incorporated, parent to Hydro Resources, said the company is assessing the impact of the legislation.
Meanwhile, opponents of the local uranium mining are savoring their victory, while acknowledging the legislation could still land them in court defending their sovereignty. Said Lynnea Smith of Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining: "We've been waiting for this a long time."
