Green Jobs: Pollution Prevention & Cleanup
Top Left Panel of Work of Mind
by Be Sargent
Winoma Foster, top left, was project manager for Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, ENDAUM, from 2003 to 2006 and is now in the final stages of gaining her Associate Degree in Environmental Science at Navajo Technical College.
Gerald Brown of CRUMP, Church Rock Uranium Monitoring Project, is shown with the monitoring device that measured particulates in the air around Church Rock.
We met with Gerald to find out what had happened since he agreed to be in the mural in 2004. He talked about Church Rock.
He told us of a beloved town where doors were never locked, the home of many Navajo leaders, was torn down, was replaced by a development without homeowner security.
He took us on a tour.
We stood at the intersection of four uranium sites. On our left was the Northeast Church Rock Mine site where partial clean up in 2009, a direct result of CRUMP findings, had resulted in a strangely sculpted landscape.
Remediation of the tailings piles at the old Kerr McGee mine.
To our right was the ongoing cover-up of two quarter-mile-long piles of mine waste from the Kerr-McGee/Quivira Mining Church Rock I and IE site.
In between, a house surrounded by tricycles.
Behind us and down the road a bit was the United Nuclear Corporation mill, now a 3.5-million ton uranium mill tailings Superfund site, remediated without a liner. This is where the biggest radioactive waste spill of US history happened on July 16, 1979.
Across the street is Section 8, owned by Hydro Resources Incorporated now seeking a discharge permit with the following Public Notice 1, MAY 13, 2011, from the New Mexico Environment Department Ground Water Quality Bureau.
Church Rock Section 8 ISR Project, Mark S. Pelizza, Sr. Vice President, proposes to renew the Discharge Permit for the injection and circulation of up to 4,000 gallons per minute of lixiviant through the Westwater Canyon Formation aquifer at depths between 600 and 1200 feet below the ground surface via injection and extraction wells in order to recover uranium. Recovered pregnant lixiviant containing up to 150 milligrams/liter (“mg/l”) of uranium will be treated through ion exchange resin to reduce uranium concentrations to less than 1 mg/l before the then-barren lixiviant is recirculated into the wellfields. Up to 1 percent of the produced or extracted water may be diverted to surface evaporation ponds or to tanks for ultimate treatment and disposal. Potential contaminants from this type of injection include chloride, radium-226, selenium, sulfate, TDS, and uranium. The facility is located approximately 6 miles north of the town of Church Rock, in Section 8, T16N, R16W, McKinley County. Ground water beneath the site is at a depth of approximately 275 feet and has a total dissolved solids concentration of approximately 835 milligrams per liter. (my italics)
Gerald explains the air monitoring device still measuring polluiton levels in Church Rock.
We asked Gerald how he felt about this remediated landscape.
Our eyes filled with tears as we heard unspoken sadness.
He said he was thankful for the clean-up, brought about by tireless work to demonstrate the uranium pollution of Church Rock’s air, water and soil.
But what makes him glad is the stream of visitors who come to see how a small group of community activists has finally gotten the attention of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
On May 16 of this year ENDAUM announced a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the United States. “By its acts and omissions that have contaminated and will continue to contaminate natural resources in the Diné communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock, the State has violated Petitioners’ human rights and breached its obligations under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.”
For the entire text go to
http://nmenvirolaw.org/images/pdf/ENDAUM_Final_Petition_with_figures.pdf
