GEM 2
Uranium Mining and the Navajo Nation
524 Mines: The threat on the Navajo Nation by 12 News (2020).
Introduction
The Navajo Nation was used for its vanadium, oil, and uranium throughout the bulk of the twentieth century. Mining and milling of uranium has contaminated water sources and scattered open, irradiated mining pits and tailing piles across the Nation. Abandoned uranium mines are spread across Navajo Nation and have lead to cancer and other health issues in residents and neighbors (Brown and Lambert, 2010). The fight for compensation and cleanup remains ongoing to this day.
The video above summarizes this topic. The rest of this page will provide more in depth information into the science behind the issue and the people and organizations involved.
The maps above show the site of Navajo Nation and where it is located within the U.S.
Abandoned uranium mines on and near the Navajo Nation are shown as red dots on the map above.
Scientific Context
Uranium and Radiation
Radiation is all around us. We use it to heat our food (microwaves), send signals to one another (radio waves), and see the world around us (visible light). The two types of radiation we will examine are ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Non-ionizing radiation is generally too weak to alter or damage the atoms in our bodies. However, if the radiation is strong enough to remove electrons from atoms, then the radiation is called "ionizing" (it creates ions out of atoms). Some elements (such as uranium) are radioactive; these elements will give off ionizing radiation. These elements, are a natural part of the environment. We eat, drink, and inhale them as we go about our lives. Luckily, they are in small enough concentrations that they normally are not hazardous to our health.
However, people working in or living near areas with unusually high concentrations of radioactive elements may be in serious danger. The dust produced during the mining of uranium is laden with radioactive elements. If this dust ends up in the air or water, this radioactive dust can end up in people's bodies. While in the body, the radioactive elements, in the form of primarily alpha and gamma particles, give off ionizing radiation that causes irreversible damage to the organs, blood, and bones.
Source: US EPA (2014)
Uranium Deposits
Uranium is a naturally occurring element that usually exists on Earth's surface in very low concentrations, largely as a minor component trapped in common crustal minerals. However, in some places, geologic processes can serve to concentrate uranium such that new minerals form, which contain uranium at high concentrations. These are called uranium-bearing minerals. Some examples are uraninite (UO2) and triuranium octoxide (U3O8).
On the Colorado Plateau (home to the Navajo Nation), the most common geologic environment to find uranium-bearing minerals are known as sandstone-type deposits (also known as roll-front deposits). These deposits are relatively easy and cheap to mine, making them valuable to mining companies and the U.S. government.
Generally, these deposits form in the following manner:
High pH (oxidized) groundwater dissolves uranium from the bedrock (i.e., igneous rock in nearby mountains).
The groundwater moves into a low pH (reducing) environment.
Unaltered uranium-bearing minerals form in a crescent shape (like the rolling front of a wave).
Bottom: Field photo of roll-front deposit where uranium-bearing minerals appear as a black crescent [modified by the authors].
Source: Wyoming State Geologic Survey [WSGS] (2021)
Mining Uranium
Historically, mining meant drilling, digging, and blasting into the surface of the Earth. Such practices were always dangerous, but as mining became more heavily mechanized, rock could be mined faster and more cheaply than ever before. Outside the mine, this meant a greater volume of tailings (rocks that did not contain useful amounts of ore) and inside the mine, this meant more dust suspended in the air as the machines and explosives processed more material. Without proper ventilation or protection, Navajo miners were exposed to extremely hazardous situations. Similarly, since the tailings were not properly contained, the newly exposed radioactive particles were available to be dissolved by water or carried away by wind, exposing local communities to hazardous concentrations of uranium.
Today, the uranium mines on the Navajo Nation are abandoned. However, this does not mean the danger is gone. Radioactive particles from left over tailings can be carried on the wind or dissolved into the water and many local people built homes and other structures using material from the abandoned mines before the dangers of using that material were understood by the community. The presence of this material poses lethal risks to nearby people, plants, and animals and these mines often require intensive cleanup (remediation) from specialized teams.
To avoid the environmental and health effects of traditional uranium mining, alternative mining technologies, such as In-Situ Leach (ISL) mining have been proposed. ISL mining involves drilling into the surface and injecting in a leaching solution (i.e., a solution that will preferentially dissolve uranium from the rock) before pumping the now uranium-rich solution back up to the surface. The uranium in solution is then sent for processing. This new mining technology is far less damaging to the surface geology and avoids placing people directly in harms way, but the full effects on the water table and surrounding environment are not fully understood. As such, many Navajo Nation peoples are still wary about allowing these mining practices to be carried out on their lands.
Environmental and Human Impacts
Impacts on Water Quality and the Church Rock Disaster
Warning sign advising against drinking water from a well on Navajo Land.
Source: US EPA
The Western United States naturally experiences elevated levels of arsenic and uranium in the groundwater and can be aggravated by mining (Ingram, Jones, Credo, and Rock 2020). Additionally, tailings left from milled Uranium ore contaminated the groundwater that the Navajo used for drinking (McElroy 2006). As stated by the EPA, “Water can dissolve within the aquifer and suspend the radionuclides. Suspended particles are easily ingested by humans and livestock,” (Brown and Lambert 2010). Accumulations of radioactive mine water runoff collected in pools that herd animals were drinking. Stagnant mine water was also leaching into the groundwater and contaminating the Navajos’ drinking water (Hungate 2005).
Sign placed by the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Department warning against using the Rio Puerco.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
On July 16, 1979, a radioactive spill occurred in Church Rock, New Mexico. The United Nuclear Corporation operated a uranium mine that produced more than two million pounds of uranium oxide annually and the waste from the mine was contained behind a dam that was recognized by experts to be geologically unsound. By 1977 large cracks began to form but were left unreported. The breach of the dam caused 1,100 tons of radioactive waste and 95 million gallons of wastewater to flow into the Rio Puerco. The breach affected two nearby aquifers, backed up sewers, and transported pollutants as far as eighty-one miles downstream. The United Nuclear Corporation removed 3,500 tons of sediment from the Rio Puerco, but this was estimated to be only one percent of spill material (Brugge, deLemos, and Bui, 2007). The EPA added the site to the National Priorities List in 1988, and cleanup activities are still ongoing (EPA).
Stakeholders
United States Government
The history of the government's role in this issue is long and complex, involving several government organizations with different roles. The timeline presented below will serve to briefly summarize the various motivations and actions of the major government entities that have been involved, but is not comprehensive. Information below is taken directly from government documents including congressional testimony and government reports.
1920s-1970s
The Federal Government paid private mining companies to produce uranium for nuclear weapons development and nuclear energy production.
Approximately 14% of the uranium used for the U.S World War II and Cold War nuclear weapons and energy programs were mined from the Navajo Nation (EPA, 2007).
1970s-1980s
The government's need for uranium diminished after the Cold War ended and nuclear energy fell out of favor. The abandoned mines were left without proper clean-up or remediation.
1990s
Congressional hearings were held regarding abandoned uranium mines (AUM) on the Navajo Nation. Members of Navajo Nation gave testimony on concerns about the mines and requested assistance to assess health risks. In response, the EPA initiated the Navajo Abandoned Uranium Mines (NAUM) Project to determine the scope and impact of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was passed by Congress in response to the persistent pressure by the Navajo Nation. The act acknowledged the responsibility of the U.S. government for the historical mistreatment of uranium miners and provided financial compensation to miners and their families with diseases from their mining experience.
2000s
The EPA Region IX Superfund Site Assessment and Technical Support Team developed a custom set of Hazard Ranking System (HRS) screening criteria to assess AUMs on the Navajo Nation for possible remedial actions.
The first five-year plan to address uranium contamination risks on the Navajo Nation was established (EPA, 2008).
2010s
The United States government (EPA and other federal agencies) entered into a historic settlement with mining companies Cyprus Amax and Western Nuclear in 2017 to cleanup 94 mines on the Navajo Nation. The United States will pay approximately half of all costs, including the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency oversight costs, through a trust funded at $335 million. Cyprus Amax and Western Nuclear will fund the other half of the work. (EPA, 2020)
2020s
March 24, 2021: The House Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on Examining the Need to Expand Eligibility Under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The end of RECA would mean the end of compensation for those who are still impacted by the radiation from these mines and tailings.
Mining Companies
The Navajo Reservation was closed to prospecting and mining until 1919, when a congressional act opened the Navajo Reservation to prospecting and locating mining claims in the same manner as prescribed by U.S Mining Law. Escalation of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union lead the US to research and develop uses of nuclear energy. When the United States Atomic Energy Commission announced in 1948 that it would guarantee a price for and purchase all uranium ore that was mined in the United States, Uranium mining in the sandstone deposits of the Colorado Plateau began.
In the early 1950's, the Navajo Council adopted a series of resolutions which developed the regulations for prospecting and mining permits, mining leases, and royalty schedules. Mining permits were granted only to Navajo, who could assign to non-Navajo (Chenoweth, 1985).
Private companies hired Navajo to work in the uranium mines, and miners were paid little more than minimum wage for very high-risk work. In 1949, minimum wage was raised from forty cents to seventy-five cents (Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, 1988), and copies of pay stubs from a Navajo miner from 1949 show an hourly wage of $0.81 to $1.00 (approximately $9.84 today). Meanwhile, in the Appalachian Mountains, Virginia coal workers were being paid an average of $1.90 per hour ($20.54) (Ross and Wirtz, 1965). Mining jobs included blasters, timber men (who built the wooden supports in the mines), muckers (who dug the blaster rock), transporters, and millers (Brugge and Goble, 2002).
Aerial photo of Shiprock site in Shiprock New Mexico (Ford, Bacon and Davis Utah Inc, 1981).
The Shiprock Mining site was built and operated by Kerr-McGee from 1954 until 1963. The mill, ore storage area, raffinate ponds (ponds that contain spent liquids from the milling process), and tailings piles occupied approximately 230 acres leased from the Navajo Nation (Ford, Bacon and Davis Utah Inc, 1981).
Exposure of three lithologic units in basal channel fill, Monument No. 1 mine workings (Witkind, 1961).
Three mines are located in the Monument Valley area. Copper Canyon Mining Industries Inc. (Foutz Mining Co.) produced ore and owned mines here from 1953 through 1956 (Witkind, 1961).
The dam breach at Church Rock, New Mexico in 1979 (Brugge, 2007).
In 1968, the United Nuclear Corporation initiated mining operations in Church Rock, New Mexico, and produced more than 2 million pounds of uranium dioxide annually. Waste from the mining process was disposed of in lagoons fortified by a dam which breached in 1979, seeping uranium waste and radioactive water into the Rio Puerco a precious water source in the broad desert of the Navajo Nation (Brugge, 2007).
Navajo Nation
In the 1940's uranium was mined from ores on the Navajo Nation (NN) lands. Eventually, there were four centers of uranium mining and milling on the NN:
1) Shiprock, New Mexico
2) Monument Valley, Utah
3)Church Rock, New Mexico
4) Kayenta, Arizona.
The Navajo Nation transformed from a traditional grazing community to a modern industrial wage economy as the mining boom continued through the 1960's. During this mining boom, Navajo miners were not informed about protective equipment or ventilation, nor of the dangers of exposure to radiation. Miners ended their shifts in their work clothes, tracking radioactive material back into their homes. Safety standards were not implemented until 1971, more than 30 years after the uranium mining began. Miners, mill workers, and their families have high rates of cancer, and aquifers are contaminated with radioactive waste and heavy metals. By the 1980's, uranium mining was over when the price of uranium fell (Brown and Lambert, 2010), and the mines were abandoned.
Navajo miners work at the Kerr-McGee uranium mine at Cove, Arizona on May 7, 1953. (AP file)
Phil Harrison Jr., Navajo Nation Council member, son of a deceased uranium miner, and an anti-mining activist (Yan, 2020)
"I grew up in the uranium mining camps. I drank uranium-contaminated water from those mines. We washed our clothes in uranium-contaminated water. I watched children going into the mine and playing on the waste piles" (Brown and Lambert, 2010).
Former Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr.
"Genocide. There is no other word for what happened to Navajo uranium miners . . . As a result, radiation exposure has cost the Navajo Nation the accumulated wisdom, knowledge, stories, songs and ceremonies to say nothing of the lives of hundreds of our people..." (Brown and Lambert, 2010).
Ethics and Equity
Compensation and cleanup of uranium mines on the Navajo Nation is an ongoing process. The Navajo united in grassroots movements to identify the high rate of cancer among mine and mill workers and other Navajo. Eventually they lobbied Congress to pass the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) of 1990, which was meant to provide compensation for medical bills related to diseases contracted through exposure to radiation. However, the Act was often exclusionary, denying aid to those who smoked or could not provide records of their work--records which were never provided to them due to laissez-faire attitudes toward evidentiary paperwork during the height of the uranium boom on Navajo land (WISE Uranium Project, 2021). In 2000, the Act was amended to encompass more diseases, land, and people influenced and affected by radiation exposure. However, this Act was only extended for twenty-two years, meaning that, in 2022, RECA will either deny coverage to those exposed to the radioactive mines that still have yet to be cleaned and refilled, or the Act will be extended until cleanup is fulfilled.
References
12 News. (2020, March 06). 524 Mines: The threat on the Navajo Nation [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cvt34m7tTk
Brown, J., Lambert, L., and Shirley, J. (2010). Blowing in the Wind: The Navajo Nation and Uranium. Evergreen: Olympia, Washington. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HrMQFQHCBXLCduAHXfJDMaapedvbydc6/view?usp=sharing
Brown, Jovana, and Lori Lambert. “Blowing in the Wind: The Navajo Nation and Uranium | Native Case Studies.” Nativecases.evergreen.edu, nativecases.evergreen.edu/collection/cases/blowing-in-the-wind. Accessed 28 July 2021.
Brugge, D., deLemos, J. L., & Bui, C. (2007). The Sequoyah Corporation Fuels Release and the Church Rock Spill: Unpublicized Nuclear Releases in American Indian Communities. American Journal of Public Health, 97(9), 1595–1600. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2006.103044
Brugge, D. & Goble, R. (2007) The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act: What is fair? In D. Brugge, T. Benally & E Yazzie-Lewis, The Navajo People and Uranium Mining. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press.
Brugge, Doug, and Rob Goble. “The History of Uranium Mining and the Navajo People.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 92, no. 9, Sept. 2002, pp. 1410–1419, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222290/, 10.2105/ajph.92.9.1410. Accessed 13 Nov. 2019.
Chenoweth, William. EARLY VANADIUM·URANIUM MINING in MONUMENT VALLEY, APACHE and NAVAJO COUNTIES, ARIZONA, and SAN JUAN COUNTY, UTAH. http://repository.azgs.az.gov/sites/default/files/dlio/files/2010/u14/ofr_85_15.pdf
Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). UNITED NUCLEAR CORP. | Superfund Site Profile | Superfund Site Information | US EPA. United States Environmental Protection Agency. https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.Cleanup&id=0600819#Status
FORD, BACON & DAVIS UTAH INC. “Summary of the Engineering Assessment of Inactive Uranium Mill Tailings, Shiprock Site, Shiprock, New Mexico.” Www.osti.gov, 1 July 1981, www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6075949. Accessed 28 July 2021.
Hock, C. (2017). In-Situ Leach Mining of Uranium. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/hock2/
Hungate, A. B. (2005). Let them eat yellowcake: Navajo uranium and American marginalization - ProQuest. ProQuest. https://www.proquest.com/openview/bdddc3fb380bf0bccb84d8ff4c7fd8c8/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
McElroy, C. A. (2006, June 1). Uranium Mining on the Navajo Indian Reservation: An Environmental Examination of the Process and Impact. ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/74/
Ross, Arthur M. and Wirtz, W. Willard. (Sept. 1965). Wage Chronology: Bituminous Coal Mines: 1933-66: No. 1461, Washington, D.C. 20402., Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_1461_1965.pdf
Samet, J. M., Kutvirt, D. M., Waxweiler, R. J., & Key, C. R. (1984). Uranium Mining and Lung Cancer in Navajo Men. The New England Journal of Medicine, 310(23), 1481–1484.
SERC Carleton. (n.d.). Impacts of Resource Development on American Indian Lands. The Navajo Nation and Uranium Mining. https://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/nativelands/navajo/index.html
US EPA. (2007). Abandoned Mines Cleanup: Screening Assessment Report and Atlas with Geospatial Data. http://mckinleyswcd.com/churchrock.jpg
US EPA (2014). Your Health: Uranium and Radiation on the Navajo Nation. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-06/documents/atsdr_uranium_and_radiation_health_dec_2014.pdf
US EPA (2016). Navajo Nation: Cleaning Up Abandoned Uranium Mines. https://www.epa.gov/navajo-nation-uranium-cleanup
Wage and Hour Division. (1988). History of Changes to the Minimum Wage Law. United States Department of Labor. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history
WISE Uranium Project. (2021, March 25). Compensation of Navajo Uranium Miners. https://www.wise-uranium.org/ureca.html
Witkind, Irving. The Uranium-Vanadium Ore Deposit at the Monument No. 1-Mitten No. 2 Mine, Monument Valley Navajo County, Arizona GEOLOGICAL SURVEY BULLETIN 1107-C. , 1961.
World Nuclear Organization. (2020). What is Uranium? How Does it Work? https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/what-is-uranium-how-does-it-work.aspx#.UchZ6Vb_KrQ
Wyoming State Geological Survey (WSGS). (n.d.). Uranium Deposits. https://www.wsgs.wyo.gov/energy/uranium-deposits.aspx
Yan, Wudan. “Uranium Widows in Navajo Country.” Sierra Club, 29 Oct. 2020, contentdev.sierraclub.org/sierra/2020-6-november-december/feature/uranium-widows-navajo-country. Accessed 28 July 2021.