atomic energy
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Waterkeeper Magazine Fall 2006
Wasting Utah Stopping Private Fuel Storage By Jeff Salt, Great Salt Lakekeeper
The National Academy of Sciences has established guidelines for sequestering nuclear waste that call for a minimum isolation period of 300,000 years. But finding a safe place to wait out the next 300,000 years is not easy. The industry’s solution: turn the problem over to the federal government, sparsely populated states and impoverished Native American tribes.
The Salt Lake Tribune
another challenge from uranium mining interests. Hydro Resources, Inc. is proposing four new uranium leach mines in the Crownpoint and Church Rock chapters of the Navajo Nation. This project threatens to contaminate the only water source for 15,000 people, some of whom already commute 60 miles a day to haul water for drinking, cooking, bathing and livestock. Uranium ore beneath the ground is not harmful; in fact, Crownpoint has one of the most pristine aquifers in New Mexico. The proposed in situ leach mines will inject chemicals into the groundwater to strip uranium from the host rock. The mixture of chemicals and uranium is then pumped up through a well and sent to a plant to be refined. The aquifer is left contaminated by uranium, other radioactive substances and heavy metals such as arsenic and selenium. Leach mining has never been performed in an aquifer that is used for drinking water. When the technique was tested in Crownpoint, Navajo resident and laboratory technician Mitchell Capitan observed that “the company could not reduce the majority of contaminants to pre-mining ‘baseline’ levels after more than six years of restoration attempts.” The aquifer in Crownpoint currently contains less than one microgram per liter of uranium. The mining could increase this level up to 100,000 times. According to the mining company’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission license, Hydro Resources is only required to restore the groundwater to 440 micrograms per liter – a level well above the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum recommended level of 30 micrograms per liter, and many times higher than the World Health Organization’s standard of 2 micrograms per liter. “Numerous health studies show that even low levels of uranium in drinking water can be toxic for the kidney,” Dr. John Fogarty warns. Fogarty worked as a doctor with Indian Health Services in Crownpoint for seven years and started the first uranium miner’s screening clinic for signs of uranium-related illness. His concern with the new project led him to the board of a group called the Eastern Navajo Dine’ Against Uranium Mining. The vast majority of Navajos say “Łeetso Dóoda” – no uranium mining. After witnessing the failure of the test project in Crownpoint, Mitchell Capitan and his wife Rita organized hundreds of community members to come together to keep Hydro Resources from destroying their only source of drinking water. The company has been held off in court since 1994. Although most of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rulings have been in the mining company’s favor, Crownpoint’s aquifer remains safe – at least for the time being. W
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