A radioactive struggle

Uranium and New Mexico seem like a good fit to some, and like an absolute horror show to others. The bloom is off the uranium boom at the moment. And not everyone is crestfallen by any means.

 

The price of uranium has dropped by 50 percent over the last year, going from about $120 a pound to only $60 a pound last month, as speculations of speedy development of multi-billion dollar new nuclear power plants loses momentum. Sizable investments aren’t forthcoming, waiting, perhaps, to see if nuclear advocate John McCain wins the presidency.

 

Uranium mining companies are scaling back their plans to open old mines near and on Native American lands in New Mexico. This gives Navajo, Pueblo, and other opponents of uranium mining a momentary breather in which to continue to strengthen their legal and moral opposition to uranium mining and the disastrous impacts it’s had on the health of miners, their families, and Native American populations in general.

 

In the classic political equation that assesses who profits and who is burdened by public policies, Native Americans have been burdened beyond bearing, and profited almost not at all, except for wage labor, from the nuclear age. In all the talk about so-called “green” nuclear energy and its potential role in battling global warming, no mention is ever made of the physical, social, and cultural costs to those who mine nuclear power’s basic material.

 

The recent cries of unfairness and economic shortsightedness directed at the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee when it designated, on an emergency basis for one year, much of Mt. Taylor, west of Albuquerque, as a protected Traditional Cultural Property, came mostly from mining interests.

 

The Navajo Nation, Acoma, Laguna, Zuni and Hopi pueblos, along with the Sierra Club, backed the designation and have supported it vigorously, maintaining that it strikes a balance between historic preservation and economic development. For them, the decision is a reprieve from uranium mining exploration.

 

There seems to be no end to the insults and burdens born by Native Americans for other people’s profits.

 

Uranium has plagued New Mexico tribes since the Cold War. In the recent uranium boom last year, Navajos at Crownpoint and Church Rock have opposed “in situ leaching” of uranium from the only drinking water supply of more than 15,000 people, fearing the water will become contaminated as it has in similar situations in Wyoming.

 

In l979, one of the worst radioactive accidents in American history occurred near Gallup at the United Nuclear Church Rock tailing pond when the dam broke sending some 93 million gallons of radioactive waste down the Rio Puerco with such force that it popped manhole covers in Gallup. Navajos maintain that widespread cancer and other illnesses followed the spill.

 

Navajos, Lagunas and Acomas have had been burdened by over 1,200 abandoned uranium mines and their toxic, cancer-causing tailings west of Albuquerque for the better part of 50 years. Native American miners and their families continue to suffer terrible health problems from exposure to radon, radium and heavy metals in tailings. The Navajo Nation went so far as to ban all uranium mining on its lands in 2005, though mining companies are contesting in court the tribe’s right to do so.

 

The uranium boom ended in the 1980s, and bottomed out in 2001 when the price of processed uranium yellowcake was $7 dollars a pound.

 

The designation of Mt. Taylor as a traditional cultural property comes five years after Zuni Pueblo won a long and costly struggle against an Arizona power company that proposed opening a coal mine near Fence Lake. Zuni feared the mining would damage the aquifer that feeds nearby Zuni Salt Lake, among the most sacred sites in the Pueblo world.

 

The power company backed off when the New Mexico Congressional delegation supported the Zuni position, belatedly but effectively.

 

The Pueblo of Acoma was not so fortunate in its lengthy and exhausting effort to keep ownership of the volcanic Malpais near its Sky City. When El Malpais National Monument, all 114,277 acres of it, was taken from Acoma Pueblo by an act of Congress in a outright land grab to help the busted uranium economy of Grants in 1987, it was over lengthy, serious and well argued Acoma objections, based in large part on religious grounds. A land swap was offered, but the Acomas refused, not wanting to be muscled out of their own land with its sacred sites.

 

The entire Native American world in New Mexico opposed the highway extension of Paseo del Norte through the Petroglyph National Monument which is looked upon as a vast religious shrine by tribal peoples. Despite their strenuous opposition, they lost their battle when the road opened in 2007.

 

When mining companies and others complain about the Mt. Taylor decision on the grounds of fairness, they seem to have a mental block about the vast environmental injustices suffered by New Mexico’s tribes. If the “market place” is truly competitive, why shouldn’t Native Americans do everything in their power fighting to retain the land in which their history, culture, and livelihood is rooted?

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