How To Fix Navajo Reservation Uranium Contamination
Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country
TEEC NOS POS, Ariz. — It was ane year ago that the environmental scientist showed upward at Fred Slowman'southward door, deep in the centre of Navajo country, and warned that it was unsafe for him to stay there.
The Slowman home, the same one-level cinderblock construction his family had lived in for well-nigh a half-century, was contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal country known as the Navajo Nation. The scientist advised Mr. Slowman, his married woman and their two sons to move out until their domicile could be rebuilt.
"I was angry," Mr. Slowman said. "I judge it was hither all this time, and nosotros never knew."
The legacy wrought from decades of uranium mining is long and painful hither on the expansive reservation. Over the years, Navajo miners extracted some four one thousand thousand tons of uranium ore from the ground, much of information technology used past the United States government to make weapons.
Many miners died from radiations-related illnesses; some, unaware of harmful health effects, hauled contaminated rocks and tailings from local mines and mills to build homes for their families.
Now, those homes are being demolished and rebuilt under a new government program that seeks to identify what are very likely dozens of uranium-contaminated structures still standing on Navajo state and to temporarily relocate people living in them until the homes can be torn down and rebuilt.
Stephen B. Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, and other tribal officials take been grappling for years with the environmental fallout from uranium mining.
"There were a lot of things people weren't told about the plight of Navajos and uranium mining," Mr. Etsitty said. "These legacy issues are impacting generations. At some point people are maxim, 'Information technology'due south got to cease.' "
Afterward a Congressional hearing in 2007, a cross-section of federal agencies committed to addressing the environmental and health impacts of uranium mining on the reservation. As part of that delivery, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Navajo Nation began working together to assess uranium levels in 500 structures through a five-twelvemonth plan set to end in 2012.
Using old lists of potentially contaminated structures, federal and Navajo scientists take fanned out to rural reaches of the 27,000 foursquare mile reservation — which includes swaths of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — to measure levels of radium, a disuse product of uranium that can cause lung cancer. Of 113 structures assessed and then far, 27 contained radiation levels that were above normal.
Epitome
"In these situations, you have contamination in somebody's yard or in their house," said Harry Allen, the E.P.A.'southward section chief for emergency response in San Francisco who is helping lead the government'southward efforts. "To the states, that is somewhat urgent."
Many structures that showed high levels of radiation were vacant; some families had already moved out after hearing stories of contamination in their homes. But eight homes still had people living in them, and the E.P.A. and Navajo officials have worked to convince residents that it would be unsafe to stay.
"People had been told they were living in contaminated structures, but nobody always did annihilation about it," said Will Duncan, an ecology scientist who has been the Eastward.P.A.'s main representative on the reservation. "They would tell us, 'We don't believe you are going to follow through.' "
But with a upkeep of nearly $8 1000000, the Eastward.P.A. has demolished all 27 contaminated structures and has begun building ones to supersede those that had been occupied. Typically, the agency pays a Navajo contracting company to construct a log cabin or a traditional hogan in the structure's stead, depending on the wishes of the occupants. Mr. Allen said the price, including temporarily relocating residents, ran approximately $260,000 per home and took about eight months.
The agency as well offers $fifty,000 to those who cull not to have an old home rebuilt.
Lillie Lane, a public data officer with the Navajo Nation E.P.A. who has acted equally a liaison between the federal regime and tribal members, said the program held applied and symbolic importance given the history of uranium mining hither.
Ms. Lane described the difficulty of watching families, particularly elders, leaving homes they had lived in for years. She told of coming upon two erstwhile miners who died earlier their contaminated homes could be rebuilt. "In Navajo, a dwelling house is considered sacred," she said. "But if the foundation or the rocks are not safe, we have to do this work."
Some families, Ms. Lane said, complained that their children were suffering from health problems and had wondered if radiation were to blame.
The E.P.A. has started sifting through records and interviewing family members to figure out whether mining companies that once operated on the reservation are liable for any damages, Mr. Allen said.
On a recent summertime solar day, Fred and Clara Slowman proudly surveyed their new habitation, a 1-level log motel that sits in the serenity shadows of Blackness Stone Point, miles away from the hurry of Farmington, N.M., where the family has been living in a hotel.
Mr. Slowman said he suspected that waste materials from a nearby abased mine seeped into his house. The family unit plans on having a traditional Navajo medicine human being bless their dwelling before they movement in.
"In our traditional way, a house is like your mom," he said. "It's where you eat, slumber, where you're taken care of. And when you come back from the metropolis, you come back to your mom. It makes you experience real good."
How To Fix Navajo Reservation Uranium Contamination,
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27navajo.html
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