The Santa Fe New Mexican
Published February 26, 2008
Was it his own ears Tom Udall couldn't believe? Or was it the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs who left Northern New Mexico's congressman incredulous during a hearing last fall by trying to wash BIA's hands of responsibility for uranium's ravages in Navajo country?
You guys are the ones on the front lines, said Udall; the ones who knew about radioactive homes and the spread of cancer. And you felt no duty to do anything for those people -- and your staff denies there's any responsibility whatsoever?
Disgusted, the representative finally yielded the microphone to California's Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee -- whose indignation over Navajo-country uranium mining is as great as Udall's.
Tom's dad, Stewart, the former congressman and interior secretary, has spent the better part of four decades seeking justice for people both Udalls say were treated as guinea pigs; put to work breathing radioactive dust, then left to live -- and die --amid uranium tailings from pit after pit dug in Indian country during the early days of the Cold War.
But, said BIA boss Jerry Gidner, if we hadn't gotten the nuclear-bomb material from there, where would we have gotten it?
Moab and other parts of Utah come to our minds; so does Wyoming, as well as Canada and other countries. Anywhere else, though, the Atomic Energy Agency and its suppliers might have had to dig more responsibly, and clean up their lethal messes. But out on the Navajo reservation, who cares?
We care, damnit, declare congressional Democrats; not only must there be long-overdue remediation of the decades-old nuclear tailings, but we're out to stop new uranium mines in Indian Country along the edges of the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.
The Navajo Nation is asking for observance and implementation of a federal moratorium on uranium mining -- inside reservation boundaries and in the land beyond; land traditionally known as Navajo Indian Country. The mining proposals in question are on private land -- but the damage the digging could do to the fragile aquifers and the wind-blown contaminated dirt of the Four Corners must be headed off -- now.
It might not be until the next administration that the executive branch recognizes and does more about the clean-up that went undone in the days of us vs. the commies -- but in the meantime, count on Udall, Waxman, Jim Matheson of Utah and others to champion this cause in Congress. This might be the most egregious reason why the 1872 Mining Act must be reformed. Because the law even predates creation of Grand Canyon National Park, uranium speculators are staking claims close to the canyon rim out to the west of Navajo country. Nowhere, it seems, is safe from an impending new uranium boom. The stuff appears cheaper to dig than to recycle -- yet once refined and put into weapons and generators, it becomes a near-eternal hazard.
So as long as it's still potent, recycling it -- preferably in civilian form -- should be a priority of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mining it, especially under the
giveaway provisions and laissez-faire non-rules of the
1872 law, has proven disastrous.
The nuclear-power industry is sure to land its propagandists in New Mexico, telling us how vastly improved and totally safe today's digging has become. Against flim-flam like that, BIA must rally key agencies to stop the companies' new incursions. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has passed baby-step mining legislation giving such agencies as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management voices in mining locations.
That bill has yet to be acted on in the Senate, where New Mexicans Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici are their parties' top dogs on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Nevada's Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, is blocking it on behalf of his state's mining industry.
A little bipartisan mutiny, gentlemen?
