By Sasheen Hollow Horn 
The Navajo Times 

WINDOW ROCK (Oct. 11, 2001) - The Navajo Nation Council's Resources Committee accepted reports from the company proposing to mine uranium in Church Rock and Crownpoint as well as from the people who oppose the plans last week. 

No decision was made and limited citizen input was allowed because the meeting was not a public hearing, but committee chairman George Arthur (San Juan/Nenahnezad) said that the committee has visited the locations and conducted hearings. More public hearings would be held in the future, he said. 

Mark Pelizza, president of Hydro Resources Inc., gave the five-member committee and the approximately 30 people present an explanation of his proposed plan and an update on Oct. 3. 

HRI is proposing the construction and operation of three in-situ leach mines in which oxygen would be added to a portion of a freshwater aquifer, rusting the uranium and bringing it out of the rock, he said. 

Water and discharge would then be pumped from underground and processed in a plant in Crownpoint. 

He said that uranium occurs naturally in many areas in the West, and in-situ mining has been "very successful" in commercial operations in Texas, Wyoming and Nebraska during its 30-year history. 

Addressing a sticking point for many in opposition, Pelizza said that there is "no scientific doubt" as to the restoration of solution mines. But groundwater in the vicinity of uranium that is mineralized before mining starts can't be returned to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency drinking water standards because it didn't meet them in the first place. 

Nuclear energy is the second largest source of electricity, providing 20-25 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S., and the country's nuclear power plants burn 50,000 pounds of uranium every year for fuel. The U.S. produces only six percent of the uranium it uses when it has the capacity to produce 25 percent. 

When huge amounts of international government inventories of uranium entered the market at no cost in 1998, the price of uranium and uranium production dropped drastically, causing many companies to close or defer mines. 

The situation is not going to last forever, he said. This year, the price of uranium went up 30 percent in price and Pelizza expects that it will continue for the next 10 years. 

"When uranium is needed, we will be in the position to provide it," he said, noting the state's vast and high-quality reserves that have for years made it the largest producer of uranium in the U.S. 

The Navajo Nation has 75 million pounds of uranium and "it's not going to go away," he said. 

The company was issued a license for all sites in 1998. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found that HRI's proposal for the Churchrock Section 8 site is safe, though it has not yet approved a plan to pay for the cost of cleanup after mining is complete, he said. 

Further hearings before the NRC will concentrate on the Church Rock Section 17, Unit 1 and Crownpoint sites. 

These must be resolved before the company acquires leases, conducts an environmental impact study, files permit applications and becomes certified. 

"We would never bring anything before the committee that is unsafe," he said. "I have been in solution mining for 25 years, have never experienced anything unsafe. Harm in the past was the result of different mining techniques with no regulation." 

"The Navajo Nation cannot stonewall itself from outside companies because it fears for health and all that can happen to us," said HRI consultant Ben House. "We have to seek out a solution to resolve. Work out a solution where mining can be made safe." 

Representatives from the Eastern Navajo Din* Against Uranium Mining, a group fighting the proposed mines and plant, presented a different picture. 

For Crownpoint resident Rita Capitan, the one thing most at-risk from uranium mining was the "good, clean water" that would be ruined by the thousands of injection wells scattered throughout the aquifer. 

She said that a pilot in-situ leach project conducted in the area by Mobil Oil over five years was never deemed successful and the water was never restored to its natural state. 

"Uranium will never be safe," she said. "Once you bother it, disturb it, it's going to affect the people. Still, you're going to bring it out and process it in Crownpoint on trust land." 

Capitan produced resolutions from Church Rock Chapter, Crownpoint Chapter and various Eastern Agency tribal entities, as well as a stack of petitions, all opposed to the project. 

Mervyn Tilden, from Church Rock, said he has been opposed to uranium mining since 1978 when 98 million pounds spilled into the Rio Puerco, affecting 11 Navajo communities downstream. 

"You know the events of the past few weeks, at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," he said. "More people have been killed with uranium than by that. This is terrorism. I'm ready to go another 22 years opposing HRI." 

Frank Chee Willetto, of Crownpoint, brought up the question of whether the mining effects would stay on private land, saying that smelly water is being released from the one wash near where the proposed mine is going to be. 

"You think we're going to drink water like that, you're mistaken," he told Pelizza. "I live four miles from Crownpoint. I use 300-400 gallons of water per week. I'm opposed. Maybe I'm an old man but my grandchildren, I think of them. If you gave me a million (dollars), I wouldn't take it. My grandchildren and other grandchildren are more important to me." 

John Fogarty, a physician with Crownpoint Indian Health Service, said that he and the hospital's 15 other physicians looked at the environmental impact statement prepared by the NRC and particularly at the studies of the health effects of uranium in drinking water. 

The NRC included studies only from the 1940s to the 1970s, overlooking five new studies showing that tiny amounts of uranium were poisonous, he said. 

Based on the studies, the World Health Organization and the U.S. EPA have put standards for uranium in drinking water at two micrograms per liter or two parts per billion - far below the NRC standard of 440 parts per billion. 

Because it is a heavy metal and a damaging toxin, it stops kidneys from working and there is already an epidemic of kidney disease, he said. 

He mentioned that the NRC, formerly known as the Atomic Regulatory Commission, saw studies in the 1930's showing that surface and underground uranium mining caused cancer, scarred lungs and put people on oxygen but ignored them, he said. 

"It is repeating itself," he said. "They will be poisoned again. I urge you to stop this project and projects like it." 

The water in the aquifer serving Crownpoint and surrounding communities up to 60 miles away contains only 1-2 micrograms of uranium per liter of water, he said. 

Crownpoint High School student Lynea Smith compared the situation to a child on the road. 

"If you get paid $15 (the amount HRI estimated that the community received from direct costs of labor, equipment, electricity and royalties from each pound of uranium mined) to let the child stand there when cars are passing by, would you?" she asked. 

"You're taking chances with 15,000 people's lives," she said. "Possible contamination will continue until it slowly dies out. It will affect more people who come and go, not just the 15,000. My sister, my brother, their friends go to school a half-mile away from this." 

Anna Frazier, with Dine' Citizens Against Ruining the Environment (Dine' CARE) said that despite the fact that the proposal is located on private land outside Navajo Nation boundaries and seems inevitable, the people's voice can change things. 

A similar issue on private land at Dzil-Na-O-Dithle went to the New Mexico state courts, who defeated a planned asbestos waste plant. Similarly, the organization opposed the tribal council on the issue of toxic waste 13 years ago. 

"I've seen suffering (and) radiation effects from working with this for 10 years," she said. "It's still going on. A lot of people are opposed. The reason why these things are happening is because the U.S. has policies it doesn't go by. That's why other countries are threatening us. They go into indigenous countries and bring out the resources." 

Capitan had asked the committee to rescind a policy on uranium solution extraction activities on the Navajo Nation approved in January 2000 but members explained that it was only a guide and a safeguard to follow when requests are made pertaining to uranium. 

Council Delegate Elmer Milford (Fort Defiance) said that, like the moratorium on uranium mining that former president Peterson Zah enacted in 1992 that it repeals in in-situ leach mining situations, it only applies to trust land. 

He said the policy provides a framework that companies must follow, requiring them to comply with the tribe's Solid Waste Code, Pesticide Act, Mine Lands Reclamation Code, Energy Development Administration, Environmental Policy Act, Air Pollution Prevention and Control Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Act and federal environmental laws, he said. 

It does not approve uranium mining and it does not approve HRI's project - which, if the current committee acts upon its predecessors' recommendation, will not happen until Crownpoint, Church Rock and other Eastern Agency entities approve, Milford said. 

Dine' CARE 
10 A Town Plaza, PMB 
138 Durango, CO 81301 
(970) 259-0199 phone 
(970) 259-3413 fax 
web: dinecare.indigenousnative.org