Living next to uranium tailings
Family suffers from medical problems

Four-year-old Kyle Williams holds his father's finger while the two wait for Kyle's pre-school bus to pick him up in Milan. Kyle has an unidentied mass in his intestines and each of his three brothers has a different rare disease. Mickey, Kyle's father has a mass in his back and his mother Candi is having unexplained kidney problems. The family was rescently told that their well water is not fit to bathe in, let alone drink. They have been buying bottled water for drinking, but said they have no other options but to bathe in the tainted well water. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

MILAN, N.M. — At 9 years old, Mickey Williams displays wisdom and strength beyond his age. Recently, Mickey had to come up with a sentence for school using the word "survived." According to his mother, Candace, 27, Mickey's sentence was:

"I survived cancer once. I survived cancer twice. I survived cancer three times. I'll survive it again."

But, she asks, "How many times is he going to have to do it?"

"Candi" and her husband Mickey Sr., 34, moved to their new home in Murray Estates nearly four years ago. Their front door opens up on an expansive view of Mount Taylor.

The back door opens to the uranium mill tailings pile at Homestake Mill, with its constant spray of water from a pump-and-treat system designed to clean uranium and other contaminants from ground water.

"When we moved in, they told us that the water was great and it was a beautiful place which, it is beautiful. We have water rights," she said something relatively rare these days. "We got five acres and a four-bedroom house."

Also, Candi said, "We have had doctor bill after doctor bill, medical problem after medical problem. My kids are all sick. I'm sick. My husband's teeth are falling out."

While there is no evidence to link any of the family illnesses with the Homestake Mill, Candi believes their water well has been impacted by a plume of contamination extending from Homestake and running underneath their property.

"My kids are 9, 7, 4 and 22 months, all boys. My 9-year-old, Mickey, has cancer. He was actually diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was 3, which is before we moved out there. Before that, we lived close but not too close by the rodeo grounds near McDonald's.

"When we moved there he was in remission," she said. Since then, his cancer has relapsed twice and now he has a "totally new kind of cancer called Enchondroma. Basically what this is, is usually a benign tumor. Well, his aren't benign. They're growing on his right distal femur, which is your right growth plate.

"He's had them removed twice and he has to have them removed again, but he keeps going. He has been through enough!" she said emphatically.

What are the odds?
The Williams' next-oldest son, Dylan, is 7. "He has Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome. It's a disorder that's causing one of his legs to grow bigger, one of his arms to grow bigger, one side of his heart. Usually in people that have this, it's one thing. In Dylan's case, he has a really widespread case," Candi said.

"He's the 723rd case in the world. When they told us this, they told us we had better chances of winning the lottery than having this happen. It affected his heart, his brain, one side of his skull, kidneys, liver, stomach. He's 7 years old and weighs 29 pounds," she said.

"We never had a lot of trouble with his heart until we moved out here. His heart stops whenever it wants to. Nobody knows why, nobody can do anything about it," she said.

When the Williamses moved to their new home, their third son, Kyle, now 4, "was just a baby and my only healthy child healthy, healthy, healthy. Always great," Candi said. "He was my world they all are. But Kyle was the one healthy one. I could enjoy him and not have to be mean and give him medicine or take him to the doctor. It was a different relationship.

"Well, about four months ago, Kyle started complaining all the time that his stomach hurt really bad hurt. It got to the point where he would take a drink of his dad's soda or something and lay down on the floor and curl up in a ball and scream, 'My tummy! My tummy!'

"So I took him into the doctor and they did an X-ray and found something in his intestines. Well, you know, any mother's first thing is, 'Did you swallow a marble?' You're trying to reason, 'This is my healthy child. He can't be sick.'

"But it's looking to be more of a mass. We're not sure exactly what kind of mass which, it could be a tumor or a cyst or a marble. You never know. But it's in there and it takes a lot of money and a lot of tests, you know. I'm not rich," she said.

In debt for life
Mickey Sr. works at a nearby coal mine, so the family does have insurance. "But one thing people need to realize is I have good insurance. I have great insurance. You would kill for my insurance," Candi said. It pays 80 percent of the family's medical expenses, leaving them responsible for the remaining 20 percent.

"Twenty percent of $50,000 is $8,500 every week for chemo(therapy)," Candi said. "We will never pay off our children's debt. It will never happen. We owe something like $4.2 million just to UNM Hospital. I have to say, they have been so awesome with us.

"Of course, we get the bills, but they're not ugly with us at all. They've never refused us treatment. And I'm sure they look at it and realize nobody could ever pay that," she said.

After moving to their new home, Candi became pregnant with their fourth child, 22-month-old Josh.

"Josh, was the one that I actually got pregnant with there, carried through the whole pregnancy there, drank the water while I was pregnant because I was told the water was perfectly safe. So I drank the water, I bathed in the water, I cooked with the water.

"My son came out with his ear is deformed. His skull is very deformed. He's gorgeous, he's beautiful, and you really, really can't tell as much now, but it's there. The plates of his skull fused together when he was 8 months old instead of 3 years."

Also, Josh is not growing, according to his mother."At this point, he is almost 2 and so should be well above 28 to 30 inches tall. He's 22. He should be well above 30 pounds or so. He weighs 21," she said.

Sulfuric acid in the air also is causing the children's teeth and Mickey Sr.'s teeth to rot, she believes. She pointed to Dylan's teeth, for example. "They're black. They're all the way to the skin on his gums. The dentist can't do anything for him. They're rotting from the air. It's not lack of brushing, it's not sippy cups.

"It's nothing but the fact that there's something in the environment, sulfuric acid, which you can smell. Come out here early in the morning when it's still cool and you can smell the sulfur. Especially if it rained the day before, you can really smell it. It will burn your nose," she said.

Don't drink the water
In September, the New Mexico Department of Environment (NMED) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) representatives sampled wells in the area following a survey in August after a major flood swept through the area.

At an Oct. 20 meeting in Grants conducted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, (NRC), families were told that the NRC was considering relaxing its ground water standard for Homestake Mill because based on contamination upgradient from the site, Homestake would never be able to reduce the ground water contamination to the new .03 micrograms-per-liter adopted by the state to ensure public health and safety are protected.

The new standard proposed by Homestake was five times less stringent than state and EPA standards. Homestake proposed .16 micrograms per liter for uranium concentration in ground water.

After hearing of the Williams' predicament at the NRC meeting, NMED's Jake Ingram promised to try to expedite results of tests conducted on the family well. When Candi talked with Ingram recently, "he said he would mail the water report right away. Then he called back and said he couldn't mail it yet because he had to get it approved. That was over a week ago."

She has since been advised that her water is both high in nitrates and total dissolved solids. When she talked to Ingram again, Candi said he told her,"Your water is contaminated. Do not drink it. We cannot advise you to bathe in it."

When she asked what she was supposed to do, she said she was told, "I don't know. That's not what we deal with." She was told to contact Gov. Bill Richardson's office, who, in turn, told her to call U.S. Rep. Tom Udall's office. She was unable to get through on the number provided, so she found his e-mail address and fired off a letter instead.

She asked for his help in getting a safe source of drinking water. She also asked if he could help her get a copy of their water report, which still has not been approved. And she told Udall, "If you have any ideas how to help me pay my outrageous medical bills and get us out of this dangerous area, those ideas would be greatly appreciated as well."

She is still awaiting his response and spending a small fortune for water with which to cook, drink and wash dishes. "Bathing we really have no choice but to bathe in the water. I mean, we can't walk around all stinky and dirty," she said.