EPA to investigate mine site
Agency, United Nuclear agree on probe for surface contamination

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Some 24 years after closing its Church Rock mines, the United Nuclear Corporation has reached an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the site for any persistent surface contamination.

Under an earlier agreement with the EPA, United Nuclear is already busy pumping ground water out of the area contaminated by tailings from its past mining operations there. The new agreement, reached Thursday, orders it to study the site's soil and abandoned facilities for contamination as well. United Nuclear must also replace a fence around the 125-acre site all of it on tribal trust land that currently does little to keep people and livestock out.

Representatives for United Nuclear could not immediately be reached for comment.

"It's great that we're finally getting something started," said Chris Shuey, director of the Southwest Research and Information Center's Uranium Impact Assessment Program, "but there's been virtually a quarter-century where nothing was done to protect the health of these people."

Besides, Shuey noted, the agreement is neither the beginning nor likely the end of the story for the EPA, United Nuclear or the residents living with the company's legacy.

"It's been in the works for a long time, and it simply continues the investigation of the site," he said.

So far as the soil and facilities are concerned, United Nuclear hasn't agreed to clean up anything just yet. Only after it's had a chance to study the findings of the investigation and consult with the Navajo Nation's own Environmental Protection Agency at whose request it stepped in will the U.S. EPA consider getting United Nuclear to clean up the site. That will take a separate agreement.

Rise of 'Mutton Man'
Residents of the area have been living with the fear of what effects the abandoned uranium mines might be having on their health and livestock for decades. It's even made its way into the local vernacular: "Mutton Man," the popular fictional character of local entertainer Vincent Craig, attained his superpowers by feasting on the meat of a lamb that drank from a nearby wash after a real-life spill of radioactive waste from one of United Nuclear's settling ponds in 1979. The Church Rock Uranium Monitoring Project, meanwhile, an initiative of the Navajo Nation's local chapter to study the legacy of the mines, has been sampling the area for the past few years.

Their fears may be well grounded. In its press release about Thursday's agreement, the U.S. EPA claims it found "elevated levels" of alpha radiation at the site and radium-226 a known human carcinogen exposure to which can lead to bone, liver and breast cancers in the surface soil. Transported by wind and runoff from rain and snow melt, it continues, they "may have" affected residents to the northeast.

Still, the EPA won't go so far as to say the Church Rock mines have definitively affected anyone's health or even speculate about whether they might have some grounds to pursue compensation if it turns out they were. That, said Andrew Bain, Remedial Project Manager for the EPA's Region 9 out of San Francisco, is not the agency's job.

"Our mission is to find contamination and mitigate it," he said, nothing more and nothing less.

Whether residents chose to pursue compensation, Bain said, will depend on them and United Nuclear's findings.

The long wait
So what took the EPA so long to get an investigation out of United Nuclear? For one thing, say Bain and Shuey, it wasn't the agency's fight to begin with. According to Shuey, the state began pursuing legal action against United Nuclear over the site in the mid-1990s. Although the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals eventually ruled against the company, it managed to stall the case for eight years. But when the Navajo Nation decided the state wasn't asking enough of United Nuclear, Shuey said, it asked the EPA to step in. It took over last November.

It's all happening while the tribe is trying to fend off a new round of uranium mining on and around the reservation. With more than half the world's remaining deposits, according to the University of New Mexico's Johnnye Lewis, the Colorado Plateau and the Navajo Nation's Eastern Agency in particular is where many of United Nuclear's successors are looking. One company, Texas-based Hydro Resources, Inc., has its eyes on Church Rock itself.

The companies say the new techniques they'll be using won't pose the risks uranium mining used to, but the tribe and its backers aren't convinced.

The Navajo Nation Council approved the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act in 2005, banning uranium mining anywhere on Navajoland. But some of the companies are seeking concessions on federal lands just outside the tribe's boarders, making it hard for the Nation to impose its will. The Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, which Shuey consults, is mounting its own offense.

The EPA's latest agreement with United Nuclear may not do much to help the tribe shape its future, but it might help the tribe reconcile with its past.

Bain expects the $350,000 investigation to begin some time in November and last up to a month. United Nuclear will be footing the bill.