During an Arizona State Senate committee hearing on a proposed uranium mine near the north rim of the Grand Canyon, State Senator Sylvia Allen spoke in favor of the measure:
This Earth’s been here 6,000 years — and I know I’m going on and on and I’ll shut up — it’s been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn’t been done away with.
We need to get the uranium here in Arizona, so this state can get the money from it… and it can be done safely, and you’ll never even know the mine was there when they’re done.
Where to begin? Let’s start with Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy:
It’s not that she says the Earth is 6000 years old — twice, just to make sure — that floors me. It’s the casual way she said it, as if she said “I had a cup of coffee today.”
The irony, of course… is that she’s talking about uranium mining, and it’s through the radioactive decay of uranium that we know the Earth is billions of years old.
Okay, so maybe science isn’t her forte. Neither, it would appear, is logic. Even if the earth is still here after, lo, these past 6,000 years, how does that prove that industrial-scale uranium mining is without hazard? Short answer: it doesn’t.
Surely, State Senator Allen knows something about the local history of her constituency. Perhaps, but apparently not the history of uranium mining in the region – which has left thousands of abandoned mines and contamination that has yet to be cleaned up decades after the mines ceased operations.
Among the hardest hit lands are those belonging to native Americans. From the 1940s through the 1980s, roughly 4 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands under lease agreements with the Navajo Nation.
According to the Sierra Club:
- More than 1000 abandoned mines and four processing mill sites are scattered across Navajo lands in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
- The largest accidental release of radiation in U.S. history occurred when an earthen dam at the United Nuclear Corporation’s, mill at Church Rock, New Mexico ruptured on July 16, 1979, sending 1100 tons of radioactive mill waste and 95 million gallons of mine process effluent down the usually dry Puerco River. The surge was detected 80 miles downstream, and contaminated water wells, used by Navajos for watering livestock.
- The percentage of Navajo people reporting diabetes, kidney disease, certain auto-immune diseases and high blood pressure is highest in Navajo communities with the highest number of abandoned mines, according to preliminary results of a community-based health study in the Eastern Navajo Agency.
- Stomach cancer was found to be 15 times higher than the national average in some areas near old uranium mines and mills on the Navajo Reservation, according to a study by the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation.
- The Navajo tribal health agency found a rate of breast cancer 17 times higher than the national average in the 1980s, and research done by Northern Arizona University linked uranium to increased growth of human breast cells (LA Times, 11/19/2006).
That’s the tip of the proverbial iceberg; the list of environmental and health hazards from uranium mining goes on and on.
How has the Navajo Nation reacted to claims that modern methods for mining and miling uranium are safer? They’ve banned uranium mining from their lands and oppose mining anywhere near the Grand Canyon.
Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Steve Martin is no less forthright.
There should be some places that you just don’t mine. Uranium is a special concern because it is both a toxic heavy metal and source of radiation.
Neither was Rep. Henry Waxman at a 2007 House committee hearing:
If a fraction of the deadly contamination the Navajos live with every day had been in Beverly Hills or any wealthy community, it would have been cleaned up immediately. But a different standard applied to Navajo lands. Half-measures or outright neglect has been the official response. It’s hard to review this record and not feel ashamed.
Under current initiatives to promote nuclear power as an alternative to carbon-based electrical generation, speculation that demand for uranium will skyrocket has led to more than 1,000 applications for new uranium mining operations.
Maybe the reason the earth is still here after 6,000 years is because, back when man rode dinosaurs, we knew how to safely mine for uranium. Science, history and the environmental evidence would suggest otherwise.
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