Poison Fire, Sacred Earth,
TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS,
THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992
pages 153-154
Father John (Moderator)
Now we have a few minutes on slides, please.
Manuel Pino
We just like to give you a visual idea of how beautiful our land is, and despite the fact that we live within such close proximity to uranium mining, we still revere the land very much, and for our future generations hopefully it will continue to replenish and nourish us as human beings.
[Slides]
This is Mount Taylor, our sacred
mountain, also sacred to the Navajo. -- This is
another shot of Mount Taylor. If you look right in
the middle of the photograph you'll see some of
the largest unreclaimed mill tailings piles in the
United States. This has been identified as a super
fund-site for the Environmental Protection
Agency of the United States Government that has
been unreclaimed for over ten years now. This is
one of the reasons we come to you, because our
government continues to have no eyes and no
ears when it looks at cleaning up the mess that
they created for us.
This is a closer shot of those unreclaimed
mill tailings. Cows in this area graze within a
half mile radius. In the desert southwest, between
the months of March and May, we have some of
the most violent sandstorms in the country that
can reach up to 60 mph. So you can get an idea
how these tailings blow all over our Mother
Earth, and we are downwind from these sites at
Acoma and Laguna.
This is the abandoned mill of which the
mill tailings were created. It still lays
unreclaimed or decommissioned. -- The same shot of
that mill tailings pile. This is all that keeps
people away from these highly contaminated
tailings: Just a chainline fence like this is going
to stop the wind blowing contamination or seepage
into the ground water.
This is the Gulf Mine, which was later
bought out by Chevron Corporation that had the
world's deepest uranium shaft in the world into
our sacred mountain. Within 200 yards from that
mill tailings pile is the Hispanic Chicano
community of San Mateo. 200 yards from that
mill tailings pile was a school and, even worse,
was a vent coming out from the underground shaft
that, when the wind blew in certain directions,
would blow radon right into the playground of that
school in San Mateo. This was going on for about
ten years and nobody ever did anything to stop it.
This is the Quivara Mine, one of the first
sites that has been attempted to be reclaimed in
the Ambrosia Lake Area. They are sloping there
a reclamation project and burying the mill
tailings which to me just seems insufficient.
This is a sign indicating that the mill is
closed and they don't allow people within close
proximity to the area, but it's virtually
unmonitored. When we took these photographs
we could walk on the tailings piles and no one
would have been there to see us.
Again, the world's deepest uranium mine
shaft. The ARCO Bluewater Mill. Quivara Mine,
which is currently being reclaimed. The city of
Grants for over 30 years prided itself as "the
uranium capital of the world". And they have built
a museum in commemoration of that distinction. Although,
to us Indian people that is a direct
insult to us, to the way we feel about Mother
Earth, especially as I keep reiterating time and
time again the destruction to our sacred mountain.
This is the Mesita Dam which is
downstream from the Paguate Mine. At the
height of production at Jackpile, this holding
reservoir which was used for irrigation of
agriculture was found to have some of the highest
levels of radon concentration in the water. It
had to be drained and closed, and the irrigation
system to the village of Mesita which is
downstream from Paguate had to stop, and it
virtually brought agriculture to a standstill.
The ongoing reclamation project at the
Jackpile Mine, which is the first attempt of its
kind in the world to reclaim an open pit uranium
mine. The Environmental Impact Statement
estimated that it would cost 400 million dollars
to successfully reclaim the Jackpile Mine, and as
my little sister Suwimi said here, we have only
been given 43 million by ARCO to reclaim that
land. So you know, big contradiction in that wide
gap of dollars.
Again, the Jackpile Mine being
reclaimed: They are doing this at three-to-one
slopes. And the three-to-one slopes seem to be too
steep, because after a very wet winter and a large
amount of snow fall, that three-to-one sloping has
dendridic pattern run-off that flows through the
Rio San Jose, that flows through the Rio Paguate
and Rio Moquino(?), which flows right through
the middle of the Jackpile Mine during
operations, that eventually feeds the Rio San
Jose, that feeds the Mesita Dam, that eventually
flows into the Rio Grande in New Mexico, which
is the life blood of our state. And this three-to-one
sloping now is eroding so bad because of the
heavy snowfall that you can see beyond the 18
inches of top soil and the 12 inches of shale that
have been used to cover it. They have had to
terrace off those three-to-one slopes because they
are too steep and it doesn't seem like this
reclamation is stopping the so-called "low-level
contaminants" to continue to get into the river and
impact people downstream.
Suwimis' school bus going right through
the middle of the Jackpile Mine. In fact, they
found high levels of radon in the pavement on
this road that goes right through the bottom of the
mine, and they had to tear it up and repave it
again. I wouldn't rely on the repaving job not
having any radon in it.
Some of the structural damage to a
traditional sandstone pueblo house in the village
of Paguate as a result of blasting, which Greg
addressed. This is our house that was repaired by
the company, and although it looks uncracked,
all they did was stucco over the cracks. This is
another traditional pueblo dwelling. It was
insulting to the intelligence of our people when
they came in and would repair the houses, repair
the cracks. One thing the company did was put
panelling on the interior walls of the houses, so
that the cracks wouldn't show -- like we didn't
know there were cracks behind the panel! And
there was a time there, in the 1970's, if you went
into almost any house in Paguate you would see
the wall panelled.
Again our mountain. -- Greg and Suwimi
taking the reclamation tour. -- Victor Sarracino,
a Laguna Pueblo man who is monitor
technician with the reclamation project. And
that concludes our video presentation.
Again, for the panel and myself, as
indigenous people from the Southwest we are very
honoured to have met all the other indigenous
groups that have presented their testimony and
their cases here at The World Uranium Hearing,
and we would like to continue to develop this
communication network and communicate with
you, so that we continue the struggle as a unified
one people or, as Floyd
Westerman suggested, "United Indigenous Nations".
Father John (Moderator)
Those were the voices of fathers, the voice of a mother and the voice of a child. And everybody of us will understand. We have seen from the slides how beautiful that country is. But due to the craziness of man they have destroyed and are continuing to destroy this Mother Land.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is why we as priests come in when the environment, our Mother Land, is destroyed, because if we stay aloof we'll have nobody to preach to. Because they are all gone. That is why you see some of us here as priests. We are here because we are all involved in this Mother Land. God created everything and found it was good. So who are we, to say that it is not good?
Before we wind up, there are people from the same Colorado Plateau, from the Diné Nation. Please feel welcome.