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"Powertech USA Inc. is embarking on a path of destruction from which there is no return. The company plans to start in situ leach mining in South Dakota's Custer and Fall River counties that will puncture through four aquifers on the Great Plains and endanger a fragile geologic system. As a result of ISL mining planned at the Dewey-Burdock site - 12 miles northwest of Edgemont - we on the Plains must face the threat of groundwater contamination for generations, while the corporate leaders reside far away in their homelands of Canada and France. This new corporation has no history of accountability in adhering to environmental laws or in the clean-up of a mined-out area. There are thousands of reports by mining corporations that document problems trying to contain uranium-laden water at mine sites, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Web site."

"The Yakama Nation has filed a lawsuit challenging the state of Washington's actions to start construction of a cover over closed portions of private company US Ecology's waste disposal trenches at Hanford. Heart of America Northwest Research Center has joined the Yakamas in the lawsuit filed in Yakima County Superior Court. The state believes it has acted properly and that the Yakama Nation does not have a valid case, according to the Washington State Office of the Attorney General. The state has a lease from the federal government for 100 acres on the Hanford nuclear reservation subleased to US Ecology for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste from organizations such as universities, hospitals, biotech firms and electric utilities in western states. The plaintiffs maintain that the landfill contains at least 220 pounds of plutonium 239 plus irradiated fuel segments and other spent nuclear fuel. It also may contain two high-level radioactive fuel rods disposed of at the site around 2003, the plaintiffs said."

"Thousands of feet under a hot patch of sand and brush is buried a deposit of uranium so rich it could revive a hardscrabble New Mexico town pocked with vacant lots and shuttered buildings. The mining industry and those residents of the area who are eager for an influx of jobs see the plateau around Mount Taylor near the town of Grants in the northwest corner of New Mexico as an irresistible opportunity for economic gain. "It's what we need, it's what's going to fuel the future," said Star Gonzales, director of the Grants chamber of commerce. "They will be good paying jobs.""

The New Mexico Environment Department will hold a water fair to test well water from private wells only in the San Mateo Basin from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21 at Cibola County Building, 515 High St. in Grants. All present and future owners and users of private wells that are within the advisory area are advised to sample their wells to ensure the quality of well water does not pose health concerns. Water from public drinking water systems will not be tested because those supplies are routinely tested and deemed to be safe pursuant to the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act. In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 will hold a community meeting 6-8 p.m., the same day, also at the Cibola County Building.

Two groups and an individual have filed nomination petitions with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources to have lands west of Edgemont declared special, exceptional, critical or unique. The petitions were filed Dec. 28 in Pierre. Oglala Sioux tribal member Debra White Plume, Defenders of the Black Hills and the Oglala Sioux Tribe have all filed the petitions with the DENR's Minerals and Mining program to ask that the determinations be made. The lands are within an area that has been leased by Powertech Uranium for exploration and possible mining of the mineral.

The Bureau of Land Management, an agency within the Department of the Interior, in early December eliminated a regulation that gave two congressional committees the power to require the secretary of interior to set aside public lands from uranium mining and other extractive activities. The action, coupled with renewed federal interest in uranium mining, is causing concern for some Western tribes. In effect, the Bush administration's decision could open up public lands in and around the Grand Canyon to uranium mining. The aftereffects of such developments could have devastating effects on the health of tribes in and around the Grand Canyon, according to environmentalists and health and legal experts.

June days lengthen and snow melts to reveal tiny bright wildflowers and nutritious lichens. Thousands of pregnant caribou gather in tight circles. They are gaunt and exhausted from their six-hundred-mile migration from the boreal forests of Saskatchewan. They have traversed steep mountains through howling blizzards and crossed raging ice-choked rivers into the subarctic taiga, then in single file trudged on to the arctic tundra to offer the world a new generation. The castanet-clicking of heel bones mixes with groans of delivery. The thrumming of desperate mothers and the bleating of lost calves create a chaotic din that can be heard for miles across the treeless expanse.

Purpose The purpose of this strategy is to articulate the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) approach to promote government-to-government relations between itself and Federally-recognized Indian tribes that have a known interest in, or may be potentially affected by, NRC's regulation of uranium recovery facilities.

About 175 people showed up Thursday night in Grants to the public hearing on the proposed exploratory drilling project in Marquez Canyon by Neutron Energy, Inc. The crowd was overwhelmingly in support of the project and a revival of the uranium mining industry. The meeting was part of the permitting requirements of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, Mining and Minerals Division.

Traditional owners from sites earmarked for a potential nuclear waste facility in the Northern Territory have begged a Senate Inquiry not to store nuclear material on their land. A Senate committee is investigating whether a Howard Government law forcing a waste dump on the Northern Territory should be repealed and sat in Alice Springs today. People from communities near the Mount Everard, Harts Range and Muckaty sites protested outside the inquiry before traditional owners appeared.

An attorney for the Prairie Island Indian Community voiced the community's concerns regarding the renewal license for the nearby Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant during a hearing on Wednesday in Hastings, Minn., in front of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's atomic safety and licensing board. Northern States Power Co. manages Xcel Energy Services, which owns the nuclear plant and hopes to extend operations at the Prairie Island plant for another 20 years and increase the number of on-site storage containers for nuclear waste.

He is a messenger between heaven and earth. Manuel Pino comes from the Acoma Pueblo, an adobe village of the Tewa west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Beyond the earthcolored dwellings one sees only blue sky - Acoma Pueblo occupies the rim of a steep mesa. Standing on the center plaza, one has the feeling that a great invisible magnet is pulling the settlement into the clouds. Tourist guidebooks and highway billboards refer to Acoma as, "Sky City."

Uranium leaks discovered in the groundwater have come closer to contaminating the entire supply of drinking water for two villages in the Hopi reservation. A series of studies conducted by consultants of the Hopi tribe and Navajo Nation show uranium contamination within 100 feet of water supply wells that provide all the drinking water to the village of Lower Moencopi.

Extensive timeline of the battle over uranium mining

Native leaders in Saskatchewan held a conference yesterday to talk about nuclear waste. The Nuclear Waste management Organization is talking with communities in the hopes of finding a spot to put all of Canada's nuclear waste. They are only in the first stages, they want to consult with different communities, get feedback, and then select a site. Saskatchewan was approached because of the uranium mining done here. The FSIN says they are cautious about the idea, they aren't going to make any quick decisions. Other sites considered are in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec.

Prospectors want to shovel 300 to 500 scoops of dirt out of the Little Missouri National Grasslands in Slope and Billings counties and examine it for uranium. The same company is talking about building a plant on a railroad siding near Belfield or Bowman to acid treat and burn coal to extract that uranium.

Teddy Nez, a Navajo rancher and Vietnam War veteran, lives practically in the shadow of a 40-foot-high pile of radioactive waste abutting his small home outside of Gallup, N.M. Nez has colon cancer, which he treats with herbs - but not with ones growing near his house, because those could be contaminated with uranium.

The chief executive officer of Alice Springs' native title body says traditional owners should not support a uranium mine south of the town. Darryl Pearce from Lhere Artepe says Aboriginal people would prefer to see solar technology projects instead of uranium mines.

BRATTLEBORO - The recent spate of advertisements promoting the electric power generated at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as "clean and green" doesn't tell the true story, said two Native Americans whose native lands are severely affected by the nuclear power industry. Lorraine Rekmans, of the Northern Ojibwa people from Elliot Lake, Ontario, and Ian Zabarte, from Mercury, Nev., secretary of state of the Western Shoshone National Council, spoke in Brattleboro Monday night, their last stop in a weeklong visit to Vermont organized by the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance and Citizens Awareness Network.

WASHINGTON - In an effort to get nuclear waste moved away from Minnesota's Prairie Island Indian Community, its tribal officials are supporting a national nuclear dumping spot in Nevada - despite strong objections from Natives living in the Silver State.