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The Navajo Nation's top health official told the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Navajos continue to live with the Cold War legacy of uranium mining, and that a long-term, comprehensive assessment and research program with adequate resources is needed to address it. Anslem Roanhorse Jr., executive director of the Navajo Nation Division of Health, said 520 radioactive uranium mines on the Navajo Nation were abandoned without being cleaned up. The uranium taken from Navajo land from 1944 to 1986 was used to meet the federal government's demand for nuclear weapons material, he said. Testifying Thursday before the bi-annual CDC and Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry Tribal Consultation session on the Environmental Public Health in Indian country, Roanhorse said four million tons of uranium ore, known as "yellow cake," were mined from Navajo land for more than 40 years. "There are about 500 abandoned uranimum mine sites throughout the Navajo Nation and only one has been fully assessed,

Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, New Mexico AGENCY: Bureau of Reclamation, Interior. ACTION: Notice of Availability of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project Planning Report and Final Environmental Impact Statement FES 09-10. SUMMARY: Pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (as amended), Public Law (Pub. L.) 92-199, and the general authority to conduct water resources planning under the Reclamation Act of 1902 and all acts amendatory thereof and supplementary thereto, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), in cooperation with the Navajo Nation, Jicarilla Apache Nation, City of Gallup, State of New Mexico, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Heath Service, Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, and Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments, has prepared and made available to the public a Planning Report and Final Environmental Impact Statement (PR/FEIS). This document was undertaken to provide a discussion for the (1) Various ways to provide a municipal and industrial (M&I) water supply to the Navajo Nation, City of Gallup, and Jicarilla Apache Nation; (2) identification of a preferred alternative; and (3) associated environmental impacts and costs of the No Action and two action alternatives.

Two American Indian tribes say their pleas to have the federal government remove medical, uranium and other radioactive waste from their land near Tuba City have been ignored, and they want it cleaned up. Navajo and Hopi officials say the waste is contaminating the land and threatening water supplies. The Hopi Tribe has put the federal government on notice that it plans to sue over the cleanup. On May 26, the Navajo Nation filed a motion to intervene in a 2007 lawsuit that was brought against the federal government by the operator of a uranium mining mill where some of the waste originated. "I think everybody is starting to come together to accept the conclusion that there are contaminants affecting the shallow groundwater," said Stephen Etsitty, director of the Navajo Environmental Protection Agency. "But we still have differences in what the tribes believe and what the U.S. government is willing to accept, how grave the situation is and what the remedy should be in the end." El Paso Natural Gas Co. claims that the federal government is responsible for the cleanup of the mill, the Tuba City open dump and another landfill north of U.S. Route 160. The mill and the U.S. 160 landfill are on Navajo land. The 30-acre Tuba City dump is on Navajo and Hopi land.

TUBA CITY, Ariz. - This spring, officials from the U.S. Department of Labor sat around a small fire, touching sweet corn pollen to their tongues and inhaling spicy cedar smoke in a traditional Navajo ceremony. Larry Martinez, who manages the Office of Navajo Uranium Workers, had organized the ceremony hoping to improve a working relationship that he described as "difficult and getting worse" between the Navajo and the labor department, which manages a federal program to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers.

Mitchell Capitan points to a flock of sheep grazing in the shadow of a sandstone mesa. The sheep belong to Capitan's family, along with a few head of cattle and twelve quarter horses standing in a corral near his mother-in-law's house in Crownpoint, New Mexico. Shelley Smithson: Navajos say "No!" as the return of uranium mining threatens to despoil their lands and health. "All of this area," Capitan says, gesturing to the valley of sage and shrub brush below, "there's a lot of uranium underneath there. That's what they're after." Capitan and his Navajo neighbors are battling a license granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Hydro Resources Inc. (HRI)--a subsidiary of a Texas company, Uranium Resources--one of several firms that have laid claim to the minerals beneath thousands of acres on and around the lands of the Navajo Nation and three American Indian pueblos in northwestern New Mexico. A group called the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining is suing the NRC to block mining in Crownpoint and another Navajo community. A panel of federal judges in Denver heard the case in May 2008 but has yet to issue a ruling.

A grassroots effort to help uranium mine workers' children affected by diseases and birth defects is picking up steam on the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation Dependents of Uranium Workers Committee will meet for the second time in a month to update community members and hear feedback from residents who suffer from cancer, kidney disease, birth defects and other illnesses resulting from prolonged radon exposure from uranium mines. The health problems date back to work in the 1950s and '60s, said Phil Harrison, Council Delegate for Red Valley/Cove Chapter of the Navajo Nation. During that time, uranium mine workers were exposed to high levels of radon, which has caused inter-generational bouts of illnesses in communities across the Navajo Nation. "A lot of people don't want to talk about this in the public," Harrison said. By holding public meetings, organizers hope to garner enough support to lobby government officials in Washington, D.C., to amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

"Uranium mining, banned on the Navajo Nation, advanced closer to tribal boundaries when the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing of in situ leach uranium mining at four sites near Crownpoint and Church Rock in New Mexico. The split decision by a three-judge panel March 8 also denied a request for review of one of the sites near Church Rock where Hydro Resources, Inc., whose parent company is Uranium Resources Inc., has a joint venture with Itochu, a Tokyo-headquartered transnational, to begin producing an estimated six to nine million pounds of uranium annually from New Mexico. Eastern Navajo Dine Against Uranium Mining, a Navajo community organization; Southwest Research and Information Center, a nonprofit environmental education organization; and two local ranchers were joined by the Navajo Nation in a friend-of-the-court brief asserting that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission violated atomic energy and environmental laws in granting the license."

Background: Decades of improper disposal of uranium-mining wastes on the Navajo Nation has resulted in adverse human and ecological health impacts as well as socio-cultural problems. As the Navajo people become increasingly aware of the contamination problems, there is a need to develop a risk-communication strategy to properly inform tribal members of the extent and severity of the health risks. To be most effective, this strategy needs to blend accepted riskcommunication techniques with Navajo perspectives such that the strategy can be used at the community level to inform culturally- and toxicologically-relevant decisions about land and water use as well as mine-waste remediation.

The leader of the Navajo Nation marked the 30th anniversary of a massive uranium tailings spill by reaffirming the tribe's ban on future uranium mining. Speaking in Navajo and English, President Joe Shirley Jr. addressed about 100 people who made a seven-mile walk to the site of the July 16, 1979 spill and to the land of Navajo ranchers who live near another contaminated site. What Shirley called "the largest peacetime accidental release of radioactive contaminated materials in the history of the United States" occurred when 94 million gallons of acidic water poured into the north fork of the Rio Puerco after an earthen uranium tailings dam failed. Within days, contaminated tailings liquid was found 50 miles downstream in Arizona.

Members of the Navajo Nation plan to take to Washington, D.C., their grassroots campaign to compensate uranium mine workers' children affected by diseases and birth defects. The Navajo Nation Dependents of Uranium Workers Committee met Friday at the Shiprock Chapter House to update community members on the upcoming trip and hear feedback from residents who suffer from cancer, kidney disease, birth defects and other illnesses resulting from prolonged radon exposure from uranium mines. Organizers plan to take their fight to the nation's capital July 7 to 9 and again July 28 to 31. "The government is pretty aware of the damage to the family members," said Phil Harrison, Council Delegate for Red Valley/Cove Chapter of the Navajo Nation. The intent of the trips is to further educate congressional leaders in the issues at hand, request a congressional field hearing in Window Rock or Shiprock, and discuss amending current legislation to extend compensation to family members.

For the first time in United States history, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will be challenged in Federal appeals court for its approval of a source materials license for an in situ leach uranium mine. The Navajo communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock, New Mexico, with the assistance of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center (NMELC), Eastern Navajo Dine against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) and Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) will fight the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Hydro Resources, Inc., demanding that they stay off of Navajo lands in New Mexico. NMELC will present oral arguments on May 12 to a panel of Federal judges in Denver asking that the NRC decision to allow mining be set aside. "The importance of our hearing on May 12 cannot be overstated," states Eric Jantz, New Mexico Environmental Law Center attorney. "We are talking about the land, water, air and health of two whole communities. There are people on this land grazing their cattle and hauling their daily drinking water."

WINDOW ROCK - Producers of the 2000 documentary, "The Return of Navajo Boy," were back on the Navajo Reservation Tuesday to showcase an epilogue to the acclaimed film before Navajo Environmental Protection Agency staff.

It was one year ago that the environmental scientist showed up at Fred Slowman's door, deep in the heart of Navajo country, and warned that it was unsafe for him to stay there. The Slowman home, the same one-level cinderblock structure his family had lived in for nearly a half-century, was contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal land known as the Navajo Nation. The scientist advised Mr. Slowman, his wife and their two sons to move out until their home could be rebuilt.

"The Navajo Nation is going to greatly benefit from that," she said. Among other programs the Navajo EPA is working on with federal funding is: * Drinking Water - $3 million for phase 1 for Sweetwater-to-Shiprock drinking water. This will serve 93 homes without piped water near three unregulated water sources that have been contaminated with uranium, 845 homes served by public water systems that exceed the arsenic drinking water standard, and 982 homes with inadequate water supply. * Waste Water - $9.7 million through the global Interagency Agreement through HIS. * Tribal Drinking Water Set Aside Funding Projects: Dennehotso New Water System - $2 million from U.S. EPA and $2 million from HUD to construct a new 50-mile water system to serve 102 homes without piped water, near 2 unregulated water sources contaminated with Uranium. * Water Hauling Feasibility Study/Pilot Project to serve 4,000 homes without piped water. USEPA is expected to soon provide funding to the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources to develop a water hauling feasibility study and pilot project to serve residents in uranium-impacted areas, and to develop safe water hauling guidelines and conduct outreach. * Black Falls Water Line Extension - U.S. EPA provided $830,000 to construct a water line and safe water hauling point to serves 40 homes without piped water near four unregulated water sources contaminated with uranium. * Clean Water Act/Wastewater Tribal Set Aside Projects: $1.75 million award - $1 million will be in a direct grant to NTUA's Stimulus proposal submitted for Window Rock Wastewater Treatment plant upgrades; $752,867 into inter-agency agreement with IHS to fund other wastewater treatment facility projects.

Two tribes say their pleas to have the federal government remove medical, uranium and other radioactive waste from their land near Tuba City have been ignored, and they want it cleaned up. Navajo and Hopi officials say the waste is contaminating the land and threatening water supplies. The Hopi Tribe has put the federal government on notice that it plans to sue over the cleanup. During late May, the Navajo Nation filed a motion to intervene in a 2007 lawsuit that was brought against the federal government by the operator of a uranium mining mill where some of the waste originated. "I think everybody is starting to come together to accept the conclusion that there are contaminants affecting the shallow groundwater," said Stephen Etsitty, director of the Navajo Environmental Protection Agency. "But we still have differences in what the tribes believe and what the U.S. government is willing to accept, how grave the situation is and what the remedy should be in the end."

A federal appeals court this week moved to allow uranium mining operations in Churchrock, a Navajo community just east of Gallup, New Mexico. The decision by the Federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals comes at a time of increased financial incentives for uranium mining-but also intense opposition from many communities, including the Navajo Nation, which outlawed uranium mining in 2005. "This ruling is a major breakthrough for URI and upholds the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] license that took us 10 years to obtain and as many to address in supplemental reviews and litigation," Don Ewigleben, President and CEO of Uranium Resources, said in a statement this week. "… The ruling also demonstrates that ISR technology, including the restoration process that follows mining activity, is safe and effective."

IN A DINE CREATION STORY, the people were given a choice of two yellow powders. They chose the yellow dust of corn pollen, and were instructed to leave the other yellow powder-uranium-in the soil and never to dig it up. If it were taken from the ground, they were told, a great evil would come. The evil came. Over one thousand uranium mines gouged the earth in the Dine Bikeyah, the land of the Navajo, during a thirty-year period beginning in the 1950s. It was the lethal nature of uranium mining that led the industry to the isolated lands of Native America. By the mid-1970s, there were 380 uranium leases on native land and only 4 on public or acquired lands. At that time, the industry and government were fully aware of the health impacts of uranium mining on workers, their families, and the land upon which their descendants would come to live. Unfortunately, few Navajo uranium miners were told of the risks. In the 1960s, the Department of Labor even provided the Kerr-McGee Corporation with support for hiring Navajo uranium miners, who were paid $1.62 an hour to work underground in the mine shafts with little or no ventilation.

The federal government plans to spend as much as $3 million a year to demolish and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where Cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its Navajo counterpart are focusing on homes, sheds and other buildings within a half-mile to a mile from a significant mine or waste pile. They plan to assess 500 structures over five years and rebuild those that are too badly contaminated.

The Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, a coalition of community groups affected by uranium mining and committed to renewable energy development, announces the 30th anniversary commemoration of the Church Rock uranium tailings spill on July 16. The purposes of the event are to remember and honor the Dine communities that were affected by the largest release of radioactive waste in U.S. history, and to reaffirm the Navajo Nation's ban on uranium mining and processing, as set forth in the Dine Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005. A prayer walk will be held on State Route 566 from Red Water Pond Road next to the Northeast Church Rock Mine to the site of the spill across from the United Nuclear Corp. mill site and ending at the King Family Ranch on Old Churchrock Mine Road at SR 566 - a distance of about five miles. Prayers for healing will offered at the start of the walk and at the spill site. The walk will end at the King Ranch with a press conference where Navajo Nation elected officials will reaffirm the Navajo Nation ban on uranium mining.

The Navajo Nation's anti-uranium mining ban scored a victory April 17 when the 10th Circuit Court upheld federal, rather than state, control over a permit for a proposed in situ leach uranium mine in a mixed-ownership area of northwestern New Mexico. Hydro Resources Inc. asked the federal appeals court to overturn an Environmental Protection Agency determination that HRI's proposed mine near Church Rock was in "Indian country" as legally defined and therefore must be permitted by EPA and not by the state.