7/18/21

Nuclear waste dump would make SE New Mexico a “sacrifice zone” that amounts to “nuclear colonialism”

Spurred by Heather Wilson, formerly the president of the South Dakota School of Mines, secretary in Donald Trump's Department of the Air Force and now president of the University of Texas El Paso, a Rapid City firm specializing in toxic waste had been floating the idea of a deep borehole where radioactive materials could be dumped. Wilson is a Republican former US Representative from New Mexico's 1st US congressional district, Air Force officer and lobbyist linked to double dealing at laboratories with ties to the military/industrial complex.
During a Wednesday meeting of the New Mexico Legislature’s Radioactive and Hazardous Waste Interim Committee at New Mexico State University Carlsbad, Chief Counsel at the Attorney General’s Office Matt Baca echoed concerns voiced by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the state’s [Democratic] congresspeople. Leona Morgan, a Dine woman and organizer with the Nuclear Issues Study Group said the open-ended risk of the Holtec project could make southeast New Mexico a “sacrifice zone” and amounted to “nuclear colonialism.” [New Mexico lawmakers warned of dangers of nuclear waste facility proposed near Carlsbad]
Stephen Schwartz is the editor and co-author of Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of US Nuclear Weapons Since 1940.
In 1979 at Church Rock, New Mexico a 50-foot earthen dam containing the radioactive and toxic waste of a United Nuclear Corporation uranium mine failed resulting in the largest single accidental release of radioactive materials in the United States. The breach released 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive and highly acidic water into the Rio Puerco and across Navajo lands as far as 50 miles downstream. Radioactivity levels near the breach were 7,000 times the allowable US drinking water standard. Although the spill contaminated the groundwater and rendered the Rio Puerco unusable for drinking, irrigation, and watering livestock, Governor Bruce King refused requests by the Navajo Nation to declare the site a federal disaster area, sharply limiting help for those affected. [twitter thread, Schwartz]
South Dakota is no stranger to ecocide because it's a way of life in the chemical toilet. Under the General Mining Act of 1872 even foreign miners have carte blanche to rape the Black Hills, so they are.  

Nearly all of the 300 mile long Cheyenne River flows through Indian Country. Powertech USA, part of Canadian firm Azarga Uranium, wants to mine near a tributary of the river even though tailings from uranium mining near Edgemont have been detected for years in Angostura Reservoir on the Cheyenne River in the southern Black Hills. 

South of Edgemont at Crow Butte near the headwaters of the White River above Crawford, Nebraska Canada-based Cameco, Inc. obtained rights to use 9,000 gallons of water per minute to extract raw uranium ore through 8,000 holes bored into the Ogallala and Arikaree Aquifers. The foreign miners have already pumped over half a billion gallons of radioactive waste water into disposal wells and have rights to bury more. 

In 2014 Cameco, the world’s largest uranium producer, paid a million dollar fine for environmental damage in Wyoming. The White River also flows through much of Indian Country in South Dakota. In northwestern South Dakota radioactive waste in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation because the Board of Minerals and Environment is an arm of the SDGOP. Recall that the South Dakota Republican Party ceded regulatory authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency for uranium mining after the legislature realized there is no competent oversight from state agencies. 

It's widely expected the Biden Administration will overturn most of the damaging policies wrought by the Trump Organization including this ridiculous ploy to mine uranium in the sacred Black Hills.

ip photo: Nebraska Pine Ridge near Crawford.

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