by CYNDY COLE, Sun Staff Reporter
Arizona Daily Sun
22 May 2009
After 12 years of
asking various federal agencies to clean up a federal dump they
contend is leaching radioactive waste into the local aquifer, the
Hopi Tribe is tired of waiting for action.
The Hopi Tribe
filed a notice of intent to sue Thursday, stating that a plume
containing uranium and other contaminants leaching from an open
dump near Tuba City was within 2,500 feet of contaminating water
supplies for two Hopi villages. The pollution left in the unlined
dump -- a dump created by the Bureau of Indian Affairs -- is an
"imminent and substantial" threat to public health and the
environment, and is a result of multiple federal agencies
approving Cold War-era mining and milling operations that have
polluted multiple landscapes in Arizona, the tribe asserted.
The Navajo Nation
has already filed a notice that they intend to sue over the same
issue.
The dump was
located a few miles from Rare Metals Uranium Mill, a 1950s-era
uranium mill that is a federal cleanup site with documented
groundwater contamination.
Federal agencies
have previously responded that they thought the uranium documented
in the groundwater near Tuba City was possibly naturally occurring
or blown in by wind, and have requested multiple studies.
The Navajo Aquifer
in the area holds water at depths of 40 feet or less in some
areas, and is deeply culturally significant to the Hopi Tribe.
Some of the 1,400
residents of the villages of Upper Moenkopi and Lower Moencopi
requested federal agencies conduct a full cleanup of the landfill
in a September meeting at the Upper Village of Moenkopi.
"I understand that
we have a shallow water plume, and then we have a deep water
plume," said Hubert L. Lewis, governor of Upper Moenkopi. "Right
now the shallow water plume shows contamination of uranium almost
down to one of our main roads here in the village and we're
afraid, also, that it's going to affect one of our three main
drinking wells that we utilize for domestic services."
In response to
concerns, some federal agencies offered to build a fence around
the dump, saying cleanup costs for the dump ranged in the tens of
millions of dollars and exceeded their budgets.
Meanwhile, village
administrators working on the case say there has been a lot of
foot-dragging.
"It's been a long
time for us," said Harris Polelonema, community service
administrator for Lower Moencopi. "We've been working on this
since 1998, '99. There has just been too many studies conducted."
Uranium
contamination in the Southwest has also been the topic of U.S.
House hearings, with some members of Congress pressuring federal
agencies to take action.
"I understand
there was a small town in Colorado that just recently had a
similar issue," Lewis said. "And they went right in there and did
the cleanup and I said to myself, 'Just because we're Native
Americans, we're treated as second-class people.' And because it's
on the reservation, they seem to feel like 'Oh, there's no
hurry.'"
Among other items,
the Hopi Tribe is asserting:
-
Wastes of all
kinds were randomly dumped on the ground and into large trenches
excavated by the BIA at the Tuba City dump;
-
Commercial and
medical wastes generated by various federal agencies were dumped
there;
-
Wastes from the
nearby uranium mill were dumped there;
-
Groundwater
sampling shows uranium, arsenic, chromium, nitrate, selenium,
and radium at the dump exceed maximum levels safe for drinking
water;
-
A plume
containing uranium and other inorganic contaminants is flowing
toward two Hopi villages.
Named in the
notice of intent to sue is the Unites States, the Department of
Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of
Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Health
and Human Services, the Indian Health Service, the Department of
Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency and El Paso Natural
Gas Company.
Cyndy Cole can be
reached at 913-8607 or at
ccole@azdailysun.com.
Landfill
dispute: A brief history
The Bureau of
Indian Affairs opened the unlined Tuba City dump a mile east of
town in the 1950s and used it for more than four decades before
covering it with sand and dirt in 1997.
In addition to
other trash, the dump holds uranium waste that is 10 times more
concentrated than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
considers safe for drinking water.
The Navajo and
Hopi tribes have asked various federal agencies to remove the
waste for about 12 years without any success.
The radioactive
waste in the dump is very similar to waste left over at a uranium
mill a few miles away, according to a chemical analysis.
Other federal
agencies, including the EPA, have disputed this relationship,
saying the radioactive waste could have been blown in by the wind
or come from other sources.
Scientists working
for the tribes say the rock formations near the dump are not
naturally radioactive.
From 1956 to 1966,
a uranium mill a few miles from the dump processed 796,489 tons of
uranium ore from the Orphan Mine at the South Rim of the Grand
Canyon and from a mine near Cameron.
The Department of
Energy has identified the uranium mill site as a source of
radioactive pollution, and is responsible for ongoing cleanup at
the mill.
But the Department
of Energy has sent letters to the tribes stating that there is no
proof the landfill was contaminated with radioactive waste from
the uranium mill.
Neighbors living
near the dump have told the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection
Agency that they saw trucks from the mill dumping waste into the
Tuba City dump.
The Hopi Tribe
says there were no restrictions on who used the dump or on what
they unloaded, and that the dump was persistently on fire.
In 2008, federal
officials told residents of Upper Moenkopi that clearing out the
dump would be too expensive, but that they would consider fencing
it.
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