Tuba City Open Dump Site Set Up By the BIA in the 1960's
Radioactive Uranium leaks are getting closer to groundwater that provides 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. In addition, contamination is within 2,000 feet of the water supply spring that provides all the drinking water to the village of Upper Moenkopi.
In the 1960s El Paso Corporation needed a place to dump their mining residue. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) accommodated them with a location in Tuba City, later to be known as the Tuba City Open Dump Site (TCODS). Uranium was among the material dumped at the site, and the deep trenches built by the BIA allowed the uranium to enter the groundwater. The company stopped using the site in 1968.
El Paso Natural Gas Company says they didn't do it. Can't find anything in their files. Instead, El Paso said it is the federal government’s fault for neglecting the TCODS and has filed a lawsuit against the government that would place the responsibility on various federal agencies.
Nevertheless, the uranium is there, and getting more dangerous. Typically in these situations, the feds and the corporation allegedly involved (see W.R. Grace) screw around in court while people die. Over the past 40 years, the uranium has moved through approximately 4,000 feet of groundwater from its source. At this rate, the contamination will reach the wells of Lower Moencopi in approximately 10 years. The main environmental concern of the tribes and government agencies is to find a way to clean the water of all toxens. However, the $38 million that the clean up is estimated to cost has been deemed unaffordable by all the agencies involved, leaving the issue without a viable solution.
“That was a vivid illustration of the complete failure of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to manage the problem. OMB has consistently blocked the agencies from expressing their professional judgment about what needs to be done and what it will cost.”
Hey, maybe we could move the Indians! It worked before.
TUBA CITY - Joetta Goldtooth's father was in his 80s when he noticeably lost weight four years ago.
"I said, 'Dad, you're getting thinner and thinner,'" Goldtooth remembers saying. "He said 'It's old age.'"
But then he pointed at a massive lump in his belly that he hadn't told anyone about.
Goldtooth immediately drove him to a Phoenix hospital, where he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He died less than four months later at 82, having worked sometimes as a laborer at a nearby uranium mill.
Dozens of people who had hauled drinking water from the Rare Metals Corporation uranium mill outside of Tuba City, as well as those who gathered items from the nearby dump, met in Tuba City on Wednesday. They wanted more information and to give comments on what they saw years ago.
They talked about the ill, and of those weren't told about the cancer risks associated with uranium and those who still aren't aware of nearby sites.
Goldtooth's aunt, mother, nieces and nephews live a few hundred yards north of what used to be the Tuba City dump, an area in the city's back yard that's now known to contain radioactive waste at shallow levels.
A plume of radioactive water from this same dump containing uranium mill tailings appears to be heading toward springs used for drinking water by two Hopi villages near Tuba City.
The Department of Energy has said there is no evidence Rare Metals Corporation employees dumped radioactive uranium waste into the Tuba City dump.
But chemical data shows a close relationship between what was mined at Rare Metals and what has been found at the dump.
This chapter of the Navajo Nation has asked that all waste be removed from the landfill, by resolution.
Ed Singer, of Cameron, is a self-employed artist and a Navajo-English translator. He's heard court cases and mediations on this subject.
About six people testified three or four years ago that they saw Rare Metals trucks dumping waste in the Tuba City dump, and sometimes in other places outside of the landfill, Singer said.
"They (members of the public) were never warned about the danger, so they would go in there and salvage the barrels, the lumber, the buckets, and the kids would have a heyday finding toys," Singer said.
Meanwhile, mill workers and their spouses testified about birth defects and miscarriages. One woman testified that the mill workers would start coughing up or vomiting blood, then die soon afterward.
"It was only later that people would say that uranium was dangerous," Singer said.
Children scouring the dump found boxes of the metallic marbles used in the ore refining process. Several people at Wednesday's meeting had taken some marbles home in their pockets.
Gilbert Fuller, now of Tuba City, lived in a trailer close to the Rare Metals mill because the land was available. He took drinking water from the mill site, which is now a federal uranium cleanup site because of pollution in the tailings.
"Here I said I was drinking that water over there," he said, wondering about health consequences like cancer.
And the Tuba City dump was hardly the only local site containing radioactive waste or leftover tailings.
"What we're finding is that there are a lot of dumps in the area of the landfill that have a lot of radiation," said Bill Walker, a geochemist who's done contract work in the area.
Sites across from the uranium mill, a few miles farther east, have also been found to have high levels of uranium-related metals, said John Krause, the Bureau of Indian Affairs official managing this matter for the agency.
Walker has suggested air quality monitoring for the area.
Goldtooth's family, the Yellowhairs, raises sheep, cattle and horses. The animals sometimes graze at the dump, finding leftover oranges and apples.
The Yellowhairs eat the sheep and cattle.
Her father collected aluminum cans at the dump.
Goldtooth petitioned to have the dump closed in the early 1980s. Other residents had complained of dumping day and night and trash burning that lead to respiratory problems.
In 1997, some sand was put over the top of the dump and the site was partially fenced off.
Fighting to close this dump for two generations, Goldtooth blames her father's death on the drinking water they were hauling from the uranium mill, his jobs there and his frequent visits to garbage heaps they would later learn were toxic.
"I do feel that my people were betrayed," Goldtooth said. "And now even the government tries to deny they were at fault for some of these things."
The Tuba City Landfill
The Tuba City Landfill Site is a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Landfill facility that received refuse from the 1940's until 1997. The Landfill was an “open dump” – without an on-site operator and without any controls on who dumped there or what they dumped. The Landfill received domestic waste from the Tuba City and Moenkopi communities, and unknown waste from the BIA and Indian Health Services (IHS). Some refuse may have been received from the Tuba City Uranium Mine Tailing Remediation Act (UMTRA) Site.
The un-lined, un-regulated dumpsite lies directly on top of the exposed N-Aquifer; the Landfill’s disposal cells were constructed by excavating into fine, very porous (absorbent) sandy soil down to the bare Navajo sandstone bedrock.
Since 1999, the Tribe has had evidence of the presence of uranium, coliform bacteria, radium, vanadium, gross alpha, chloride, sulfate, nitrate, selenium and total dissolved solids in excess of the Safe Drinking Water Act’s maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) and EPA health advisories in the shallow groundwater under the Landfill. Data from a study instituted in 2001 shows, among other contaminants, the presence of uranium in the groundwater at nine-times EPA’s proposed standards.
The contaminated groundwater is located directly above the unconfined area of the N-Aquifer from which Tuba City and the Hopi Villages at Moenkopi withdraw drinking water, and no confining layer isolates the groundwater contaminated by the Landfill from the N-Aquifer. Contaminates that leach out from the waste can move through the fractures (cracks) of the sandstone and further contaminate the Tribe’s sole water resource. The distance from the Landfill to the Moenkopi wells is ½ mile, in the direction of the groundwater flow.
The Villages of Moenkopi need their lands and water restored to protect the current and future use of the N-Aquifer’s waters, which includes: drinking water for residential, school and business facilities, cultural and religious activities, and current and planned economic development. Daily religious and cultural activities include the use of water for irrigation of agricultural fields and for the herbs picked and used in the preparation of Hopi foods for daily food and ceremonies. Based on the available evidence, the Hopi Tribe has determined remediation through the placement of a permanent cap on the Landfill will not effectively address the groundwater contamination currently present, address the future risk of contamination, or otherwise effectively remediate the Site.
The Hopi Tribe has worked with the Navajo Tribe, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Environmental Protection Agency to prepare cost estimates for the “clean closure” of the Landfill Site and is now seeking the funding necessary to ensure the cleanup of the Tribe’s lands and water. For environmental, economic, and cultural reasons, all parties support a clean closure of the Tuba City landfill to be completed as quickly as possible to eliminate any potential threat of contaminated groundwater adversely affecting the health, economy, or cultural imperatives of the Hopi Tribe.
LINKS
- Story on radiation pollution of Hopi water supply
http://www.hopitribe.org/landfill.htm
