2002-08-02 - 9:25 p.m.

In 1952, Kerr-McGee employed 100 Diné in its uranium mines. Wages for these miners were only 66% that of off-reservation rates. The corporation cut costs by lax enforcement of safety regulations. In 1952, a federal mine inspector found that the ventilation shafts were not in operation. In 1954, the inspector discovered that the ventilation shafts were only being used during the first half of each shift. In 1955, the inspector found that the ventilation blower was out of gas.

A 1959 report found that radiation levels in the Kerr-McGee mine were 90x the permissible limit.

By 1969, Kerr-McGee had exhausted the uranium deposits near Shiprock, NM. They abandoned 71 acres of raw uranium tailings which contain 85% of the ore's radioactivity. This tailings were located 60 feet from the San Juan River.

Uh-huh...

By 1975, 18 of the 150 Diné miners was dead of radiation-induced lung cancer. By 1980, 38 were dead and 96 had contracted respiratory ailments and/or cancer. Birth defects skyrocketed at Shiprock and in the downstream communities.

The corporate solution to unemployment is lethal.

Tuba City, AZ has comparable tailings piles and similar radioactive consequences.

The mine at Churchrock discharges 80,000 gallons of radioactive water a day into local water supplies.

In July 1979, the United Nuclear Uranium Mill at Churchrock was the site of an accident that released 100,000,000 gallons of radioactive water into the Rio Puerco River.

On June 11, 1962 200 tons of radioactive mill tailings washed into the Cheyenne River.

In June 1980, the Indian Health Service (IHS) announced that well water at Slim Buttes contained gross alpha levels 14x the national safety standard.

Subsurface water at Pine Ridge tested at several times the acceptable limit as did water at Manderson and Oglala.

Tribal President Stanley Looking Elk requested $175,000 for emergency water supplies. The BIA stipulated that this water could only be used for consumption by cattle.

There is an Air Force Gunnery Range near Pine Ridge that is a suspected illegal dumping ground for nuclear wastes.

3,500,000 tons of uranium tailings are setting on the banks of the Cheyenne and Cottonwood Creek at Igloo, SD.

The US Department of the Interior (1979), "Contamination is well beyond the safe limit. Increasing the danger is the accumulative nature of this type of contamination."

This is genocide...

The situation in Canada is comparable. The James Bay Power Project threatens to demolish the Cree.

There is no safe uranium mining, processing, waste disposal, or use.

The energy corporations and their government cares little about community safety.

Corporations were offering miners increased wages to work in hot spots. This sort of exposure guarantees contamination. The corporations downplay the risks involve. Worker rotation systems are also used which contaminate the entire workforce.

At Questa, NM there is an elementary school built on a dry tailing pond, at the foot of a tailing pile, and near shaft ventilations.

People may wind up much more destitute and in an infinitely worse environmental position than ever before.

Anaconda used uranium ore to pave the road system leading to the mine and the nearby village.

The Department of Energy has a nuclear facility at Hanford, WA. In July, 1990 the government admitted dumping radioactive wastes into the local environment at 2,000x the safe limit. 444,000,000,000 gallons of water tainted with plutonium, strontium, tritium, ruthenium, cesium, and assorted rare earth elements were poured into a hole int he ground. The radiation is beginning to reach the Columbia River. The residents of Yakima, WA are exposed to greater concentrations than the residents of Chernobyl.

EuroAmerika has a long history of blaming it's victims for the abuse done to them.

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