Jul 24, 2025
CHURCH ROCK, N.M. — The area once bustling with the sound of families laughing at birthday parties has become an eerie and silent landscape. Most of the homes in the Red Water Pond Road Community are now boarded up so that cleanup efforts can commence soon. Bertha Nez, 78, and her daughter Jennifer Nez left their longtime home last August to make way for a long-delayed federal cleanup of uranium contamination. Their home sits just yards away from one of the largest radioactive tailings piles in the United States – residue from the 1979 uranium mill spill and decades of mining by United Nuclear Corporation and Kerr-McGee, now known as Quivira. Lasting impact of uranium mining “We used to walk in the forest, climb the mountains, herd sheep,” Bertha said. “My grandfather gathered plants, and there were hummingbirds everywhere. Now, it’s all gone.” Uranium mining began in the 1960s, but no one warned them of the danger. “The workers would come around, yelling or whistling. We’d just run back into the woods with the sheep,” Bertha recalled. “Later, the livestock drank from water near the mill, and some died.” The Environmental Protec tion Agency has committed to removing contaminated soil over the next decade and transporting it to a designated disposal site near Thoreau, New Mexico. But for families like the Nez family, the cost of waiting has already been felt – in illness, loss of livestock, and cultural devastation. Generations of loss and displacement “They’re boarded up for the safety of the people here,” Jen nifer said. “It’s in preparation for the mine cleanup, so people cannot live in those homes.” Her uncle Tony Hood, Ber tha’s brother, said radiation measurements support why they’ve long advocated for uranium waste tailings to be removed. “Although they say it’s safe, other people have come. They’ve taken readings on the waste. They say it’s still hot,” said Hood, a former uranium miner. “All this is waste that they brought up from the mine and just spread it all over. It’s dangerous.” Tony worked in the mines for 11 years. “We had like close to 800 people working here,” he said. “Some of us had to work in knee-deep water and mud. Even with ventilation, we breathed in dust and radon.” Bertha said her sisters also worked at the mine. “One got cancer, another had a kidney transplant. My brother-in-law had respiratory problems and passed away,” she said. “They did studies at our house and found uranium in the urine of babies. That’s how it affects our health.” She remembers that after the mine closed, barriers to pre vent people or livestock from entering dangerous areas were practically nonexistent. “After the mine closed, there was no fence. The sheep, horses, and cows went right on top of the piles. Nobody warned us it would affect the animals too,” Bertha said. “We saw lambs born without hair, only surviv ing 30 minutes. That was the first sign. And when we butch ered sheep, the meat was dis colored. Since then, we stopped having livestock.” Sacred places were also lost. “We had a cedar tree. That one was pure. They cut it off,” said Arthur Hood, Bertha’s brother. “There were places where offerings were made. They’re probably all gone now.” Now approaching 80, Arthur Hood said he fears his family won’t return when the cleanup is completed, which is estimat ed to take 10 years or longer. “We had to move for safety, but what’s the guarantee we’ll come back? Politics change. Ten years from now, who knows what decision will be made,” Arthur said. Bertha agrees with her brother. “For 46 years, we’ve been telling United Nuclear and Kerr-McGee to clean it up,” she said. “Now they say it’ll take 10 more years. That’s longer than many of us have left.” New mining, old wounds As families await remedia tion, uranium mining interests in the region are being fast tracked under a federal pro gram known as FAST-41. Susan Gordon, the coordina tor for the Multicultural Alli ance for a Safe Environment, said: “There is a mine in Utah that they passed the federal licens ing in 11 days, no public input, nothing. In New Mexico, we have five mines that are on the fast track.” FAST-41, established by Congress under Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, is intended to accelerate federal reviews of major infrastructure projects, including critical minerals mining. The U.S. Department of the Interior, in support of for mer President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14241, ex panded the program to include domestic mineral development. The agency claims the process reduces delays through inter agency coordination and trans parent permitting timelines, but it does not override any environmental laws or public involvement procedures. According to the Interior Department, the United States imports many critical minerals from geopolitical rivals de spite having its own domestic reserves. FAST-41 was created to remove what the government calls “lengthy and duplicative permitting processes,” which in the U.S. can stretch seven to 10 years. In contrast, countries like Australia and Canada complete mine permitting in as little as two to five years. Among the projects listed by Gordon are proposed in-situ recovery uranium mines in Churchrock and Grants. “They are going to drill these shafts down and inject water and a chemical, and the chem ical will attach to the uranium and pull it up to the surface,” Gordon said. “They claim they can return it to its natural background. That has never happened, that a single ISR mine did.” She said uranium waste will likely be shipped to the Energy Fuels mill in Utah. “Part of that secret deal in cluded an agreement that Ener gy Fuels would ship some of the material from the Roca Honda mine – a very small quantity of it,” Gordon said. “I don’t under stand why they didn’t push for like some substantial money out of this – they just got, you know, pennies.” To reduce contamination at abandoned uranium sites, the EPA recently tested high-pres sure slurry ablation, a remedi ation technology developed by Disa Technologies. The pilot study, conducted in 2022 and finalized in 2023, showed the process can reduce uranium and radium-226 concentrations by over 90 percent in some cases, but few samples met the Navajo Nation’s strictest clean up standards. Navajo EPA Executive Director Stephen Etsitty said the Nation supports exploring treatment technologies. “We want to use this technol ogy if it is going to be helpful at reducing toxicity of the waste,” he said. “We need to always be vigilant about how we can protect groundwater.” While the EPA moves ahead with waste removal plans, many Red Water Pond Road residents remain excluded from federal compensation under the recently renewed Radiation Exposure Compen sation Act. “You practically have to be dying to take part in that RECA program,” Tony Hood said. “Many of those who worked in the mines are already gone.” Bertha said she lost siblings to liver disease and cancer, and uranium exposure has affected the health of younger genera tions. “They said we didn’t live here,” she said. “We had to go back to pictures of our grand parents. That’s how far back we had to go just to be believed.” Jennifer Nez echoed the fami ly’s deep sense of loss. “People say it won’t hurt any one, but it does. We breathe the air, touch the soil – it becomes part of us,” she said.