Sustainability Issues And Concequences Of Uranium Mining In The Navajo Nation
Sustainability is the idea that humanity must operate in a way that allows it to meet its current standard of vitality and integrity without compromising its ability to meet them in the future. Vitality refers to a person’s basic needs for survival, like water or food, whereas integrity is a person’s desires beyond their basic needs, like security or freedom of choice and action. To ensure that the current standards of vitality and integrity are met without compromising the future ability to do so, humanity must practice sustainable development. The World Commission on Environment and Development states that sustainable development is “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
Sustainability is built upon three central pillars: social, environmental, and economic. The social pillar is primarily on human capital, which refers to human resources like people’s labor, education, and their effectivity in economic development. The economic pillar is dependent upon economic status and development, such as production and consumption of an economy or its supply and demand. The environmental pillar is built upon natural capital, which is basically an environment’s natural resources and ecosystem services, the natural processes in an ecosystem that humanity benefits from. Sustainability is achieved when all three pillars, which each represent an aspect of sustainable development, are each operating at their full strength. If one of the pillars were to crumble, the other two must compromise for it; that is to say, if the environmental pillar of sustainable development were to collapse, then the social and economic pillar must compromise to maintain sustainability.
While true that the three pillars of sustainability are of equal importance, their ability to operate is also limited by one another. Economy is constrained by societal limits, and both economy and society are limited by environmental limits. In other terms, environment is humanity’s limiting factor. In ecology, limiting factors are environmental conditions that limit the growth, abundance, or distribution of an organism or a population of organisms in a given ecosystem.
Description of Problem at Local Level
In the 1950s the United States experienced a boom in uranium mining. This was the result primarily of the development of atomic warfare and nuclear energy techniques during World War II, which relies entirely upon uranium as its fuel. In 1948, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) announced that it would guarantee the purchase of all uranium mined in the US, which would be done by private companies operating the mines. This incentivized the commercial acquisition of uranium when the AEC would lessen its purchases of uranium, such as in the late 1960s.
It was during this uranium boom that mining began in the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation within the United States. It spans over parts of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. It had been noted since the 1960’s that the reservation happened to be located above massive deposits of uranium ore. During the boom, mining corporations flocked to the land, and began their mining on land that was leased to them by the local government of the reservation. From the timespan of 1944 to 1986, when the final mine on the reservation stopped operating, roughly 30 million tons of uranium ore had been extracted and sold to the AEC.
The Navajo actually benefited in many ways thanks to the uranium mines. The mines provided jobs for the majority of Navajo men, which would make it the first time that they had any contact with the broader US wage economy. People living within the reservation often lived simplistic and agrarian lifestyles; they did not have jobs that provided income, but rather lived the traditional lifestyles that allowed them to provide the resources they needed themselves. The sudden source of income, both from working the mines and leasing the lands, provided a significant boost to the Navajo Nation’s economy.
Despite its economic benefits, there were still pay issues when it came to the men working the mines. The miners were meant to be paid minimum wage, but were often paid significantly less, around 80% of what they should have been receiving. Many also accounted that the bosses and foremans were most often White, and that they did not spend as much time working in the mines as the Navajo laborers.
Since the late 1930’s, it had been widely known scientific knowledge that uranium mining was associated with high rates of lung cancer. It was confirmed by William Bale and John Harley in 1952 that exposure to the radioactive particles found in the mines were being retained in the bodies of the workers, delivering especially high doses of radiation to the sensitive cells found in the lungs. The particle in question that causes the radiation is radon, an undetectable gas produced by decaying uranium. It was also discovered that many of the harmful effects of working in uranium mines could be reduced by implementing a proper ventilation system, effectively reducing the risks to none. The AEC was aware that the radon would most likely cause the mine workers to develop cancer and that ventilation would abate this hazard, but chose to not disclose this fact with the public or the Navajo workers. The AEC did not hold the private mining companies to any health standard, allowing them to hire workers without informing them of the risks of working in a non-ventilated mine. The Navajo people, who had initially believed that the mines were a blessing, an economic opportunity that allowed them to stay near their homes, were being lied to and exposed to high levels of radiation.
The Navajo people began to notice the health effects in the 1960’s. Widows came together, noting how nearly everyone of their husbands deaths were identical; lungs that failed. This led to a unified Navajo effort to further educate themselves on the effect of uranium mining. Within the next few decades, those living within the Navajo Nation understood that the federal government had deliberately failed to inform the Navajo of the risk they were putting themselves in by working the mines, and demanded compensation. Federal regulations were established in 1969 that detailed the amount of radon in a mine that would allow it to be operable, the standard that remains today, but this regulation was often ignored and unsafe mines continued to be worked.
It was not until 1990 that US Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which acknowledged that the US government was responsible for the mistreatment of uranium miners from 1948 to 1971. It also promises monetary compensation to those who developed a disease as a result of their labor in uranium mining, milling, or the transportation of the ore. To the uranium miners, RECA offers a $100,000 compensation.
Despite the end of all uranium minings in the Navajo Nation in 1986 and the eventual efforts to compensate those who were harmed by working the mines, the people of the Navajo Nation still suffer because of the mines. This is due to the fact that upon their shutting down, the uranium mines were abandoned before they had been properly sealed or capped. This resulted in the 523 abandoned uranium mines within the Navajo Nation contaminating the surrounding air and water. Furthermore, much of the radioactive substance produced as a byproduct of the mining has been left surrounding the mines, untreated and fully exposed to the surrounding environment.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, tasked with protecting human health and the environment. A 2013 EPA test of water sources located in the Navajo Nation showed that the water is rich with pollutants, substances that have harmful or poisonous effects. The most notable pollutant is an abundance of uranium; the average amount of uranium found in the water was 88µg/L, 88 micrograms per liter. The EPA has set legal threshold limits on how much of a given substance can be allowed in public drinking water before there is a reasonable risk of health, known as Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs). Their is also the Maximum Contaminant Level Goals (MCLGs), the level of a contaminant in drinking water below which there is no known or expected risk to health. The MCL for uranium is 30µg/L, and the MCLG is 0. The MCLG for uranium is so low because the EPA decided that the MCLG for any substance that has a high chance of causing those who come in contact with it to develop cancer to always be 0. The fact that the uranium content of water in the Navajo Nation is far beyond the federal limit warrants federal intervention in improving the overall water quality. The Navajo Birth Cohort Study found that the concentrations of uranium in Navajo mothers and their babies is far above the national average, indicating that the polluted water supply is having a legitimate effect on the populace of the Navajo Nation.
The people who are most affected by the hazardous water quality are the residents of the Navajo Nation, especially those who do not have access to piped water. Roughly 30% of the 350,000 Navajo living in the region have no access to a piped water system, meaning that they either drink the contaminated water, risking serious health effects, or invest money that they do not possess into somehow obtaining water from a non polluted source. The EPA and Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency (NNEPA) must also worry about this issue, as their role as federal agents is to find a way to allocate more resources to acquiring, sanitizing, and distributing drinkable water. The goal of these organizations is, ultimately, to improve the water quality in the Navajo Nation to the federal standard. In this efforts, upwards of $58 million have been donated since 2008 towards providing safe drinking water to the estimated 3,000 homes without water. The EPA and NNEPA are the ones who have the biggest responsibility to improving the water quality issue, as the entire situation represents a historical series of faults by the federal government and a legitimate crisis that the EPA is designed to address.
Two additional groups that are less affected by the water quality, but just as invested in the issue, are the healthcare providers for the Navajo Nation and the energy companies wishing to resume mining efforts on Navajo land. The primary healthcare provider for the Navajo is the Indian Health Service (IHS), which provided for roughly 250,000 people in the Navajo territories in 2016. The goal of IHS is to ensure that all American Indians have access to public health services, and by serving to those in the Navajo Nation are required to allocate more resources to helping those who suffer from the effects of radiation, whether that be from the contaminated water or otherwise. As for energy companies stakes in the abandoned uranium mines situation, it comes down to the fact that there is still an abundance of uranium located within the reservation’s borders. A private mining company would profit greatly by being able to mine and sell this uranium commercially. In fact, arguments could be made that these efforts would once more be beneficial to the Navajo people economy; it would provide labor to the unemployed, and grant the local government significant more funds. Plus, it is possible that mining in the modern day can be properly executed to essentially nullify any possibility of radiation leakage or pollutants escaping. It is for this reason that energy companies still wish to gain access to the Navajo Nation’s uranium once more.
Economic Pillar
In an effort to prevent further pollution of the water in the Navajo Nation, funding has been providing from both internal and external sources for the proper cleanup of the abandoned uranium mines. The EPA has entered into an agreement with the NNEPA to provide settlements valued at over $1. 7 billion. These settlements are intended to reduce the risks of radiation exposure to the Navajo people from AUMs. This funding, like the EPA itself, pulls its monetary resources from federal funds. With them, the NNEPA plans to begin the assessment and cleanup process of roughly 129 AUMs within the Navajo Nation. This funding was established by the second Five-Year Plan created by the EPA, in 2014, to address the uranium contamination in the Navajo Nation. To add to this, the United States federal government and the mining company Freeport-McMoran reached a $600 million settlement with the Navajo Nation, which will see to the cleaning of 94 AUMs. The United States government’s contribution equates to just over $335 million.
Beyond proper cleaning of the AUMs, funding must be allocated for those living on the Navajo Nation who do not have access to sanitized water to be able to acquire water from external sources, as the water quality is so low that consuming it presents serious health risks. There are roughly 54,000 people in the Navajo Nation without access to any public water system, 40% of the entire Navajo Nation population. Reports suggest that 30% of Navajo Nation members haul their water from a less contaminated source. The principal hydrologist for Navajo Water resources stated that in order to get running water into each Navajo home would cost nearly $70,000 per home.
