The United Nuclear Corporation is asking to transfer 1 million cubic yards of mine waste to a spot still near the Nation
By: Arlyssa Becenti - October 22, 2021
“The #Navajo people have endured decades of radiation exposure and #contamination caused by #uranium mining and production, and continues to impact the health of individuals, families and communities. We strongly oppose the proposed amendment that would allow the transfer of uranium mine waste and contamination just a short distance from the Navajo Nation and the homes of our Navajo people.” -- Navajo President Jonathan Nez
The long tail of toxic emissions on the #NavajoNation
Communities contend with ongoing air quality issues tied to #gas and #oil wells.
Mark Armao, August 30, 2023
"Sitting in his office a few miles away, former Chapter President Samuel Sage said he often smells the gas that collects in certain valleys. Sage, who has provided written testimony to Congress on the issue, said officials with the #BLM and the #BureauOfIndianAffairs never discussed the dangers posed by #fracking during oil-leasing negotiations with allotment owners. 'The first thing that was mentioned was, ‘If you sign this, you will get this much money,’ and of course, there was no hesitation,' he said.
"While oil tankers tear up the dirt roads that branch off the highway, Sage said the industry’s presence has frayed the fabric of the community, pitting locals who support oil and gas development against those who are opposed to the industry encroaching on the landscape. Undeterred by the controversy, Pinto plans to continue putting pressure on regulators and the industry by documenting emissions and raising awareness of their potential health impacts.
"'It’s not good for us, it’s not good for wildlife, it’s not good for plants,' Pinto said. “Are people getting paid enough to bear all these negative impacts — is it worth it?'"
About the author:
"Mark Armao (#Diné) hails from the high desert in northern Arizona. Now based in California, his recent reporting has focused on #environmental issues facing #Indigenous communities."
On the landmark Canada Supreme Court decision, this is the only quote you need to see: “The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), an intervener in the process, said it was pleased with the decision.”
The Dirty Deadly Front End of Nuclear Power — 15,000 Abandoned Uranium Mines (Pt. 1)
by Josh Cunnings, March 11, 2016
"The perplexing problem of these open, deadly, toxic messes was discussed between Emerson Urry and Arnie Gundersen.
"Urry: I want to go back for a minute to the uranium. We were talking about Fukushima and obviously the myriad isotopes that are put off as a byproduct of the nuclear fission that is happening in the reactor. It all starts there with the uranium, and there was quite a rush for that, and now we have all of these situations. To our understanding there are about 15,000 abandoned uranium mines that have been left in complete ruin with very little cleanup or remediation at all, just in the western United States. This has happened, by-and-large, because of an antiquated mining bill – the 1872 Mining Bill – still affecting these situations today – that kind of allowed miners to just walk away from these situations — but yet, they remain in the open leaching off tailings – blowing around #radioactive dust. I think there’s about 4,500 of these exposed mining sites just in #Navajo country – another 2,500 or so in #Wyoming. How do we deal with that situation? What does the future hold in those regards, and quite frankly, are we all being poisoned by these mines?
"Gundersen: I’ll give you another example of the same thing, and I would say 'yes' to everything you said is the quick answer. There is a mill-tailings site in Moab, #Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission [#NRC] told the owner of the site that they needed to set aside six million dollars to clean it up. Well, the actual #cleanup is a billion dollars. What did the owner do? They declared #bankruptcy and walked away.
"Urry: And it wasn’t bonded? No bond?
"Gundersen: Right. It wasn’t bonded. You know, if you bonded uranium mining, you wouldn’t have uranium mining."
As Waters Rise, a Community Must Decide: Do We Stay or Go?
Faced with more frequent flooding and worse to come, the Philadelphia community of Eastwick is grappling with difficult questions about its future: Will levees and flood walls protect them, or should residents abandon their homes and move to higher ground?
By Jon Hurdle • September 28, 2023
"Across the United States, low-lying communities face similar hydrological challenges: how to protect people and property from rising seas and increased inland flooding. Many of these places are low-income communities of color. But low-lying Eastwick, with a majority Black population and a history of pollution, has long-standing socioeconomic challenges that make adaptation especially urgent and difficult."
#ChinaGovernment is looking to #exploit more #DesperatePeople in countries mostly ignored by #GlobalNorth - including many African nations, Trinidad & Tobago, South American countries; where poverty is very high & pretty much anywhere else where natural resources haven't been fully plundered yet & the citizenry is poor with #corrupt govts willing to make shady deals with Chinese state.
I'm Chinese in Canada. I know well, how their govt works. Don't try to justify govt abuses/exploitation to me.
"#Cree Journalist Brandi Morin said, 'We are taking back the narrative and this story about North America’s largest lithium mine being constructed while violating sacred Indigenous territories is told from the Native perspective. The 'green' energy revolution isn’t what you think it is!'
IndigiNews Media and The Real News, September 12, 2023
Go watch! @IndigiNewsMedia@TheRealNews@ricochet_en
"Follow Native journalist Brandi Morin, who came from Canada, and covered this powerful story.
"In Nevada’s remote Thacker Pass, a fight for our future is playing out between local #Indigenous tribes and powerful state and #corporate entities hellbent on mining the lithium beneath their land. Vancouver-based Lithium Americas is developing a massive lithium mine at Thacker Pass, but for more than two years several local tribes and #environmental organizations have tried to block or delay the mine in the courts and through direct action.
"The Thacker Pass Project is backed by the Biden administration, and companies like General Motors have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the project, looking to capitalize on the transition to a 'green energy economy,' for which lithium is essential. While it is a vital component in the manufacturing of electric vehicles and batteries, though, there’s nothing “green” about mining lithium. Ending our addiction to fossil fuels is urgently necessary, but the struggle of the local tribes around Thacker Pass reveals the dark side of a 'green revolution' that prioritizes profit and consumption over everything (and everyone) else."
"'This is not just a problem of the #AlgonquinNation but all people on the #OttawaRiver. Why are we trying to put a radioactive mountain adjacent to the drinking water of millions of people that are south of this NSDF site?'
"Verna McGregor, a Kitigan Zibi #Anishinabeg elder, plans to explain at the CNSC licensing hearing how the #Algonquins were bypassed in the establishment of the original #ChalkRiver nuclear site on their unceded territory in the 1940s, and regard the river as sacred to their culture."
#HeatWave :: In #Arizona, if this heatwave were to coincide with a power outage, 800,000 residents would end up in the emergency room due to heat related illnesses. The three communities most vulnerable are in South Phoenix with mainly Black and Latinx people living there. #EnvironmentalRacism
"Duck Valley Paiute-Shoshone Council Member Addie Parker appealed to the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues today, describing the disastrous lithium mining and hydrocarbon plume her people suffer from in northern #Nevada. Parker said there has been extensive #mining here for over 150 years.
"The "new green gold rush" for lithium batteries has brought devastating lithium mining and 'green colonialism.' Currently, there are 70 lithium mining applications in Nevada alone. The so-called 'green' solution actually creates an #environmental nightmare, including the disposal of #batteries.
Parker said there must be a rights-based approach and pointed out that Nevada mining laws are archaic. Paiute Shoshone of #DuckValleyNation opposes more mining and Nevada's new law for increased revenues from mining.
"Since the signing of the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863, there has been no mechanism for tribes to share in the benefits of mining. The mining companies are multi-national #corporations and most are from #Canada. They are not required to compensate the people.
"'It violates our Indigenous rights,' Parker said, listing international law violations, including the fre prior, and informed consent as mandated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of #IndigenousPeoples.
President #Biden's order to consult with #tribes is also being violated.
"Describing the illegal exploration of their resources, she said Paiute-Shoshone children are suffering because of it. 'We can't even get money to build a new school,' Parker said, describing how children are forced to attend school on a #toxic site.
"More than 100 members of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Nation, on the Nevada #Idaho border, have died over the years due to #cancer. It is a large number for a tribe of about 3,00 people, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. There was one thing they had in common: they all attended the same school on the reservation.
"The 70-year-old Owyhee Combined School, where tribal members have been educated for generations, sits adjacent to hydrocarbon plumes that lie underneath the town, Chairman Brian Mason said. He thinks the school, where drinking water was once #contaminated by the plumes, is the root of the problem.'"
In the protracted fight for accountability in #Ecuador’s Amazon, #StevenDonziger is a victim of #corporate retaliation, supporters say.
by Gabriela Barzallo, August 31, 2021
#Environmental lawyer Steven Donziger spent 25 years helping fight a million-dollar legal battle in the Ecuadorian Amazon against oil giant Chevron. But on July 26, a U.S. federal judge found him guilty of six counts of criminal contempt of court for withholding evidence in a long, complex legal fight.
"Having already served more than 700 days of house arrest, Donziger now awaits sentencing. He faces six months in jail as the culmination of a process he and his lawyers have called 'a charade.' Donziger was a fundamental part of the team of lawyers that sued Chevron in the early 1990s for toxic dumping in the Ecuadorian Amazon. After the case concluded in the affected communities’ favor in 2011, Chevron #countersued Donziger in the United States for alleged fraud in the Ecuadorian courts.
"'This is an outrageous decision,' Donziger said of his conviction. 'I see it as an attack on #HumanRights lawyering by the fossil fuel industry. It’s a violation for the rule of law and for our democracy."
I think NPR mischaracterizes this solar-power debate as “environmentalist vs. environmentalist” when it’s probably “environmentalist vs. NIMBY (‘Not In My BackYard,’ the selfish fight song of moneyed white privilege).” NIMBY only pretends to care about society’s needs as it pushes the cost and responsibility of handling them onto the backs of poorer, minority neighborhoods. #environmentalracism - https://www.npr.org/2023/06/18/1177524841/solar-energy-project-location-debate?f=1003&ft=nprml
"When a foreign company started exploratory drilling for the possible return of uranium mining near #ChurchRock, community members say they were not informed in advance.
“It was a complete shock,” Jonathan Perry, the director of Eastern Navajo #Diné Against Uranium Mining, said of the process that started this winter.
"The eastern Navajo Nation communities have stood largely in opposition to future uranium mining for decades.
"'The majority of Diné people have been personally impacted by (uranium),' Leona Morgan, an activist and member of Navajo Nation, said.
"The Navajo Nation has a moratorium dating back nearly two decades that prohibits uranium extraction, but the Eastern Agency consists of what is known as checkerboard. That means federal and state lands are intermixed with Navajo, or Diné, lands and allotment lands.
"#LaramideResources, a Canada-based company, plans on extracting uranium from an area within the checkerboard that is not tribal land.
"The work would occur near the same location where, in 1979, a dam breach released 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of #RadioactiveWater into the #RioPuerco, which the nearby Navajo communities relied upon for water.
"Decades later, the spill, along with mine and mill sites in the area, remain unremediated. Earlier this year, the U.S. NRC issued a record of decision as well as a license amendment that will allow the #UnitedNuclearCorporation—which owned the site where the spill occurred—to dispose of mine #waste from the old uranium mine at the old mill site.
"Morgan said there are concerns that this disposal method in an unlined pit could lead to a second spill happening, especially as climate change increases the risks of extreme weather events like monsoon floods."
Construction begins on controversial #lithium mine in #Nevada
Opponents say the Thacker Pass lithium project was rushed in the name of the green transition.
by Gabriela Aoun Angueira, March 3, 2023
"'It’s an important place not only because a terrible massacre occurred, but also because it’s a place where people gather, it’s a place for ceremony, for hunting,' said Michon Eben, tribal historic preservation officer for the Reno Sparks Indian Colony, a government that includes members from the the #Paiute, #Shoshone and #Washoe tribes. The colony is advocating for Peehee Mu’huh to be on the National Register of Historic Places. 'It’s really hard to be a tribal member and see our homelands destroyed,' said Eben.
"#ThackerPass also comprises thousands of acres of #sagebrush and is a nesting ground for the sage grouse and a migration corridor for pronghorn #antelope. Environmental groups including the Great Basin Resource Watch and Western Watersheds Project say the mine would cause irreversible #ecological damage, and that the project’s impact was not adequately studied.
"'It got by the environmental impact statement process in just under a year and I would expect a project of this scale and complexity to take 3 to 5 years,' said John Hadder, director of Great Basin Resource Watch. 'That’s sloppy permitting on the side of the federal government.'
"Tribes, #environmental groups and a cattle rancher are all plaintiffs in a combined case against the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, and #LithiumNevada, a subsidiary of #LithiumAmericas. On February 6, a federal judge in Reno ruled that the BLM had complied with federal law in approving the mine, with the exception of one matter regarding waste disposal, which the judge ordered the BLM to revisit. The plaintiffs filed an appeal in the 9th Circuit and an emergency motion to block construction before the appeal hearing. The appeals court rejected the injunction and set the hearing date for June. "
Uranium Mine Gearing Up Near Grand Canyon -- Havasupai Urge Ban
by Grand Canyon Trust, December 7, 2022
"The Senate has only a few weeks left to pass the #GrandCanyon Protection Act, which would permanently ban new uranium mines on just over 1 million acres of federal public lands near the Grand Canyon. The bill has already passed the house twice. Longtime resident sof the Grand Canyon, the #Havasupai Tribe, its leaders, and elders have fought against #uranium mining for decades." #EnvironmentalRacism#Indigenous https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2022/12/uranium-mine-gearing-up-near-grand.html