Protesters picket URI speaker in Gallup

(Special to the Times - Donovan Quintero)

Larry King, foreground, and other protestors protest against a presentatin by Uranium Resources Inc. at Sammy C's Nov. 12 in Gallup. URI wants to reopen mining operations in the Church Rock and Crownpoint areas.

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As members of the Gallup Chamber of Commerce gathered Nov. 12 for their regular "Lunch-and-Learn," about 20 picketers strolled the sidewalk in front of Sammy C's restaurant chanting "HRI, URI, lie, lie, lie!" and "Leetso (uranium) dooda!"

That's because the chamber's luncheon speaker was Richard Van Horn, vice president and CEO of Uranium Resources Inc., the parent company of Hydro Resources Inc., which wants to extract uranium on privately owned parcels of land within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation.

Several of the protestors were Navajos living in Gallup while their homes in the Church Rock, N.M., area are being cleansed of radioactive contamination left from the last wave of uranium mining in the 1970s and '80s. The proposed new mines are near Church Rock and Crownpoint.

One of the residents, Larry King, said the protest organizers had read about the luncheon in the local newspaper and the irony was too much for them.

"They (URI) are in there buying influence from the local business community while our homes are finally being cleaned up after 30 years," King said.

The federally funded "remediation" is being done by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency because the original mining companies left the area or went out of business before cleaning up the mess they'd made. The protesters worry the same thing could happen again.

The protest was peaceful and no one was prevented from entering the restaurant.

Meanwhile, Van Horn was in the restaurant's conference room talking up the virtues of in-situ leach mining, which he said is a much different procedure from the mining of the 1970s that left radioactive mine and mill wastes covering parts of Church Rock Chapter.

Van Horn explained the procedure, which involves injecting solvents into a uranium-rich rock layer, then pumping out the dissolved uranium.

"One of the misperceptions is we go in there and we crap the water up," he told the group of about 25 businesspeople. "No we don't. The water is already contaminated (by uranium)."

Van Horn said his Texas-based company consistently monitors any nearby aquifers with test wells to make sure the chemicals don't spread into drinking water aquifers, and when the ore has been extracted, pumps out any remaining leach solution, cleans it through reverse osmosis and returns it to the ground.

"We take more water out than we put in, so there's no chance of polluting the groundwater," he said.

But King, a spokesman for Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, said his group has been in contact with South Texas Opposes Pollution, a grassroots organization that claims the water in nearby domestic wells became cloudy or muddy after in-situ leach mines started operating nearby.

"A mining company has never been able to return an aquifer to its natural state after ISL mining," King said.

In a telephone interview, Van Horn said the García Hills well his company is accused of polluting was drilled "right in the middle of a uranium ore body" and already exceeded the federal limit for uranium in drinking water before URI started mining in the area. He said URI connected the local residents with another domestic water source before mining the aquifer.

King also claims the mining proponents overstate the economic benefits of the proposed mining. Unlike conventional mining, ISL mining doesn't take that many workers and the number of jobs brought to Navajo by the new uranium extraction would not justify the health risk, he asserted.

"Why don't we leave behind uranium and look toward green jobs?" he asked. "Wind - we have plenty of that. Sun - we have plenty of that."

Rebecca Nakai, another Church Rock resident currently living in Gallup while her home site is decontaminated, decided rather than protest she would go into the luncheon and see what Van Horn had to say. She didn't hear anything that changed her mind about uranium.

"They talk like it's all nice, but it's not," Nakai said. "They should all come by and see the EPA digging out our homes."

When someone at the luncheon questioned Van Horn about the health effects of past uranium mining in the area, Van Horn replied there is no evidence linking uranium mining to cancer cases in the Church Rock area.

"I would love to see an epidemiological study showing what actually happened," he said.

King said he would too.

"That's just it," he said. "There's never been an epidemiological study. So how can they say there's no effects?"

Sofia Martinez, an environmentalist from Albuquerque who traveled to Gallup for the protest, said the chamber's invitation to Van Horn amounted to an insult to the nearby Church Rock community.

"You can't come to a place where people are surrounded by Superfund sites and expect them to listen to a pitch for new mining," she said.

At the moment, any sales pitch for the proposed HRI project is moot. The USEPA and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver have both held that the private mining claims lie within "dependent Indian communities" in the Navajo Nation, which banned uranium mining in 2005.

However, the appeals court ruling was by a three-judge panel, and HRI has asked the court to reconsider the decision in an en banc hearing before all 20 judges.

"We're not out of the woods yet," King said. "We've been fighting URI for 15 years, and we're not going to stop until they decide to listen to the people and go home."

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