EPA: Radioactive Spill Never Affected Water Supply

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

>EPA: Radioactive Spill Never Affected Water Supply
>
>The Associated Press, July 18, 1999 Albuquerque Journal
>http://www.abqjournal.com/news/5news07-18.htm
>
>CHURCH ROCK -- It's been 20 years since a uranium tailings dam near Church
>Rock collapsed, sending a wall of radioactive water down the Rio Puerco.
>
>Navajos who lived near the Church Rock mine site 17 miles northeast of
>Gallup expressed fear about water contamination for years after the July
>1979 spill.
>
>United Nuclear Corp. and its corporate successor, United Nuclear Inc., have
>monitored water quality since the spill, which occurred half a mile from
>the Navajo reservation boundary, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
>says.
>
>"We didn't find any contamination that migrated near anyone's well," said
>Don Williams, the EPA's New Mexico team leader for toxic waste remediation
>projects.
>
>"The responsible parties have continued to monitor that plume (of
>contaminants) to see if the plume is decreasing in concentration," Williams
>said by phone from Dallas. "It's a very close decrease. The plume is not
>getting any larger, and it has clearly never affected anybody's water 
>supply."
>
>Williams said that in his 31/2 years on the job he has never heard any
>resident express concern about water contamination. He said the Navajo
>Environmental Protection Agency works closely with its federal and state
>counterparts.
>
>"We've had a fairly good outreach effort," he said.
>
>Last year the New Mexico Conference of Churches and the New Mexico Catholic
>Conference sponsored a water stewardship conference in Albuquerque. Out of
>that gathering sprouted the Interfaith Stewards of Creation.
>
>"We're trying to bring the disaster to public consciousness -- the fact
>that people continue to suffer," Sister Rose Marie Cecchini of the Roman
>Catholic Sisters of Maryknoll said in Gallup.
>
>Interfaith Stewards calls the Church Rock spill "the largest nuclear
>accident in U.S. history."
>
>"It's acknowledged as larger and more serious than Three-Mile Island,"
>Cecchini said.
>
>Asked about that assertion, John Greeves, spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear
>Regulatory Commission, said: "I think it's an overstatement.
>
>"It may have been the largest volume of material released, but there have
>been a number of other events that have been more significant in terms of
>radiological impact," Greeves said.
>
>"The event was significant more from an environmental perspective than from
>a human one. There was a large volume of liquid that had to be cleaned up."
>
>On July 16, 1979, residents along the Rio Puerco watched as a 93 million
>gallon slurry of radioactive waste and toxic chemicals oozed 115 miles into
>Arizona after the earthen dam at United Nuclear's tailings pond crumbled.
>The slurry included 1,100 tons of hazardous solid waste.
>
>In the year after the spill, United Nuclear removed more than 360,000 cubic
>yards of sediment from the riverbed.
>
>Ten years later, Navajo leader Ernest Becenti Sr., then the Church Rock
>Chapter president, wrote to the New Mexico Legislature: "Many of our
>community people and their livestock were adversely affected by the
>tailings spill. ... Several years have passed, but our people continue to
>herd their livestock and consume water ... from near the Puerco."
>
>The Church Rock mine opened in 1968. The mill opened in 1977. The mill
>closed in 1982, and it was decommissioned about five years ago, NRC and EPA
>officials said. Last year, United Nuclear was purchased by General Electric.
>
>"They are now in the process of remediating their tailings at the site,"
>NRC spokesman Blair Spitzberg said from Fort Worth, Texas. "They're in the
>final reclamation stages."
>
>"Things are moving in the right direction," Greeves said. "Unfortunately
>they take a long time."
>
>  -----------

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