Tribes, county battle over cultural site designation in uranium hot spot PDF Print E-mail
User Rating: / 0
PoorBest 
Written by APRIL REESE, Land Letter   
Friday, 09 May 2008
County officials and Native American tribes are squaring off over a proposed cultural designation for a New Mexico mountain that is both a sacred site and a uranium hot spot.

In response to a proposal from five area Native American communities, including the Hopi and Navajo tribes and the Acoma, Laguna and Zuni pueblos, the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee approved a temporary designation for Mount Taylor in February. The emergency designation will protect a 422,840-acre area encompassing the summit and mesa tops of the 11,301-foot mountain for a year while the committee explores whether the area should be permanently listed on the state's Register of Cultural Properties.

 

But last Tuesday, Cibola County commissioners voted 4-1 to oppose the listing at a meeting reportedly attended by hundreds of people. County officials feel they were shut out of the review process for the designation.

 

"The public wasn't given due process," said David Ulibarri, Cibola county manager and a state senator, who added that most of his constituents are opposed to the designation. "For them to be working on that for a year, and not to have any public meetings?"

 

In his role as a state senator, Ulibarri has asked the state attorney general's office to determine whether the Cultural Properties Review Committee violated the state's Open Meetings Act by not giving sufficient notice of the February meeting.

 

Ulibarri said he is worried that ranchers and hunters will no longer have access to parts of Mount Taylor, which is a patchwork of federal, state and private lands.

 

Mining a mountain

But the real issue, both county officials and tribal advocates acknowledge, is uranium mining: Cibola County and neighboring McKinley County welcome a new uranium boom, while many tribal leaders oppose it.

Last year, the Navajo Nation, many of whose members have endured cancer and respiratory problems that the tribe links to uranium mining during the 1940s, '50s and '60s, barred new uranium mining on Navajo lands.

 

Cibola County, on the other hand, welcomes the economic boost of a revived uranium industry and has approved a resolution supporting the return of uranium mining to the area. According to Ulibarri, a former miner who worked in the Kerrmade Mine in the 1960s, a uranium mining redux would infuse between $30 billion and $50 billion into the local economy.

 

"Uranium does have a lot to do with it," said Ulibarri, referring to efforts to classify the area as a cultural site. "This designation [effort] has been a big play to stop uranium mining."

Furthermore, he argued that the designation and concerns about the effects of uranium mining are not warranted because laws passed in the ensuing decades would better protect the land, water and mining communities.

Anna Rondon, a Navajo activist who has helped communities fight the return of uranium mining to the area, pointed to other reasons the groups are seeking a cultural site designation. The tribes and pueblos hope that such a designation will allow them to be notified when a mining permit is under consideration for Mount Taylor, she said. Religious sites on the mountain are kept secret, so officials do not know whether they are approving activities that could compromise those areas, which are still used by the tribes today, she explained.

 

"These private landowners were in an uproar because they weren't given the opportunity to comment," Rondon said. "I say, 'Join the club.' The different tribes and concerned citizens of the region are not being afforded the opportunity to even comment on this exploratory permitting."

 

Currently, the state does not have to issue public notification of proposed mining activity if officials determine there will be minimal impact. The three uranium exploration proposals for the Mount Taylor area did not involve public notice, and the tribes found out about them after the fact, Rondon noted.

 

The county would have been informed about the proposed cultural site designation later in the process, she added.

 

Katherine Slick, director of the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division, said a cultural site designation does not restrict uses on private property or public lands; hunting, grazing and other activities will continue under the temporary designation and under a permanent one, if approval is forthcoming. But it does create a mechanism for public notification of proposed activities on the lands, she said. "It characterizes what's there, and ensures that the impact on the resources can be known. Hopefully, state agencies can make better informed decisions."

State regulators would have to issue public notice before approving a mining permit or any other major activity on the registered site, she said.

 

In addition, Slick defended the committee, saying it followed the requirements of the Open Meetings Act.

 

A uranium legacy

The battle over Mount Taylor is part of a larger effort by the Navajo Nation to halt new uranium mining. In April, tribal and environmental groups filed suit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's decision to issue a license for a uranium mine proposed for four sites near the Navajo communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock (Land Letter, April 24).

The Navajo Nation is still struggling with the fallout from the last uranium boom, Rondon noted. She says more than half of the 1,500 miners who worked in the mines in the mid-20th century have died from cancer or respiratory diseases.

 

According to the Southwest Research and Information Center's Uranium Impact Assessment Program, hundreds of abandoned mines currently await cleanup and pose environmental and health risks to Navajo communities.

 
Last Updated ( Friday, 09 May 2008 )
 

Syndicate