Monday, June 15, 2009

Navajo uranium clean up


For four decades after World War II, Navajos built homes with uranium ore and mill tailings from the uranium mining activities on the reservation, not realizing the risk from contamination. Now EPA is undertaking a $3 million per year effort to remediate or tear down and rebuild contaminated structures, according to a story in today's Arizona Republic. [right, former miner Joe Ray Harvey at an abandoned uranium mine near Cove, Arizona. Photo credit Doug Brugge/Memories Come To Us In the Rain and the Wind]