Uranium in Monument Valley

Uranium in Monument Valley

Uranium has affected a lot of Navajos in the Monument Valley area for a long time. For decades people have suffered many types of disease, and just recently the government made the decision to clean up the Uranium mines.  Uranium is very dangerous to humans and live stocks. Uranium is a silvery metallic chemical element that could be made into bombs.  Being around it is not an ideal thing to do. People from the Monument Valley area have suffered lung cancer, heart disease, brain disease, and liver problems, etc.

In 1942 it is known that a Navajo that discovered Uranium on the Navajo Reservation in Monument Valley, Utah. Monument Valley, Utah is a rural area many Navajo people call home. At the time, there was a nuclear arms race going on between America and the U.S.S.R. Discovering uranium on the Navajo Reservation lead to mining beginning in 1948. Many private companies came and hired Navajos in the local area. It was good that Navajos got jobs so they could support their families, but the bad part is they were not informed that Uranium was so unhealthy to be around. Mining was done near homes and contaminated the area such as plants and water which was vital part of everyday necessity to the local people. The United States Atomic Energy Commission and the private companies did not tell the people that breathing in uranium can affect their health. 

More than eight million pound of uranium oxide was produced.  In 1969 mining in the Monument Valley area was stopped. It has been twenty-one years since the first mine was opened and now hundreds of worker that worked there have been exposed to uranium. The majority of the workers were Navajos. Twenty-one years have passed and nobody had told them that uranium is very toxic to the body. Years went on before researchers noticed that people around the contaminated areas suffered major health problems.  

After the Uranium workers discovered their health problems, the mine workers filed for compensation. Not all were successful, due to poor paper work by the companies that operated the Uranium Mines and due to the fact that not all workers were English speakers.  Finally in 1990 they got what they had been asking for. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed by Congress to provide the need for compensation.

A five year cleanup was authorized by the U.S Congress, and one of the first big projects was to clean up the Skyline mine area. The Skyline mine is located four to five miles north of Goulding's Lodge. Goulding's is located five miles northwest of the Utah, Arizona border in southeast Utah.  The families who live there are glad that the cleanup is being done and feel a lot safer living there. With the cleanup being finished, they have removed twenty thousand cubic yards of contaminated dirt and rocks. The cleanup was a success and the people that lived near the area are thrilled that the cleanup was done.

It’s a good thing the Skyline area was cleaned, but the people around the area believed that it should have been done much earlier. There are families that live near the Skyline mine who have been seriously affected by the uranium in the area. One mother has lost two of her sons due to brain tumor and the other with lung cancer. If they had informed the people around the area and the Navajo workers that uranium was toxic to the body, I’m sure the workers would have made more intelligent decisions. Perhaps it would have even saved some lives. 

--Harrison Louie