From The Telluride Daily Planet (Matthew Beaudin):
[Doug Brugge, a professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University] is in town this week to discuss the issue in a talk titled “Dirty Secrets: the Health Effects of Uranium Mining — New Research.” The discussion is free at 6 p.m. Monday at the Palm Theatre and comes at a particularly relevant time, as Montrose County Commissioners gave their approval of a uranium mill to be built in the lonely reaches of western Montrose County, between here and Moab, Utah, in the fall of 2009.
Now, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is reviewing the proposal and will issue a final decision sometime in January. The mill’s approval would be the first in 25 years and has become a polarizing issue around Telluride, a town founded on mining that is now dependent on tourism. Those near the planned mill and from communities that participated in the first atomic boom generally support the idea and say their towns need jobs desperately while some Telluriders have taken a hard line, believing the environmental and health risks are too great.
Brugge is from the Southwest — he grew up in Gallup and Albuquerque, N.M. — but didn’t align his research with the region because of his roots, he said. Once he left school, he visited the reservation with his father. At the time, Brugge was working in environmental health and saw a Navajo newspaper story on the issues in uranium mining, which had cast a long shadow over the Navajo Nation.