Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral website (Arlyssa D. Becenti). Here’s an excerpt:
March 23, 2024
Representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency met with Cove community members last week to discuss the agency’s decision to place the Lukachukai Mountains Mining District on the National Priorities List. Although the meeting was intended to be informational, tribal, Navajo EPA and community leaders expressed their uncertainty about whether the federal government will actually start addressing the cleanup of the abandoned uranium mines that landed the site on the EPA list, also known as the Superfund program. The mining district encompasses Navajo Nation communities of Cove, Round Rock and Lukachukai in the far northeastern corner of Arizona.
“We are looking at what happened in the past and how the federal government could have prevented a lot of this contamination,” said Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty, “could’ve prevented our community from getting sick. What I don’t want them (children) to have to deal with is another three or four decades before actual action happens.”
[…]
Phil Harrison remembers when his childhood community of Cove was alive with family gatherings, ceremonies, rodeos, farming and ranching, but after decades of uranium contamination, those days are a thing of the past…Harrison’s father was a miner in the uranium mines of Cove, which was where uranium was first discovered on the Navajo Nation. Uranium production in the northern and western Carrizo Mountains of the Navajo Nation began in 1948, peaked in 1955 and 1956 and declined to zero again by 1967.