ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — There are hundreds of abandoned uranium mines scattered across the Navajo Nation.
The clean-up process has been slow for those who live right in the heart of them. For many, it’s been a decades-long fight for the removal of “hot dirt” and there’s still no real end in sight. Red Water Pond Road Community Association is home for Edith Hood. She and her family have lived there, a few miles east of Gallup, for generations.
“We had a medicine man living across the way,” she said. It’s a remote village on Navajo land surrounded by beauty and radioactive waste. There is tons of “hot dirt” left behind from the nearby abandoned Northeast Churchrock Uranium Mine and the abandoned Kerr-Mcgee Uranium Mine Complex.
“This uranium, it’s in the air, the soil, the water, everywhere,” said Hood. She is also the community association’s president. Teracita Keyanna also grew up here and believes the place she loves so much is killing her family.
“We suffer from respiratory illnesses, cancers, different kinds of skin ailments, there’s a lot of things that happened,” Keyanna said. The community members have been asked by many people why they choose to live in that environment if they believe it’s toxic.
For the rest of this article: https://www.kob.com/albuquerque-news/4-investigates-abandoned-uranium-mines-continue-to-threaten-the-navajo-nation/5462132/