On 16 July, 1979, the dam breached and 1100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive water seeped into the Puerco River. 1. While the Church Rock spill was the largest destructive incident other instances of uranium poisoning in Navajo lands have been a continuous problem and this one spill was not an isolated incident. And there is a reason for this.“Our generation is afraid of having children,” said Faith Baldwin, who grew up on the Navajo nation surrounded by abandoned uranium mines. His home is surrounded by a beautiful, unforgiving landscape of red rock cliffs, a scattering of Navajo residences and, if you look closely, fencelines with KEEP OUT signs marking the numerous abandoned uranium sites.After 40 years, the problem still persists, and appears to much larger than previously thought.A few weeks later, at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1979, the dam failed, releasing 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive water into the Rio Puerco and through Navajo lands, a toxic flood that had devastating consequences on the surrounding area.“The Church Rock spill symbolizes the governmental and societal indifference to the impacts of uranium development on Indigenous lands,” said Jantz. On July 16, 1979, the worst accidental release of radioactive waste in U.S. history happened at the Church Rock uranium mine and mill site. The Church Rock spill occurred in 1979 and is to this day the largest accidental release of radioactive material in the United States. One in six Navajo uranium miners have been afflicted with lung cancer.
The uranium tailings spill at Church Rock, NM was the largest single release of radioactive contamination in US history By Linda Pentz Gunter On July 16, 1979, the worst accidental release of radioactive waste in U.S. history happened at the Church Rock uranium mine and mill site. Scholars argue that their response was an insufficient response to the drastic situation considering the impoverished Navajo people were not able to advocate for themselves.
the Church Rock community, found no documented human consump-tion of river water. 1,100 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and approximately 93 million gallons of acidic, radioactive tailings solution flowed into Pipeline Arroyo, a tributary of the Puerco River. In 1968, the United Nuclear Corporation (UNC) opened the largest underground uranium mine in the United States in Church Rock. The dam was constructed on an unstable geological site as later acknowledged by records kept by the United Nuclear Corporation themselves. But the largest spill of radioactive material in the United States happened three and half months after Three Mile Island and several thousands of miles west of Pennsylvania. Elevated radiation has been monitored as far as 50 miles away from the initial spill and the radiation in the Puerco River showed 7,000 times the standard amount for drinking water.
The long-term effects of this radioactive exposure have not been studied. And though the Navajo and other New Mexicans nearby were the most directly affected, people as far away as Los Angeles had cause for concern. The mill was closed in 1982 and was placed on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) national priorities list.In 1990, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) mandated “compassion payments” of $100,000 to uranium miners diagnosed with cancer or respiratory ailments. Additionally many of the Navajo people were not able to speak English and authorities did not communicate properly in order warn the residents in the area to protect themselves from the radiation and poisonous water.