"When a foreign company started exploratory drilling for the possible return of uranium mining near #ChurchRock, community members say they were not informed in advance.
“It was a complete shock,” Jonathan Perry, the director of Eastern Navajo #Diné Against Uranium Mining, said of the process that started this winter.
"The eastern Navajo Nation communities have stood largely in opposition to future uranium mining for decades.
"'The majority of Diné people have been personally impacted by (uranium),' Leona Morgan, an activist and member of Navajo Nation, said.
"The Navajo Nation has a moratorium dating back nearly two decades that prohibits uranium extraction, but the Eastern Agency consists of what is known as checkerboard. That means federal and state lands are intermixed with Navajo, or Diné, lands and allotment lands.
"#LaramideResources, a Canada-based company, plans on extracting uranium from an area within the checkerboard that is not tribal land.
"The work would occur near the same location where, in 1979, a dam breach released 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of #RadioactiveWater into the #RioPuerco, which the nearby Navajo communities relied upon for water.
"Decades later, the spill, along with mine and mill sites in the area, remain unremediated. Earlier this year, the U.S. NRC issued a record of decision as well as a license amendment that will allow the #UnitedNuclearCorporation—which owned the site where the spill occurred—to dispose of mine #waste from the old uranium mine at the old mill site.
"Morgan said there are concerns that this disposal method in an unlined pit could lead to a second spill happening, especially as climate change increases the risks of extreme weather events like monsoon floods."