Word: mined
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Anaconda made the first discovery of uranium in the U.S. at Laguna Pueblo, N.M., in 1951. Within 20 years, Anaconda's mine has become the largest uranium strip mine in the world, over five miles long and without any prospect for restoring the land to its original condition...
...Kerr McGee began to move out of Shiprock, abandoning uranium mine shafts and the uranium mill in favor of awaiting ore bodies found elsewhere on the reservation. In the early 1970s, the long-term effects of low-level radiation began to take their toll among the Navajo miner workforce. By 1974, 18 Navajo uranium miners had died from radiation-induced lung cancer, with many more near the hospitalization stage. Kerr McGee refused to take any responsibility or to pay medical expenses. As Kerr McGee spokesman Bill Phillips told one reporter in Washington, "I couldn't tell you what happened...
...Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had purchased the uranium for its ambitious nuclear weapons program, and this agency also denied responsibility. The AEC stated that it had jurisdiction over the uranium only after it had been taken out of the mine...
...uranium miner deaths are not enough, Kerr McGee's abandoned uranium mine amounts to something more than an eyesore for the Navajo people. The uranium mill at one time processed raw uranium ore into "yellowcake," discarding tons of low-grade uranium ore called tailings in the process. For every ton of uranium mined, only 2.24 ounces of processed ore results. Although the company is long gone, the 71 acres of uranium mill tailings remain, untreated and exposed in the city of Shiprock. The U.S. Department of Energy now estimates that those persons residing within a half-mile radius of uranium...
Last year, the TVA, Mobil Oil, and United Nuclear Corporation submitted an environmental impact statement for a proposed uranium mine and mill complex in the eastern portion of the Navajo reservation. The BIA made arrangements for the lease in 1970, although Navajos living in the area never heard anything about the proposal until 1978. Mary C. Largo, a Navajo woman of the Dalton Pass Chapter (an area under lease), signed up as a plaintiff in the December 1978 lawsuit after drilling began on her land allotment without her permission. "I never saw any contract papers, I never put my thumbprint...