White Plume: Keep out! Radioactive Sacrifice Area

By Debra White Plume

Powertech USA Inc. is embarking on a path of destruction from which there is no return. The company plans to start in situ leach mining in South Dakota’s Custer and Fall River counties that will puncture through four aquifers on the Great Plains and endanger a fragile geologic system.

As a result of ISL mining planned at the Dewey-Burdock site – 12 miles northwest of Edgemont – we on the Plains must face the threat of groundwater contamination for generations, while the corporate leaders reside far away in their homelands of Canada and France.

This new corporation has no history of accountability in adhering to environmental laws or in the clean-up of a mined-out area. There are thousands of reports by mining corporations that document problems trying to contain uranium-laden water at mine sites, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Web site.

Will this new corporation – which will be mining uranium in an area with thousands of improperly abandoned boreholes and fractured aquifers – have the capacity to contain the radioactive water it plans to pump to the surface through miles and miles of pipe? Pipe which leaks, according to the NRC.

Powertech plans to start in situ leach mining in South Dakota’s Custer and Fall River counties that will puncture through four aquifers on the Great Plains and endanger a fragile geologic system.

Powertech knows about the thousands of uncapped boreholes in their mine permit area, and about the horizontal and vertical faults and fractures between aquifers through which groundwater can spread thorium, radium, arsenic and other contaminants disturbed with ISL mining.

These metals can travel to contaminate clean drinking water which may eventually end up in the pipe that brings drinking water into our homes, or the garden hose that waters our family gardens. Arsenic and alpha emitters make people sick.

The history of earthquakes in the Black Hills makes ISL uranium mining even more dangerous.

Does Powertech have the finances to pay fines for leaks and spills that other corporations have had to pay or to cleanup? It is not clear if the company has the resources to pay for cleaning up its mess, or if water can ever be safely restored.

Powertech’s uranium mining applications to the NRC and the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources were deemed inadequate. But rather than denying the applications, both entities helped revise Powertech’s applications.

The fact that the corporation failed to complete a satisfactory application does not create confidence and makes one wonder about these governmental entities: Are they here to look out for the well-being of people and the environment, or for the mining corporations?

The opportunity to view the public records of Powertech’s 6,000 page application as limited to Internet availability is prejudicial. It assumes that everyone has a computer and Internet access and eliminates untold members of the general public.

Let me be clear, this practice impacts the most vulnerable: The poor and the isolated.

The Dewey-Burdock area is in 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty Territory and in a place sacred to the Lakota People: The Black Hills, the heart of everything that is. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty was ratified by Congress and was never amended. Under international law it is our land.

Our ancestors fought the United States, and many people died, to protect the Black Hills and our homelands. There are hundreds of places in the proposed mining area that have been identified as archeological, historical and cultural sites.

Will this new corporation have the capacity to contain the radioactive water it plans to pump to the surface through miles and miles of pipe?

There are tipi rings, stone cairns, graves; there are eagle nests there which need protection. For a corporation to have more rights than human beings is a violation of our basic human rights.

To keep us away from a sacred place is to kill our people and way of life. What kind of government makes such laws that allow a corporation to turn this into a “National Sacrifice Area?”

The laws of the United States, the NRC regulations, and the individuals who sit behind those desks can honor treaty law, the life way of the Lakota, environmental laws, and demonstrate respect for Mother Earth by denying Powertech USA Inc.’s application to mine uranium.

After Powertech has mined for 20 years, used billions of gallons of water, fouled our aquifers and land, and completed processing its yellow cake imported from Wyoming, Powertech’s board of directors and shareholders will remove the pumps that keep radioactive water “contained,” cap the deep disposal wells storing billions of gallons of radioactive waste, dismantle its buildings for shipment to a nuclear waste dump, lay off the handful of local employees, close its Hot Springs Office, and enjoy their profits back in their home offices in Canada and France.

The NRC staff will file away the paperwork of the Dewey-Burdock Uranium Mine – our homelands. Will the file tab read “Radioactive, Keep Out?”

Debra White Plume is an Oglala Lakota author, artist, and activist from the beautiful Pine Ridge homelands.

The preceding story first appeared on Indian Country Today

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/Keep-out-Radioactive-sacrifice-area-98105464.html

Kȟe Sapa and Paha Sapa – Russell Means’ response to David Swallow

Hello my Relatives,

My name is ‘Works for the People’. I am a Lakotah/Dakota/Crow. I live at Porcupine, South Dakota on the former Pine Ridge Souix Indian Reservation which is part of the sixty-million acres comprising the Republic of Lakotah. I am also known as Russell Means. And I am now more than 70 winters old.

I read the July 5th communique of David Swallow. It saddened me that this younger man retold the history of the Black Hills from the White Athropological point of view. Which, at best, is incomplete, if not a downright lie. According to the former South Dakota State Archeologist whom I talked to in 1985 to be a witness in the trial of Yellowthunder Camp, a spiritual youth camp put on trial by the US Forest Service.

Our origin story takes a full year to explain, because you have to utilize all four seasons. The sacred Black Hills have two descriptions in the Lakotah language. Paha Sapa and Kȟe Sapa. The white man says that Paha Sapa means ‘Black Hills’. I will attempt to correct their interpretation of my language. The word ‘Pa-ha’ is broken up into two meanings: Pa describes the mountains emerging from the earth. Paha Sapa all together gives you a picture and a description of our sacred mountains as seen from a distance. The Ponderosa Pine gives the illusion of black from a distance and the mountains emerging from the earth. Paha Sapa. Therefore, what you see is holy. The words ‘Kȟe Sapa’ also gives you a description of what the sacred mountains look like close up, with the white stone cliffs, the meadows and the trees and the valleys. Therefore, you know it is holy. Think how profound Paha Sapa is. Just by linguistic interpretation, it begs the question, “Were we here at the plate tectonic movements and creation of these hills?” Wow!

A footnote to the above paragraph: International linguists have established that the indigenous languages of the Western Hemisphere are the most expressive languages on Earth. And the world’s languages become less expressive, as you move WEST!

Secondly, in 1975, I attended a Lakotah Treaty Council meeting at Mother Butler Center in Rapid City, South Dakota. At that meeting, was a young attorney from the Oglala Souix Tribe, by the name of Mario Gonzalez. Mr. Gonzalez gave a presentation to the elders present at that Treaty meeting. That presentation was a reiterization of the anthropological claims to where we originated in North Carolina and how we migrated west and arrived around 1750 at the Black Hills. Mr. Gonzalez had a page by page display that was placed on a tripod. The elders present were from most of the Lakotah reservations of the Northern Plains. All of whom had been born in the 1800s. Some couldn’t speak English. Others spoke broken English. None had been to a white man’s school.

At this point I want to mention Wowitan Yuha Mani, aka, David Swallow. He, in his mid-fifties right now, is much like those elders that were present. I must also add that he speaks broken English like the elders and he is a third-grade drop-out (I am proud for him). David Swallow and those elders have a clarity of mind and a purity of heart that only those indigenous peoples who have NOT gone through the brainwashing systems of euro-education.

All of these elders were in their 80s and 90s, one in partciular from the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota stood up after Mr. Gonzalez concluded and humbly began the creation story of our people. Because Mr. Gonzalez does not understand our language, David Spotted Horse announced he would speak as best he could in English. He then gave a very abbreviated lecture on our creation story. Very politely and humbly, Mr. Gonzalez and his lecture were firmly rejected. The beauty of Spotted Horse and our creation story included our oneness with Kȟe Sapa. The facts are, we shared this holy land, along with the Bighorn Mountains, which are also just as sacred to us as the Paha Sapa, with other Indian Nations, and are part of our oneness with creation. All of our elders that are gone talked about the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountains.

May the Great Mystery continue to guide and protect the paths of you and your loved ones.

~Russell Means

America’s Secret Chernobyl – Uranium Mining & Pollution in the Upper Midwest

The following report was produced by Defenders of the Black Hills:

1. World War II ended with the nuclear bomb and introduced the use of nuclear energy for the production of electricity which caused the price of uranium to rise. Uranium mining in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota began in the middle of the 1960s. As the economy of the Midwestern states depends primarily on agriculture, when uranium was discovered in the region, many get-rich-quick schemes were adopted.

Not only were large mining companies pushing off the tops of bluffs and buttes, but small individual ranchers were also digging in their pastures for the radioactive metal. Mining occurred on both public and private land, although the Great Sioux Nation still maintains a claim to the area through the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868, the March 3rd Act of 1871, Article VI of the US Constitution, and the 1980 Supreme Court decision on the Black Hills.

2. In northwestern South Dakota, the Cave Hills area is managed by the US Forest Service. The area currently contains 89 abandoned open-pit uranium mines. Studies by the USFS show that one mine alone has 1,400 millirems per hour (mR/hr) of exposed radiation, a level of radiation that is 120,000 times higher than normal background of 100 millirems per year (mR/yr)! In the southwestern Black Hills, the US Forest Service reported on 29 abandoned open-pit uranium mines, one of which is about 1 square mile in size.

3. It is estimated that more than 1,000 open-pit uranium mines and prospects can be found in the four state region from a map developed by the US Forest Service. The water runoff from the creeks and rivers near these abandoned uranium mines eventually empties into the Missouri River which empties into the Mississippi River.

4. The following agencies are aware of these abandoned uranium mines and prospects: US Forest Service, US Environmental Protection Agency, US Bureau of Land Management, SD Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the US Indian Health Service. Only after public concern about these mines was raised a few years ago did the USFS and the EPA pay for a study in 2006 of the off site effects caused by only 1 abandoned mine.

5. More than 4,000 exploratory holes, some large enough for a person to fall into, are found in the southwestern Black Hills with an additional 3,000 holes just 10 miles west of the town of Belle Fourche, SD near the Wyoming border. These holes go to depths of 600 feet. This exploratory process itself allows radioactive pollutants to cross contaminate underground water sources. More exploratory holes for uranium are being drilled in Wyoming and South Dakota.

6. The US Air Force also used small nuclear power plants in some of their remote radar stations. No data is available on the current status or disposal of these small nuclear power sources or of their wastes. The US Air Force is responsible for monitoring these sites although there is no stopping the radioactive pollution that could contaminate aquifers.

7. In Wyoming, hundreds of abandoned open-pit uranium mines and prospects can be found in or near the coal in the Powder River Basin, and the coal is laced with uranium ore. The coal is shipped to power plants in the Eastern part of the United States.
Radioactive dust and particles are released into the air at the coal fired power plants and often set off the warning systems at nuclear power plants. The same radioactive dust and particles are released into the air that travels across South Dakota and to the South and East in the coal strip mining process.

8. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed a secret Executive Order declaring this four State region in the Upper Midwest to be a ‘National Sacrifice Area’ for the mining and production of uranium and nuclear energy.

Conclusion

This Fact Sheet regarding past and planned uranium and coal mining in the Upper Midwest region should give cause for alarm to all thinking people in the United States. This is the area that has been called “the Bread Basket of the World.” For more than forty years, the people of South Dakota and beyond have been subjected to radioactive polluted dust and water runoff from the hundreds of abandoned open pit uranium mines, processing sites, underground nuclear power stations, and waste dumps.

There needs to be a concerted effort to determine the extent of the radioactive pollution in the environment, and the health damage that has been and is currently being inflicted upon the people of the United States.

It is imperative that a federal bill be passed in Congress appropriating enough funds for the cleanup of ALL the abandoned uranium mines in this four State region. This harmful situation must not be placed on the end of the Superfund list of hazardous sites to be addressed in twenty years. Those responsible for this disaster must be held responsible for the consequences, but the cleanup and health concerns of the nation need to be addressed first. The health of the nation is at stake!

The cleanup of all of these mines and underground sites must begin NOW!

We hope you will consider our request for concerted actions to be taken at the national level regarding these grave concerns. This problem of radiation pollution spreading throughout the United States has been allowed to continue quietly for much too long.

********* What you can do ***********

1. Contact your Congressional Representative and Senators by phone (202) 224-3121, through the mail, and email. Ask that they consider sponsoring a bill for the cleanup of all the abandoned uranium mines and prospects, and underground nuclear sites in the Upper Midwest Region of South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming.

2. Ask your Congressional Representatives and Senators to support the Expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to include also those harmed by abandoned uranium mines and prospects in the Upper Midwest Region.

3. Encourage the use of alternative sources of energy such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Nuclear energy is not the answer and only creates very long term problems to the entire environment.

Thank you!

Produced by Defenders of the Black Hills, PO Box 2003, Rapid City, SD 57709, a nonprofit corporation.
For more information check out www.defendblackhills.org

Water and Energy BHA Report – 1979

A comprehensive look at how aquifers are formed, the toxic state of water and the implications to humans and animals of Uranium mining.

Download BHA Water & Energy Report 1979

–Excerpts–
-Uranium tailings move easily in wind or water because they are fine particles like sand. But they are very different from most sand, because they retain 85% of the radioactivity of the original uranium ore.

-The radiation is measured in “picocuries” per liter of water; a “picocurie” isn’t much, but the U.S. Public Health Service limit for safe water is only 3 picocuries per liter of water.
About 60 water samples taken in the Southwest had from 0.5 to 65 picocuries of radium per liter. Several streams have been declared unfit for irrigation and for drinking by stock and humans. Unfortunately, animals can’t read, and they continue to drink (and die) from dangerous streams.
Another pollutant, selenium, was present in wells near the United Nuclear/Homestake mill at levels 340 times the recommended maximum for drinking water. Studies show that water from mill activities move from streams to aquifers, and that effects on groundwater are “marked.”

-To make things worse, tailings are often stored mixed with water, so they move unexpectedly in a flood or if the dam used to hold them breaks. there have been over a dozen tailings-dam breaks in the U.S., none of which has been cleaned up. The biggest was a spill at the United Nuclear mill in Church Rock, N.M. in July 1979.
The dam break spread 100 million gallons of tailings and water for 50 miles down a river, despite the fact that the dam was “of the newest and safest type approved by federal and state agencies.” Radioactive readings were more than 6,000 times the drinking water standard.

-In 1962, the problem was aggravated by spilling 200 tons of tailings, much of which washed 25 miles then sank into the Angostura Reservoir. Current plans for moving the tailigs will reduce the release of radiation into the air and the Cheyenne, but will not stop seepage through the ground — only slow it down.