Ed Brickey, who is one of the organizers of the event and chair of the Western States RECA Reform Coalition, spoke with Militant reporters in Grand Junction, Colorado. RECA is the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990.

Like his father, Brickey worked most of his life in Colorado's uranium mines. He grew up in Uravan, Colorado, a town condemned in the 1980s by the Colorado Department of Public Health and leveled because of radioactive contamination.

RECA established one-time payments of up to $100,000 to miners or their families and smaller amounts to people who lived downwind from nuclear test sites in Nevada. Compensation payments began in 1992 and as of February amounted to $244 million going to 3,302 people. About the same number were denied compensation because they lacked required records.

Last year, Congress added an amendment relaxing requirements for the radiation compensation program--just after the fund ran out of money. It also extended payments to sick uranium mill workers and ore haulers.  
 
Mining and milling release radon gas
Thousands of uranium miners are sick or dying mostly from lung cancer and other lung ailments. Uranium, a radioactive substance used in nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants, exists in rocks, which must be mined, broken up, and milled. This process releases radioactive radon gas, which decays rapidly to form isotopes that can accumulate in the lungs when inhaled.

"I mined for 12 years at the Union Carbide mine in Gateway, Colorado," Henry Blackwater, who is Navajo, told the Militant. Blackwater has filed a compensation claim with the U.S. government for health problems arising from working as an underground uranium miner.

Two of his brothers, Ray and Husky, died from illnesses related to working for many years in the uranium mines. Husky died in his 40s after 25 years underground, while Ray lived until his late 60s, but had less time in at the mine. Blackwater also believes his wife died as a result of handling his work clothes and from being exposed to uranium dust and tailings in the community near the mine where he worked. He told the Militant that gravel from the uranium mine was spread around his house and the children played in it.

"The mine owners never told us about the dangers of uranium," Blackwater said. Miners would drill holes in the hard rock face to prepare for blasting. Dust created by the drilling process was in the air and got all over workers' heads and clothes. The drilling machines were not equipped to suction dust into filtered compartments as is required in mines today. "After we blasted," he said, "there would be a big cloud of dust and we'd have to let it settle until the next morning to get the ore."

Anna Rosa Blackwater added, "My father mined for 30 to 35 years in different uranium mines. We went with him into the mine where we played and drank the water seeping out of the rocks. We also ate his leftover lunch and washed his clothes. We didn't know it was dangerous. My dad died of cancer. A lot of people died from that," she said.  
 
Miners left with IOUs
Stanley Brewer, an underground uranium miner for 35 years, told the Militant, "It took me 10 years to qualify for benefits. Now I don't know if I'll live to be able to collect them. President Bush talks about all the surplus money they have, but they don't have money to pay miners." Brewer worked in mines in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah and suffers from lung diseases and low blood oxygen.

Referring to all the obstacles placed in the way of miners receiving compensation, Henry Blackwater said, "We have to keep fighting."

During an intensive period of nuclear bomb development and deployment following World War II, Washington established uranium mines in a number of locations on the Colorado Plateau, many on Indian reservation lands.

At first the "uranium rush" of the 1950s, much of which occurred on reservation lands in the Southwest, appeared to be an economic boon for the Navajo people who had been devastated by brutal livestock reductions at government hands between 1932 to 1942. Today uranium is known as "Leetso," or yellow monster, in the Navajo language because of the long-term devastation it has caused.

During this boom the energy companies reaped gigantic profits, while uranium miners, particularly Navajos, were paid wages that were sometimes below the minimum wage.

The industry went bust in the 1980s and no conventional uranium mines remain in the United States today. But disasters and contamination haunt the fragile, beautiful landscape of the plateau just as the mining and milling have destroyed the lives of the miners.

For example, the 40-year-old Atlas mill tailings pile at Moab, Utah, is located 750 feet from the Colorado River. The contaminated hill covers 130 acres and leaks on the average 57,000 gallons of contaminated fluids into the river each day. The radioactive isotopes that are released in the mining and milling process have very long half-lives and are slowly making their way downriver into the sediments and water of Lake Mead, which supplies drinking water for Arizona, Southern California, and Las Vegas, Nevada.  
 
Government negligence
A 1995 report from the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiment concluded that the federal government did virtually nothing for two decades to lessen the risks for miners, despite definitive evidence from Europe that uranium miners were contracting lung cancer and other illnesses from their work. The U.S. Energy Department, which manages the nuclear weapons production program, said in March 1997 that the miners' exposure was "a tragedy created by the government's failure to use available resources" to adequately ventilate the mine shafts and reduce the workers' risks of exposure to lung cancer."

In last year's changes to RECA, an additional $20 million was authorized for cancer screening in areas hard hit by atomic fallout from atmospheric testing of atomic bombs in the 1960s. But some areas that had more fallout than now-eligible areas still are not added, such as Salt Lake County. This is because a federal study in 1998 concluded that virtually every county in America was hit with some fallout.

Miners have formed a number of groups to press their fight, such as the Office of Navajo Uranium Workers in Shiprock, New Mexico, and the Western States Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Reform Coalition, in Grand Junction, where a March 16 meeting was covered by the Denver Post among other papers.

According to the Post, Hazel Cherry, whose husband died of lung cancer in May after 19 years in a uranium mine in Uravan, Colorado, read an IOU made out to her late husband from the Justice Department. "I am pleased to inform you the above referenced claim under RECA has been approved. Regretfully, because the money to pay the claims has been exhausted, we are unable to send a compensation payment to you at this time. When Congress provides additional funds, we will contact you to commence the payment process."

There are more than 1,100 abandoned mines in the Navajo Nation alone. The Navajo Abandoned Mine Lands Department has reclaimed 441 mines to date.  
 
 
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