Thursday, March 28, 2024

Red Water Pond resident testifies at international hearing

Red Water Pond resident testifies at international hearing

CHINLE

A resident of Red Water Pond Road, the Church Rock, N.M. neighborhood perhaps most affected by the legacy of uranium mining, was among 10 to 15 people testifying about the right to clean water Friday at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C.

With only five minutes allotted per speaker, Edith Hood managed to give the commissioners a brief history of uranium mining in Church Rock, and how the people there, many of whom worked in the mines, did not know the health effects of radiation until years later.

“As children, we played in the tailings piles,” Hood told the commission, adding that their sheep drank from pools at the mines and some people built their homes out of rocks that came out of the mines.

Hood told the commission, “We face an impossible choice: to stay where we are, or to relocate and give up our drinking water.”

Teracita Keyanna, another Red Water Pond resident who accompanied Hood to the hearing, later explained what Hood meant.

“The government is offering to build us houses in our customary use area about three miles away, upwind and upstream of the uranium,” she said. “But there’s no infrastructure there. Where we are we have water, communication, telephones – but we live in a contaminated area. Still, it’s hard to give that all up.”

Keyanna said they’ve been told there’s no money for infrastructure, but the alternative is to put all 35 to 45 members of Red Water Pond community up in hotels for seven to nine years while they remediate their existing homes – plus pay them a meal stipend since some of the hotel rooms do not have kitchenettes.

“If they can afford to do that, it seems like it would be cheaper to build us some infrastructure,” she said.

Hood was just one of 10 to 15 people who testified at the hearing from all over the U.S. and Latin America.


 To read the full article, pick up your copy of the Navajo Times at your nearest newsstand Thursday mornings!

Are you a digital subscriber? Read the most recent three weeks of stories by logging in to your online account.

  Find newsstand locations at this link.

Or, subscribe via mail or online here.




About The Author

Cindy Yurth

Cindy Yurth was the Tséyi' Bureau reporter, covering the Central Agency of the Navajo Nation, until her retirement on May 31, 2021. Her other beats included agriculture and Arizona state politics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in technical journalism from Colorado State University with a cognate in geology. She has been in the news business since 1980 and with the Navajo Times since 2005, and is the author of “Exploring the Navajo Nation Chapter by Chapter.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Weather & Road Conditions

Window Rock Weather

Fair

56.0 F (13.3 C)
Dewpoint: 19.9 F (-6.7 C)
Humidity: 24%
Wind: from the Southwest at 17.3 gusting to 32.2 MPH (15 gusting to 28 KT)
Pressure: 30.09

More weather »

ADVERTISEMENT