And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: How Much Is Too Much? Officials Argue While Uranium Leaks "There is nothing like radioactive material in their drinking water to make the public upset," explains Mark Buehler, a Moab, Utah district water quality director. He is referring to a huge pile of uranium mill tailings 750 feet away from the Colorado River at Moab. That's 10.5 million tons of radioactive and toxic waste left over from 20 years of uranium processing by the now-bankrupt Atlas Corporation, which ceased operations during 1984. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Utah officials are arguing about how much uranium -- a lot or an awful lot -- is leaking into both groundwater and the river. The Colorado River supplies drinking water for 25 million people. Estimates set the cost at over $100 million to move the waste pile to a plateau 18 miles away. Water treatment plants downstream cannot remove the uranium, which has been proven to cause cancer. Even if the pile is removed, toxic groundwater from under the waste pile will continue flowing into the Colorado River. The NRC has approved the Atlas plans to cover the pile with clay and rock. Utah representatives have introduced parallel bills in the House to force the federal government to excavate and move the waste. Joe Holonich of the NRC said that Lake Meade, along the river's course, is big enough to dilute the radioactive water. He claims that the leaking mill tailings adds "a sliver of uranium to a large amount of uranium that's already in the river from upstream" uranium deposits and abandoned mines. Excessive Uranium Found In Worker's Bones Who Protested "We turned the badges in and that was the last we heard of it," said Al Puckett, a retired union shop steward who worked at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, "No one ever said anything to us." The Paducah plant supplied radioactive fuel for nuclear bombs. Now long-overlooked medical evidence shows that for some workers radiation doses were far higher than previously believed and may have been dozens of times above the federal limits. The exhumed bones of uranium worker Joseph Harding, who died in 1980, offers the strongest corroboration to date of hazardous conditions inside the plant, where workers labored for decades in a haze of radioactive dust that was sometimes laced with plutonium. DOE Secretary Bill Richardson called Harding a "hero of the Cold War," but for nine years before his death, Harding's claims of radiation exposure were vigorously challenged by contractors (at that time, Union Carbide, Martin Marietta, and Lockheed Martin) and DOE officials who insisted that the plant was safe. Before his death, Harding developed stomach cancer, lung perforations, and growths on his limbs. Harding had insisted that the plant always had a dense fog of uranium dust and smoke that would cling to workers' skin and coat their throats and teeth. A DOE study in 1981 attributed Harding's death to a combination of smoking and eating country ham. A new study is also tracking death rates among workers at the K-25 plant in Oak Ridge where there is an unusually high rate of lung and bone cancer among workers, as well as a third facility in Ohio. DOE admits it is now clear that uranium workers were not properly protected until at least 1990. "This reaffirms our decision to get out of the business of fighting sick workers," said David Michaels, DOE Assistant Secretary for EHS on Aug. 20. "Right now we should be bending over backward to help those workers." (Washington Post, Aug. 22, 1999. For more radiation victim information go to http://www.downwinders.org) Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ UPDATES: CAMP JUSTICE http://shell.webbernet.net/~ishgooda/oglala/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
