CHURCH ROCK, N.M. — Teracita Keyanna grew up in the Red Water Pond Road community, but she never put much thought about her community's location near an area contaminated by uranium.

She spent her days herding her grandma’s sheep, unknowingly letting them graze in the most contaminated parts of the community because there were no fences or signs to warn her of the hazards.

While tending to the sheep, she would take a swig of water she found in nearby puddles, which was nothing out of the ordinary for a Navajo kid growing up on the Navajo Nation. 

She’s now well aware of how dangerous these seemingly innocent acts were, and as an adult she works to educate children about their uranium-contaminated community, lessons she says children shouldn’t have to learn.

Among her teaching supplies are crossword puzzles using words like “uranium,” “yellowcake” and “radiation.” She has coloring books, a scrambled-word activity sheet where kids form words like “open pit,” “debris pile” and “warning signs.”

She also hands out a comic book titled, “Gamma Goat: The Danger of Uranium." The illustrations show a goat teaching sheep about the origin of uranium mining, how the sheep need to stay away from mine pits, and what to be aware of in the community. Morbid learning tools, she knows, but Keyanna said it's vital for their safety and knowledge.

“It pisses me off,” said Keyanna. “This was never done when I was a child. My generation has probably been right along with the mine workers, because I used to herd sheep with these fences down and no one said anything. It pisses me off that I have to keep an eye out on my health and see if anything develops.”

Keyanna is part of the grass-roots organization Red Water Pond Road Community Association, which was founded in 2006 by Navajo residents who live near the Northeast Church Rock Mines, the Tronox Quivira Mines and the United Nuclear Corp. Mill Site. The community is a little over 20 miles northeast of Gallup, New Mexico.

The organization held its 43rd Uranium Tailings Spill Legacy Commemoration last week. On July 16, 1979, an earthen dam owned by United Nuclear Corp. broke and released 1,100 tons of radioactive uranium tailings and 94 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the Puerco River, contaminating the river for at least 80 miles and impacting about 11 Navajo Nation communities. 

A year later, the Navajo Nation filed a lawsuit seeking $12.5 million from United Nuclear Corp. on behalf of 125 Arizona and New Mexico Navajo families for damages they say resulted from the spilling of radioactive water into the Puerco River in July 1979. 

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Residents living along the Puerco River at the time said they were never warned of the dangers of radioactive waste contaminating the water they used for their livestock and crops. Arizona and New Mexico environmental agencies never made it clear whether the water was safe. 

In August 1980, it was reported that the Arizona Department of Health Services warned families living along the Puerco in Navajo and Apache counties in Arizona to avoid the water and keep their livestock out of the river. 

Levels of radioactivity in the river exceed Arizona's maximum limit, the department said. The department began testing water from the Puerco River after the spill.

At the time, Cubia Clayton of the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Division said the danger "is not at a level to cause us any reason for concern at this point."

"There is some evidence, but not a whole lot, that background levels from uranium mine discharges over a long period of time might cause higher levels of radiation in livestock tissue," he said then.

Residents say the community has long dealt with this type of denial about how hazardous the Puerco River is for Navajo families and their livestock. It wasn't until 2015 that Navajo researcher Tommy Rock, who was testing unregulated wells along the Puerco River, discovered uranium levels at 43 parts per billion, well above the EPA limit of 30 parts per billion, in the water.

“The contaminated runoff from uranium mining has degraded the Puerco River and for decades has negatively impacted the people that rely on it,” stated Rock in 2019 in testimony before a U.S. House Natural Resources subcommittee. 

Not only was the spill harmful, he said, but other factors like routine mill operations, unforeseen events and insufficient remediation of mining activities disproportionately affected tribal communities. 

Teresa Montoya, who is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, has family from the Puerco Valley in Sanders. She said it was through Rock’s research that this contamination was finally discovered. After that, the community formed the Puerco Valley Homeowners Association to get the tribe and other entities to address the issue. 

“None of the action happened because the federal or tribal government is going to take it upon themselves to do this,” said Montoya. “I argue it's a community effort, and usually it's because of some sort of grief or trauma. By upholding Diné scientists and researchers like Tommy, who notified that community, they took that data, and they put pressure on the Navajo Nation.”

With more than 520 abandoned uranium mines across the Navajo Nation awaiting cleanup, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency entered into enforcement agreements and settlements valued at over $1.7 billion to reduce the highest risks of radiation exposure to the Navajo people from abandoned uranium mines. As a result, funds are available to begin the assessment and cleanup process at 230 of the 523 abandoned uranium mines.

A 10-year plan on how these funds will be used has been put in place by the Navajo EPA.

“It’s going to take a long time to clean up the uranium mines,” said Chris Shuey, co-investigator for the DiNEH Project and Navajo Birth Cohort Study at Southwest Research and Information Center. “There is only money for 40% of that. There’s no plan by the federal government to commit the kind of resources that it will take to solve this problem, and put people to work, and repair the land to heal the people.”

The Red Water Pond Road Community organization continues to fight for environmental justice and awareness. For the past two years the community and the Navajo Nation have been working to prevent the transfer and storage of uranium-contaminated soil from the Northeast Church Rock Mine Site to a proposed site located only 1 mile away. 

In April, the Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners traveled to the Red Water Pond Road Community and heard from residents who shared firsthand accounts of the traumatizing health and livelihood experiences caused by the mines. 

The transfer of the waste only a mile from the Navajo Nation has been a contentious issue for the community and the Navajo Nation. In 2021, President Jonathan Nez wrote a letter to the NRC opposing a waste dump so close to the Navajo Nation.

The dumping costs to transfer the waste down the road was about $44 million, according to participants in a local radio forum that year. That's millions of dollars less than the $293 million it would cost to transport it to the nearest off-reservation facility, which is why this nearby transfer was proposed. 

“That has always been what they wanted and not the community,” said Keyanna. “The community has always wanted off-site removal. And the reply has always been ‘it’s on your property.’ We were always told this is the feasible solution and we are fed up with feasible. We don’t have a solution, but it's not our job to find a solution. Why does the community have to figure out where it goes?”

Moving out of the community is not the solution and not an option for the 53 families who choose to stay in their homes. The cultural ties to the land is strong, residents say, even if the EPA has tried to erase that by saying the mines were there first and the people followed.

“There was a thing going around that the EPA was repeating, that somehow the mines were here first and the people just followed them,” said Shuey. “Folks out here could trace their lineage a hundred years from that.”

But the advocates were apparently successful, because the NRC sent a memo to its staff to hold off on issuing a final environmental impact statement and safety evaluation report, both of which are required to allow the EPA to transfer and store uranium-contaminated soil from the Northeast Church Rock Mine Site to the proposed site 1 mile away. 

“The delay allows the Navajo Nation to advocate for another alternative than taking the waste across the road,” said Valinda C. Shirley executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency. “We are preparing to meet with our federal partners, such as the U.S. EPA and the U.S. DOE, to discuss other sites to dispose of the Northeast Church Rock Mine waste.”

As the federal government continues to delay the cleanup of these uranium mines, residents fear officials want to wait and hope the Navajo Nation and its people will forget the 40 years of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation and the largest radioactive spill. Keyanna and the Red Water Pond Road Community will continue their annual commemoration of the spill to remind everyone they haven’t forgotten and neither should the federal government. 

“In other locations this wouldn't be a problem at all,” said Keyanna. “The community members who decided they wouldn’t move away, in their minds they’ve lived their lives. They feel if they’re going to die here, then it's going to be for a reason. And a lot of the reason for our elders is that if they leave they’re going to continue the mine work again. We still continue to fight.”

Arlyssa D. Becenti covers Indigenous affairs for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send ideas and tips to arlyssa.becenti@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter @ABecenti.

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