http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2007/03/22/news/20070322_news_30.txt

By CYNDY COLE - Daily Sun Staff

TUBA CITY - Joetta Goldtooth's father was in his 80s when he noticeably lost weight four years ago.

"I said, 'Dad, you're getting thinner and thinner,'" Goldtooth remembers saying. "He said 'It's old age.'"

But then he pointed at a massive lump in his belly that he hadn't told anyone about.

Goldtooth immediately drove him to a Phoenix hospital, where he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He died less than four months later at 82, having worked sometimes as a laborer at a nearby uranium mill.

Dozens of people who had hauled drinking water from the Rare Metals Corporation uranium mill outside of Tuba City, as well as those who gathered items from the nearby dump, met in Tuba City on Wednesday. They wanted more information and to give comments on what they saw years ago.

They talked about the ill, and of those weren't told about the cancer risks associated with uranium and those who still aren't aware of nearby sites.

Goldtooth's aunt, mother, nieces and nephews live a few hundred yards north of what used to be the Tuba City dump, an area in the city's back yard that's now known to contain radioactive waste at shallow levels.

A plume of radioactive water from this same dump containing uranium mill tailings appears to be heading toward springs used for drinking water by two Hopi villages near Tuba City.

The Department of Energy has said there is no evidence Rare Metals Corporation employees dumped radioactive uranium waste into the Tuba City dump.

But chemical data shows a close relationship between what was mined at Rare Metals and what has been found at the dump.

This chapter of the Navajo Nation has asked that all waste be removed from the landfill, by resolution.

Ed Singer, of Cameron, is a self-employed artist and a Navajo-English translator. He's heard court cases and mediations on this subject.

About six people testified three or four years ago that they saw Rare Metals trucks dumping waste in the Tuba City dump, and sometimes in other places outside of the landfill, Singer said.

"They (members of the public) were never warned about the danger, so they would go in there and salvage the barrels, the lumber, the buckets, and the kids would have a heyday finding toys," Singer said.

Meanwhile, mill workers and their spouses testified about birth defects and miscarriages. One woman testified that the mill workers would start coughing up or vomiting blood, then die soon afterward.

"It was only later that people would say that uranium was dangerous," Singer said.

Children scouring the dump found boxes of the metallic marbles used in the ore refining process. Several people at Wednesday's meeting had taken some marbles home in their pockets.

Gilbert Fuller, now of Tuba City, lived in a trailer close to the Rare Metals mill because the land was available. He took drinking water from the mill site, which is now a federal uranium cleanup site because of pollution in the tailings.

"Here I said I was drinking that water over there," he said, wondering about health consequences like cancer.

And the Tuba City dump was hardly the only local site containing radioactive waste or leftover tailings.

"What we're finding is that there are a lot of dumps in the area of the landfill that have a lot of radiation," said Bill Walker, a geochemist who's done contract work in the area.

Sites across from the uranium mill, a few miles farther east, have also been found to have high levels of uranium-related metals, said John Krause, the Bureau of Indian Affairs official managing this matter for the agency.

Walker has suggested air quality monitoring for the area.

Goldtooth's family, the Yellowhairs, raises sheep, cattle and horses. The animals sometimes graze at the dump, finding leftover oranges and apples.

The Yellowhairs eat the sheep and cattle.

Her father collected aluminum cans at the dump.

Goldtooth petitioned to have the dump closed in the early 1980s. Other residents had complained of dumping day and night and trash burning that lead to respiratory problems.

In 1997, some sand was put over the top of the dump and the site was partially fenced off.

Fighting to close this dump for two generations, Goldtooth blames her father's death on the drinking water they were hauling from the uranium mill, his jobs there and his frequent visits to garbage heaps they would later learn were toxic.

"I do feel that my people were betrayed," Goldtooth said. "And now even the government tries to deny they were at fault for some of these things."

Cyndy Cole can be reached at 913-8607 or at ccole@azdailysun.com

Who to call

Leo Oserow, at (303) 763-7188 and Anntoinette Renne Pino, (505) 884-4250, are private consultants hired to collect data about what is in the Tuba City dump for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, if you have information you would like to share.