The two mines on the reservation, Sherwood Mine and Midnite Mine, have not been active since the ’80s, and the Midnite Mine was declared a Superfund site in 2000. The mine was operational from 1955 to ’81 and now contains several open pits filled with heavy radioactive metals and water.
Midnite Mine was operated by a subsidiary of the Denver-based Newmont USA Limited, one of the largest mining corporations in the world. It’s long refused to pay for the cleanup of the mine. But last year the Environmental Protection Agency won a lawsuit that requires Newmont and its subsidiary, Dawn Mining Company, to help pay for cleaning up the abandoned mine.
The environmental impacts have been devastating to the land out there. There’s, once were mountains, it’s gone, and it’s piles of waste rock that are left over. And for twenty years, during the first twenty years of operation, the mine ran without any water treatment at all. And so, in 1981, they finally started treating the water. And now, even with the cleanup plan that’s estimated at about $280 million, it’s treatment in perpetuity. So this, will never be totally rid of this environmental impacts. And then that also impacts the culture of the tribe, because we do rely on subsistence, and so fishing and hunting in that area.
The Spokane Reservation is about forty-five miles northwest of the city of Spokane. And when the mines opened, the workforce was largely tribal people, and a lot of women worked in the mines at that time. And so, we’ve heard a lot of stories of women that worked there that were placed in certain positions because they were over childbearing age. Lot of people affected illnesses related to the mine and the contaminants at the mine.
Discussion: Twa-le Abrahamson, Amy Goodman.
Twa-le Abrahamson, Youth coordinator and a founding member of SHAWL (Sovereignty, Health, Air, Water, Land) Society, a grassroots organization whose major focus involves developing community education and strategies to address impacts of radiation exposure due to over fifty years of uranium mining on the Spokane Reservation.
– from democracynow.org