HREF="http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0415AZ--
URANIUMM.htm
l">
Uranium Miners, Families Bring Tales of Pain to Washington</A>
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0415AZ--
URANIUMM.html
Uranium Miners, Families Bring Tales of Pain to Washington
Associated Press
Apr. 15, 2000 11:50
WASHINGTON - Just like his father, Earl Saltwater Jr. got his
first job
30 years ago in one of the uranium mines that dotted the arid
mesas
and
canyons in and around the Navajo reservation.
Now Saltwater is worried the effects of radioactivity from
those
mines
will kill him one day. Just like his father.
"They did experiment on us like guinea pigs. It makes
me angry,"
Saltwater said as he sat on the steps outside the U.S. House of
Representatives. "I would have lived longer, but they gave
me a
shorter
life on this earth."
Saltwater was one of nine Navajo uranium miners and miners'
dependents in
Washington last week to lobby for changes to a 1990 law compensating
some of the Cold War's domestic casualties. A bill passed by the
Senate
and pending in the House would make it easier for uranium miners
and
victims of fallout from open-air nuclear tests to get federal
payments
of up to $100,000.
The miners worked in shafts with few safety measures to dig
out the
uranium used in nuclear weapons and atomic power plants. Sen.
Orrin
Hatch, R-Utah, said he wrote the Senate-passed bill because "we
should
not add a bureaucratic nightmare to the burden of disease and
ill health
that these citizens are carrying."
The proposal would expand the list of diseases and slash the
amount
of
time a miner had to have spent working with uranium to be eligible
for
the compensation program. It would open the program to those who
worked
in open-pit uranium mines and uranium milling plants, as well
as
underground mines.
The bill also would streamline the application process and
eliminate
some
of the barriers for American Indian miners, such as disqualification
for
smoking during religious ceremonies or refusal to recognize undocumented
marriages to compensate miners' widows.
Saltwater said he had to fight that bureaucracy for five years
before his
father got compensation in 1996, before he died. Saltwater carries
a
fading, black-and-white photo of his father standing outside a
uranium
mine, holding a shovel and dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a miner's
helmet. That helmet was all the safety equipment he got, Saltwater
said.
"It's hard for anyone to be qualified" for compensation,
Saltwater
said.
"That's where it really hurts me a lot. My people are dying.
My father
died. My mother died ... Every single miner should be compensated
for
the injustice that has been done to us, regardless of our condition."
Saltwater blames his current hearing loss, kidney disease,
diabetes
and
breathing problems on his work in the uranium mine, though he
only
worked for about six months in 1968 and 1969. He said he was fired
because he was sickened and started vomiting in the mine.
The mine had no bathroom facilities, so miners drank radioactive
water
and cleaned themselves with soft, doughy chunks of uranium ore
after
relieving themselves, he said.
"I worked almost like a slave" for $1.70 an hour,
Saltwater said.
The Navajo group supports further changes to the law, including
increasing the maximum payments to $200,000 and directly compensating
miners' families exposed to radiation themselves.
Gilbert Badoni of Shiprock, N.M., said he and his siblings
played in
uranium mine tailings and drank radioactive water during the decades
his
father worked in uranium mines in Colorado in the 1950s and '60s.
Badoni
said his father would come home covered in yellow uranium dust,
which
covered everything in their small home when their mother brushed
it off
the clothes.
He blames his lung problems and his siblings' cancers on that
exposure. "The U.S. government has abused innocent women
and
children. They have
abused my family," Badoni said, choking back tears. "They
have abused my
Navajo people. That's not right."
As of last month, the government had paid more than $244 million
in
compensation to 3,302 people, including 1,523 uranium miners,
according
to the Justice Department office which oversees the payments.
The
program covers miners who worked in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado,
Utah,
Wyoming and Washington state.
The bill pending in the House would extend the program to
cover
miners in
North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Oregon and Texas.
The Navajo group sold 2,500 traditional Navajo meals of coffee,
frybread
and mutton stew to pay for their trip to Washington, said member
Sarah
Benally of Delores, Colo. Benally, whose uranium miner father
died of a
lung ailment but could not be compensated under the current law,
has
been lobbying Congress on the issue since the 1970s.
People have to listen to us. If they don't, we'll come back
again.
We'll
keep coming back until something is done," she said.
------- End of forwarded message -------
************************************
Bob Dorman, KD7FIZ
redorman@theofficenet.com
"The Activist Page"
http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/welcome.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GET WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE FREE! GET THE OFFICIAL COMPANION
TO TELEVISION'S HOTTEST GAME SHOW PHENOMENON PLUS 5 MORE BOOKS
FOR
$2. Click for details.
http://click.egroups.com/1/3014/7/_/468875/_/956162363/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a BIGMTLIST post.
Email addresses---
To Post message: BIGMTLIST@onelist.com
To Subscribe: BIGMTLIST-subscribe@onelist.com
To Unsubscribe: BIGMTLIST-unsubscribe@onelist.com
For more information on this on-going human rights crisis in the
United States, visit my web page at http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/pagea~1.htm