The Salt Lake Tribune

MONUMENT VALLEY - There was a time when Navajos welcomed uranium mining. It brought good jobs to people left to scratch out a living herding sheep in the desert and, in these scenic parts, to play bit parts in Hollywood Westerns and pose for postcards.

Not anymore.

Last spring the Navajo Nation's governing council banned uranium mining on the sprawling reservation, part of which is in Utah.

"Lives and more lives - that's what's at stake," said Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr., explaining the prohibition. "I've lost hundreds already."

Navajos living in uranium-rich Monument Valley welcome the new law. They lived near the mines and sent their men into them. Here, the damage from uranium lives among them, like a nasty neighbor.

Mary Cly Holiday raised her family at the foot of a tall, redrock mesa just below the Moonlight Mine, a few miles up the road from the Gouldings Lodge. Her husband, Billy Boy Holiday, hauled uranium from it, and she earned money cooking for miners and cleaning their dusty clothes.

Ore poured down to the valley floor, where gondola cars hauled it past their traditional hogan house to the road. The fine yellow sand left over from mining helped make an excellent mortar for the hogan.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was in the area four years ago when it tested the hogan for radiation. It found penetrating gamma radiation 25 times higher than the level that triggers emergency action by the EPA.

It measured cancer-causing radon levels 44 times higher than EPA's standard for homes. Soon after, men in white protective gear came in with a bulldozer and razed the house.

But the tale of Holiday's hot hogan did not end there. Her niece's son, who had lived in the round-top home for several years, died a couple of years ago of lung cancer, a disease often blamed on too much exposure to radon. He was 38.

Did she know the dust was bad for her? She shakes her head, "no."

That is the same story told by many Navajos, who, while they would welcome big paychecks, fear for their lives if uranium mining returns.

Down at the Oljato Senior Center, about 10 miles from Holiday's home, one-time miner Tom Atene shares his views through an interpreter, a cousin who kept to sheepherding to stay out of the mines. Atene suffers from lung problems because of his 15 years of working with uranium.

He has been wrangling for years with the federal compensation program for uranium workers and their families. Like many Navajos, he has struggled to come up with the job and health records required for the $100,000 compensation checks.

Will he support mining again?

"Only if he gets compensated. Otherwise, no."

Gregory Holiday sounds amazed at how ill-informed his community was about the danger surrounding the Navajos all those years.

As a child, he and other kids would drink the cool water found in the mines and swim in it. The mining waste was sandy and soft, fun to play in, and they never realized there was a danger.

As an adult, he took radiation safety classes while working the Navajo's abandoned mine program.

"Really," he said, "they weren't informed of the hazard."

He agrees health and safety controls would have to be better before uranium mining is again allowed on the reservation.

Last week, Shirley was lobbying members of Congress in hopes that the ban remain intact. Several uranium companies have expressed interest in mining state-owned lands within Navajo boundaries. He's worried about another "genocide" from uranium mining if non-Navajos snub his nation's new law.

fahys@sltrib.com