Maggie Billiman says her family and neighbors have been forgotten.
However, she said she hopes a gathering Saturday to commemorate the country’s largest radioactive accident grabs the attention of a government that seems indifferent to the consequences of its Cold War deterrence efforts.
Billiman was a teenager in Sawmill, Arizona on July 16, 1979 when a dam containing a uranium waste disposal pond ruptured sending more than 1,000 tons of radioactive waste and nearly 95 million gallons of radioactive wastewater into the nearby Rio Puerco. Radiation from the spill was detected as far as 80 miles downstream.
It was the third-largest radioactive waste leak ever after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan and the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in modern-day Ukraine.
The wastewater ended up largely on Navajo Nation land.
Navajo people who drank water from the river and used it for irrigation and livestock were only told of the danger several days after the spill, according to Judy Pasternak’s 2010 book Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed.
Kurt T. Mantonya, in a paper published in Nebraska Anthropologist, wrote that 1,700 Diné (Navajo) people were immediately affected by the spill, and more than 1,000 sheep and other animals died after drinking from the Rio Puerco and contaminated streams.
A 2014 National Institutes of Health report shows that the waste heaps near the mill — declared a Superfund site in 1983 — still drew readings 30 years later from invisible uranium atoms on radiation survey instruments.
There was a bipartisan push earlier this year to extend benefits from the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to uranium mine workers and other New Mexicans affected by radiation, including from the Trinity Test site.
However, that effort has stalled.
Read more about that legislation here.
One family’s heartbreak
Some residents of the area say there are still lingering effects today.
Billiman told CityDesk ABQ the spill has resulted in decades of illness for her family and others, and that the Indian Health Service has been slow to help them. She described going through numerous ordeals to try to get conditions verified, often having to start the process again if the doctor they were seeing left the agency.
She’s not alone — communities around the spill have experienced health problems associated with radiation exposure, including various cancers and other illnesses, the scientists union says.
Billiman said her father, Navajo Code Talker Howard Billiman Jr., was among those who got the runaround. She said by the time he was diagnosed, he had Stage 4 stomach cancer. Howard Billiman died a few months later, on the first day of 2001.
Maggie Billiman said she and her nine siblings have all suffered maladies that can’t otherwise be explained. After the family went through a cycle of doctor visits, referrals, cancellations and paperwork, she said, they received compensation of about $5,000 each.
She said her mother was never officially diagnosed with a radiation-related condition, but she believes her death was also related to the spill, or radiation from nuclear testing.
Maggie Billiman said that on the reservation, help is hard to come by, as the bureaucratic process has caused some to miss application deadlines or give up on applying altogether.
Goals
Saturday’s event is slated to start with prayer and breakfast, followed by a walk to the spill site, then a community discussion and speeches.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
WHEN: 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 13.
WHERE: 26 Red Water Pond Road, Church Rock
It’s organized by the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, a network of New Mexico grassroots groups working to stop uranium mining and advocating for the cleanup of uranium mining pollution.
Maggie Billiman, who has gone to Washington D.C. to lobby on behalf of those impacted by the spill, said she’s hoping the event draws attention to their cause and results in better medical care and improvements at the IHS.
She said she’s “disappointed in” Mike Johnson, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Johnson, she said, is stalling legislation that would bring more compensation to radiation victims.
“We want them to know we’re human beings,” she said. “We’re not going to go away.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correctly identify the organizers of Saturday’s event.