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History
of MASE and Collaboration Among the Core and Allied Groups
by
Chris Shuey
MASE
was formed in January 2008 among groups and communities that shared several
common interests — pollution of lands and water and damage to community
health from past uranium mining and milling; potential impacts to natural
resources, health and cultural areas from new uranium development; and a
vision of sustainable rural development built around renewable energy
applications and “green jobs.” The groups represented a cross-section of
the different cultures and ethnicities that, for more than 50 years, have
been adversely affected by uranium development in
New Mexico
and
Arizona
.
Five
community-based organizations emerged from the initial planning for MASE;
these organizations became known as the “Core Groups”:
o
Bluewater
Valley
Downstream
Alliance
(BVDA),
Milan
,
N.M.
o
Dineh Bidziil
Coalition (DBC),
Flagstaff
,
Ariz.
o
Eastern Navajo Diné
Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM), Crownpoint and
Churchrock
,
N.M.
o
Laguna Acoma
Coalition for a Safe Environment (LACSE),
Pueblos
of Laguna and
Acoma
,
N.M.
o
Post-71 Uranium
Workers Committee (Post-71), Grants, N.M.
Several
community groups, faith-based organizations, and non-governmental
organizations that also had long histories of involvement in uranium issues,
environmental justice, and safe-energy advocacy, some of which have worked
with and supported the Core Groups over parts of a quarter century, also
became part of MASE. These
“allied” groups are:
o
Amigos Bravos,
Taos
and
Albuquerque
,
N.M.
o
Haaku Water Office,
Pueblo
of
Acoma
,
N.M.
o
McKinley Community
Health
Alliance
(MCHA),
Gallup
,
N.M.
o
Moquino Water Users
Association on the Cebolleta Grant Land,
Moquino
,
N.M.
o
Navajo Uranium
Radiation Victims Committee (NURVC), Shiprock and
Red
Valley
chapters, Navajo Nation, N.M. and
Ariz.
o
New Mexico
Environmental Justice Working Group, a project of the Southwest Network for
Environmental and Economic Justice (NMEJWG/SNEEJ), Albuquerque, N.M.
o
New Mexico
Environmental
Law
Center
(NMELC),
Santa Fe
,
N.M.
o
Office of Peace,
Justice and Creation Stewardship,
Gallup
,
N.M.
o
Partnership for Earth
Spirituality,
Albuquerque
,
N.M.
o
Ramah Navajo
Community,
Ramah
,
N.M.
o
Red Water Pond Road (RWPR)
Community Association, Churchrock and
Coyote
Canyon
chapters, Navajo Nation, N.M.
o
SAGE Council,
Albuquerque
,
N.M.
o
Sierra Club
Environmental Justice Office (SC-EJO),
Flagstaff
,
Ariz.
o
Southwest Research
and
Information
Center
(SRIC),
Albuquerque
,
N.M.
o
Stewards of Creation,
Albuquerque and
Gallup
,
N.M.
In
2008, MASE held eight meetings to develop the alliance’s organizational
structure and plan and carry out common actions and policy initiatives on
uranium mining impacts and sustainable development.
A strategic planning retreat was held in January 2009 to refine the
alliance’s vision and mission statements, clarify goals and objectives,
and develop a program plan that not only moves the group forward on
substantive issues, but positions MASE to take on more of its own internal
coordination, fund-raising, and administration.
Following the conclusion of the New Mexico Legislature’s 2009
session, MASE revised its 2009 budget and program plan to reflect successes
achieved during the legislative session! on uranium legacy issues.
MASE-Initiated
and Sponsored Actions in 2008
The
groups that formed MASE sought to establish an effective citizens’
movement to address existing uranium mining impacts, thwart new uranium
development, change the region’s debate over the direction of economic
development, and bring national attention to these issues through an
environmental justice analysis. Major
accomplishments of the
Alliance
toward these goals included:
- Establishing
a name and presence in the 2008 session of the
New Mexico
legislature that not only raised awareness about the state’s
“uranium legacy,” but also resulted in MASE-affiliated groups no
longer being ignored in policy discussions on uranium development.
Communities associated with MASE were invited to participate in
interim legislative hearings to address the legacy through proposed
changes in state and federal policy.
- Sponsoring
two tours of uranium-impacted communities for New Mexico Lt. Govenor
Diane Denish, who could be the state’s next governor and who had,
until recently, little exposure to the health, environmental and
cultural affects of past uranium development.
- Co-sponsoring
public talks and legislative testimony by Dr. Thomas Power, a
University
of
Montana
minerals economist, whose study of the economics of the uranium industry
helped to deflate industry’s overblown projections of a new economic
boom from renewed uranium mining and processing.
- Initiating
a campaign calling attention to uranium issues among members of the
environmental justice staffs of USEPA Region 6 (Dallas) and Region 9 (
San Francisco
) following the sending of a letter and public statement to the National
Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (NEJAC) in
Atlanta
in October. This initiative
has resulted in increased collaboration among the two regions,
grass-roots communities and the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED),
and helped to expand the agency’s responses to directives from the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform stemming from the
October 2007 ⡍ ??Waxman Hearings” on the Navajo uranium legacy.
- Providing
citizen testimony to several committees of the Legislature to raise
awareness about the need for (1) comprehensive health studies in
communities impacted by past uranium mining; (2) regional hydrologic
studies to estimate the volume of groundwater contaminated by uranium
mining and processing; (3) increased attention to clean up of abandoned
mines by both state and federal governments; (4) thorough evaluation of
the adequacy of state regulations should conventional or in situ leach (ISL)
uranium mining return; and (5) studies of the economic development
potential of renewable energy applications as alternatives to new
uranium mining.
- Supporting
Bluewater Valley Downstream Alliance by providing Senator Jeff Bingaman
with technical and policy rationales to encourage the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to pay attention to the failure of a 35-year-old groundwater
remediation program at the Homestake Mining Company uranium mill.
- Co-sponsoring
screenings of films on uranium mining impacts and community resistance
in the Southwest in
Flagstaff
,
Ariz.
, in November.
MASE’s
Participation in the 2009 New Mexico Legislature
Among
the commitments of the Core Groups and Allied Organizations at the inception
of MASE was working collectively to increase awareness of the uranium legacy
among members of the state Legislature.
New Mexico
legislators are unpaid citizens from diverse ethnic, economic and political
perspectives, many of whom, we discovered, had little or no knowledge or
understanding of the wide extent of uranium mining-contamination that many
communities live with every day. MASE’s
presence at the 2008 Legislative session, and nearly a dozen committee
meetings and hearings in last summer and fall, started the process of
educating legislators and build! ing support for MASE’s 2009 legislative
priorities.
Several
of MASE’s uranium legacy priorities (see MASE Issues Paper #1,
attached) were introduced as legislation in January, and the MASE
Legislative Team
followed them throughout the 60-day session. Using an e-mail server list and
weekly conference calls, the Team kept the Core Groups apprised of
legislative progress and changing circumstances, and received directions
from the Core Groups on key policy matters. The Team also prepared updated
legislative summaries, fact sheets and issues papers for distribution to
legislators (see MASE Issues Papers #2 and #3, attached).
Most important, more than 20 people who live in communities impacted
by uranium mine wastes and pollution and who are members of MASE-affiliated
groups traveled to
Santa Fe
on sever! al occas ions during the session to testify at hearings and talk
to legislators about their communities’ problems and the need to pass
legislation that addressed the uranium legacy.
Results of this grass-roots effort included:
- Passage
of a memorial (SJM-15) that requests the Federal Government provide
funds for cleanup of orphan mines created for the nuclear weapons
program.
-
- Inclusion
of $150,000 in the state’s budget for further assessment of abandoned
mines.
-
- Defeat
of a bill that would have created a clean-up fund from taxes on new
uranium production — a policy opposed by MASE communities as
tantamount to supporting new uranium mining.
-
- Introduction
of two bills that (1) established a clean-up fund funded by either sale
of severance tax bonds or through the annual capital outlays budget, and
(2) imposed liability for cleanup on any company that mined uranium
after 1900, thus closing that gap in state law that limits reclamation
liability to companies that operated mines after 1971. While neither of
these bills passed, they had wide support among some legislators and
they represented a shift in legislative policy away from funding clean
up through taxes on new mining to funding clean up from existing state
funding sources.
Bills
that MASE backed but which did not pass — funding for a regional health
study and for a regional hydrologic assessment and a memorial supporting
inclusion of post-1971 uranium workers in the federal Radiation Exposure
Compensation Act framework — made their ways through several committees
and helped keep the need for responding to the uranium legacy on the
Legislature’s radar screen. Just
getting this far in the legislative process would not have been possible
without MASE’s presence at interim legislative committee hearings in 2008
and at the 2009 session in
Santa Fe
.
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