I sometimes take our water supply and its purity for granted. At least I, like most Americans I think, assume my water is free of harmful chemicals.
The people of Yerington, Nev., a community 65 miles southeast of Reno, have thought their water was contaminated for years, but only recently have they found proof. Peggy Pauly and her neighbors have blamed the abandoned uranium mine for the high levels of uranium in their water. Officials scoffed at the notion, but now, new government testing has finally shown there are dangerous levels of uranium, arsenic, or both in 79 percent of the wells in the area.
For years, many officials insisted that the mine had nothing to do with the amount of uranium. They theorized that uranium occurred naturally in that area. But, new tests have proved that the water is now unsafe to drink, due to the mine that has been there since World War II. Research also found that the contamination came from a groundwater plume that has slowly moved form the mine site over the years.
What were the results of the testing? Testing found there is more than 10 times the legal standard of uranium in the drinking water in the immediate area. A little further north of the mine, the readings is still two to three times the legal standard. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believes that prolonged exposure to uranium like this can cause cancer and damage a person’s kidneys.
How did this knowledge finally come to light? Through the efforts of everyday concerned citizens – Pauly, hydrogenologist Steve Acree, former site project manager Earle Dixon, and Yerington Paiute Tribe environmental consultant Deitrick McGinnis. Pauly organized a community action group five years ago and Dixon had been speaking out about the possibility of the contamination for years. In fact, he was so vocal that he won a court case last year in which he claimed he was illegally fired by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, who owns half the property, for speaking out on the matter. BP, which owns the other half of the site, initially insisted that the mine could not been the cause of the contamination, but now say the mind has an impact, but to what extent, it is not certain.
Now the EPA has declared the site a Superfund site – meaning that it may take millions to clean it up. The state, which has been supportive of mining for a long time, has been resistant to the site being named a Superfund site. Officials fear it may take years to clean up the site.
(This image is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.)
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