Dawn, one of the most glorious phenomena in creation, was appropriated in the '50s to name a uranium mining operation extracting ore for nuclear bombs and power from the heart of the Spokane Indian Reservation. This twist of meaning was a sign of things to come. In 1981, after milling operations ceased, the Dawn Mining Company's parent, Newmont, started using similar Orwellian slight of tongue to squirm out of actually cleaning up its mill site, located on the border of the reservation. Instead, Newmont, the most lucrative gold mining company in the nation, advocates cleaning up by getting dirtier.
In the years since the mine and mill closed, the local community, which has consistently opposed the dumping scheme, has been showered with a barrage of semantic contortions as Newmont promotes its plan to convert the old uranium mill, 35 miles northwest of Spokane, Washington, into a radioactive dump. The plan is to sell space in a gigantic 28-acre, 70-foot-deep hole at the Dawn site to parties possessing radioactive dirt. In its clever machinations, Newmont has made the word "dump" synonymous with "clean up," turned public outcry into so-called strong community support and steamrolled the whole process into a supposed "win-win" situation.
Newmont's plan promotes the transport of radioactive dirt by train from as far away as Tonawanda, New York, to Spokane, where a convoy of 36 five-axle trucks would complete the trip out of town and down a winding two-lane country road every day for the next five years. That's a loaded truck every 12 minutes.
The environmental impacts of hauling 20 million cubic feet of radioactive dirt across the United States to the site were never assessed during the environmental impact statement process. The site itself sits above the Walkers Prairie Aquifer, which has already been contaminated by Dawn's uranium milling operations. In 1989 the Washington state health department ordered Dawn to pump millions of gallons of water out of the aquifer to remove uranium and sulfate contamination. This water is now evaporating from plastic-lined ponds stretched over 100 acres of the Dawn site.
The Spokane Tribe has initiated several lawsuits opposing the dump, citing a threat to tribal waters under the reservation. Dawn Watch has also fought the plan in court. But in June 1998 Dawn Watch's bid to force the state to abide by its own administrative code, which prohibits dumping radioactive waste from an outside supplier on private property, failed. Though the tribe recently filed a discrimination suit in federal court in relation to the dumping scheme, the only thing stopping Newmont from opening its dump is that it has not successfully bid on any toxic dirt.
Newmont has tried to keep the issue local, but the Dawn dump would be the nation's first successful mill-to-dump conversion. As early as 1990, Spokane Tribal Chairman Warren Seyler predicted that if Newmont is allowed to get out of its clean-up responsibilities, other mining companies will demand the same consideration. As it turns out Umetco Minerals Inc. tried it unsuccessfully in Colorado in 1994, and the Quivara Mining Company wants to dispose of radioactive material at its Ambrosia Lake facility near Grants, New Mexico. Unlike Washington, the state of Utah is exercising some foresight and asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reconsider a decision to send 25,000 cubic yards of radioactive tailings to the White Mesa Mill, near Blanding, Utah. The material would come from Tonawanda, New York, one of the sites Dawn has been wooing for its radioactive treasures.
Meanwhile, Newmont and the Department of Health are still insisting the Dawn site isn't really a dump. However, American Ecology, parent of US Ecology, the commercial low-level waste manager at the Hanford, Washington, nuclear plant has been selected as Dawn's first choice to oversee the dumping. US Ecology and American Ecology were recently the subjects of a Government Accounting Office study sparked by concerns over the proposed low-level waste dump in Ward Valley, California, which US Ecology was promoting. The study says American Ecology has disposed of significantly larger amounts of plutonium at Hanford than had previously been identified and that a similar scenario occurred at its Nevada and Kentucky sites. Radioactive material has leaked from all of these facilities.
For all the fearsome ways that the Dawn dump is a warning of things to come, it is also just the most recent example of an established patternïa low-level nuclear waste dump proposed on Mojave land at Ward Valley, California; toxic waste dumps in one of Texas' poorest Hispanic communities; a nuclear waste repository on the Western Shoshone's Yucca Mountain; and now a toxic dump next to the Spokane Indian tribe.
But there's reason to believe the bad guys will finish last. Working in coalition, Natives, locals and Earth First!ers were able to defeat the dumps at Ward Valley and Sierra Blanca. May Newmont be next and Yucca Mountain follow closely on its heels.
Though the dump could open at any time, its current license expires on February 28, 1999. The Department of Health is currently accepting public comment relating to the relicensing of the mill site as a disposal facility for radioactive dirt.
Send comments to Gary Robertson, Department of Health, Division of Radiation Protection, POB 47827, Olympia, WA 98504-7827.
Contact Dawn Watch at POB 193, Springdale, WA 99173; (509) 747-3552; aloafofbread@yahoo.com; www.dawnwatch.org.