The grand canyon an awesome spectacle of nature with a poisoned human legacy uranium mining here during the cold war has left a long term impact on the health of the local population. We used to have the largest birthrate in the nation and now we find we have the highest birth defect. And now there are fears that the trumpet ministration could end the moratorium on your rainy in mining near the grand canyon. Environmental activists here fear the worst once that contamination happens theres no way to take a. Cold war uranium mining also left a toxic legacy in germany communities in what was communist east germany still face the repercussions of contamination. This woman is praying to her ancestors for help and if. Diana you call is a member of the smallest native american tribe in the u. S. The havasupai. For them red butte hill or clenched fist mountain near the grand canyon is a sacred site diana comes here regularly to collect sage brush a plant that said to ward off evil spirits and one that the medicine woman feels in acute need of just a few hundred meters away work is underway drilling the shaft for a year in the a mine. Diana fears for the future of red butte and even the mighty grand canyon. To me its really important for the world the human people to see the grand canyon because it be little to you and you begin to know how you have even this core because youre not. All of it. Here just a little piece of a parcel when you look at the grand canyon. For tourists up above the canyon appears devoid of human life but tucked away inside a deep valley is the village of supai one of the most remote settlements in the u. S. The only way to reach it is by helicopter or enforce the nearest road is thirteen kilometers away. Now if you put just so is one of supai is five hundred residents hes angry at the u. S. Government and its backing for a resumption of uranium mining in the area. Theyre here to help us and supported us but. Its just changed it like you know im not a chapter in. U. S. History. Were being. Desecrated and. Taken advantage of. It all if you. Dont have a supplier dreading the prospect of the uranium mine contaminating their Drinking Water. Water is in every sense an essential element of their lives. Each year the waterfalls attract twenty thousand visitors the villagers are dependent on tourism. The guardians of the grand canyon are preparing for a special ritual the group was founded in protest against a new uranium mine back in the one nine hundred eighty s. When its construction began the mine never opened for operation but it could in the near future. Keep within the grand canyon. One of the most sacred. How to park. Where this. Represents our identity. Like. In times past the havasupai used to live all across the grand canyon. In the Nineteenth Century they were forced to relocate to a narrow gorge. Or to sing this song where everything. Reversionary. The grand canyon these three reprieve for you know we were to be returned to ours. Together with the Environmental Organization the sierra club the havasupai have taken legal action to stop the mine from operating. In germany too uranium mining has taken its toll a toxic environmental legacy of the communist era in east germany. For example some eighty thousand tonnes of uranium were extracted here during the cold war delivered to the soviet union for Nuclear Bombs and to supply Nuclear Power plants. By some the valley of death was one of several dozen mines operated by vis moat a uranium Exploration Company set up by the occupying soviet union. In the one nine hundred ninety zero any a mining was discontinued as a consequence of german reunification the Successor Company also called business which is owned by the german state its job now is to clean up and stabilize the former mines. Many of the mine tunnels are now flooded some are being expanded in order to enable the extraction of contaminated water or improved ventilation. The team here is still uses the old drills from the east german era. Its on top of an underground network comprising four thousand two hundred kilometers of tunnels some reaching depths of almost two thousand meters. Insufficent you know a couple we have a total of eighteen locals its like having a high rise building with multiple stories. And each story theres a huge network of theres all this like thats. And theres a huge amount of work to be done the biggest danger comes from the radioactive gas raid on among the teams jobs is to extract the air from all tunnels still open. To low pressure from the ventilation of the entire mine means that the radon polluted air can only escape at one point around one kilometer from the village. The cleanup operation was originally planned to be over by two thousand and five and cost six point six billion euros that budget is now close to being exhausted well work is expected to continue for more than another decade. But the company in charge is content. The of god is still in for the operations projected budget was very accurate. The figures we have now are not too far off from those original i calculated. The amount spent in todays money totals around eight billion euros through two thousand and forty five months from france was. The kind of budget that people in arizona can only dream of. The navajo reservation to the east of the grand canyon includes around five hundred fifty abandoned mines. Just nine have been cleaned up or stabilized. Environmental scientist tommy rock is investigating the impact today hes taking measurements at a mine your Monument Valley located inside the reservation as you can see it looks like theres no one living here but theres theres one over there theres a couple how those on the float so people. To come up here and they have their livestock graze up here as well like horses cattle and sheep as well so with that theres a different type of exposure being happening at that time as well and with the you can see. Pieces you know or playing around as well when it rains a lot of that will be transported down below. As well for you and it was pretty solid also be carried off by water pretty easily. With devastating consequences the Indigenous People suffer incidence rates for many forms of cancer that are higher than the national average. So why doesnt the Us Government take action tell me suspects that if the mines were located close to White Communities they would have been cleaned up years ago. Especially when it comes through the business population of people of britain already. Of armed forces uses operating in the United States or their canaries greece leaves their girls were. Soon but were expendable which were not. And the navajo are far from the only native people to face a similar situation an estimated seventy percent of the worlds uranium deposits are located on indigenous lands. Activist Vanessa Brown is one of the many navajos to have lost family members to cancer. For decades shes been fighting for change. Our nation the Navajo Nation the largest birthrate. In the nation and now we find we have the highest defect and a lot of it is due to the strip mining of these these elements that are dangerous. To our people the land animals and the water affects everything. Nessa grew up on the doorstep of a uranium processing. Back then a lot of houses were built using stones laced with uranium from the mines people had no idea how dangerous this was. So there was really strange things that happened i had to treat them and i always watered them and the little birds would fall out of the tree. And i couldnt understand. Id find a little birds at the bottom of my trees and. Just certain things have like flashes of light in the night and scaring my dogs and it was like it was like. A Science Fiction movie. But a nightmare that could soon return. Ellison get one works for the sierra club. Its the largest Environmental Organization in the u. S. Ellison accuses the authorities of automatically renewing the canyon mine operators old license without requiring a new Environmental Impact assessment. The mine Operator Energy fuels insists that there is no danger and that uranium mining is now conducted far more responsibly than during the cold war. I think thats ridiculous if youre in your mining today its so significantly different than it was in the past about why wont they revise their plan of operations their plan of operations is from one thousand nine hundred four theres nothing new happening at canyon mine it is a Hard Rock Mine theyre extracting the or to the surface and trucking it to a mill exactly the way they did in one nine hundred eighty s. Theres nothing new here. The u. S. Government is eager to reduce the countrys dependency on your Indian Imports currently its Nuclear Power plants run on supplies sourced from abroad. In two thousand and seventeen Global Uranium production totaled almost sixty thousand tonnes the biggest supplier was kazakhstan with over twenty three thousand tonnes. Next is canada with just over thirteen thousand tonnes and australia with close to six thousand. The us is in one spot the country currently produces just one and a half percent of Global Annual total but its number one in terms of consumption using eighteen thousand two hundred tonnes of your. Any im in two thousand and sixteen. Domestic production covers only a fraction of the u. S. Is demand which is why washington is determined to expand uranium exploitation. Canyon mine is said to be reopened in twenty nineteen. Energy fuels expects the price of uranium to increase to over one hundred dollars a kilo by then making mining profitable here. Alison meets up with fred tillman from the United StatesGeological Survey an agency that reports to the department of the interior. He wants to show her how canyon mine is being monitored. This site is out of bounds to humans at least. Significantly really here the wildlife is moving through to get to the pot accessing that contaminated water. The Geological Agency has installed a number of measuring stations so this is our perched Groundwater Monitoring well and it monitors the quality and the amount of groundwater in the perch level system so it goes down to eleven hundred feet or so about four hundred meters its still not deep enough to catch whether water whether the original brown water is absolutely and we figured if there was going to be an impact to ground water we would probably see it in the program one of the first. But he admits that precious little is known about the lever into the groundwater network under the grand canyon we dont know if water from this area would float towards the grand canyon which is just a few miles from here or if it goes in exactly the opposite direction towards the village without more information well be able to predict if there were an impact or groundwater what direction that would go and how long it would take to get there but the operator doesnt want to wait for the results of any further studies. And the Mining Company as we dont have proof that were going to contaminate the groundwater so. Lets move forward because theres no proof that were going to do harm. In my eyes the stakes are high weve got cranking here weve got. Here weve got the Navajo Nation here and all of these affected people affected wildlife and its just important its graeme king and this is too important. The section the region of the old east germany had a number of uranium mines. In this mood then the operator injected thousands of tons of self cast it into mine tunnels to leach the uranium from the ore deposits. That acid is still underground and continues to extract uranium from the or. To prevent the groundwater being contaminated the visit has to pump the water out of the tunnels day and night. These tanks are then used to filter the uranium out of the mine water. Instead of being disposed of through Radioactive Material is sold. In the mid one nine hundred ninety s. Thats still amounted to six hundred tonnes a year by two thousand and seventeen the figure was just thirty four tons. Of overdoses in mobile unfortunately perhaps fortunately the quantities of uranium we are now producing each year or extremely low thats due to the huge decrease in concentration of the modern water so the revenues are no longer high enough to refinance the separate step of the process basically of no longer makes economic sense instead an alternative has to be strong. For the time being however the uranium produced here in germany is being sold to just one customer. The us based Nuclear Fuels corporation supplies Nuclear Power plants around the world. Where exactly the uranium from germany ends up has not been revealed. The formerly radioactive mind during its water is cleaned in treatment plants. Rendering it safe even to be discharged into the river. In the desert lens of Arizona Water is a rare and precious commodity. One that doesnt wear zero does not have on tap at home which is why he has to pick up his own supplies in his car. That means a forty five kilometer trip three times a week. Around forty percent of the Navajo Nation has no running water. Dustin uses one of the officially sanctioned wells where the Water Quality is subject to regular inspections but many of his people acquire their water from other nonapproved sources which have been found to contain concentrations of uranium that exceed the maximum contaminant levels for Drinking Water and the majority of the windmills are closed off or you put a padlock on it so we can get the water from there. Because some of the windmills or the water the water table and me is poisoned or. Contaminated by uranium arsenic order ph levels too high. So. Drinkable. Dustin is a photographer and an activist. He is also involved in the fight to stop canyon mine from reopening. Frustrated with the authorities dustin and his fellow campaigners interrupt the mine operators transportation or hauling routes. Hall know is an indigenous Led Volunteer group in addition to spreading awareness of the issues they want to prevent uranium from canyon mine being transported through the middle of the reservation to a Processing Plant. Dustins grandmother cecilia jo is proud of his commitment she is the head of their family. The navajo are traditionally a matriarchal society. Cecilia jo worked in a uranium mine while still a young girl she was just eleven the first time she loaded the radioactive war on two horses with her bare hands her sole payment was food. Years later in adulthood she was diagnosed with bowel cancer she was given a one time compensation payment but no long term support. If your grandsons Campaign Fails to bring progress a dozen trucks a day hauling high grade uranium ore from canyon mine might soon be permitted to pass by cecilias settlement. And. Its a building the wind will blow the contaminated dust over to us people will breathe it in and become sick just as i did from working in the mine. I had cancer my tumor was the size of a grapefruit i dont want others to suffer the same fate. But. Your mania mining has claimed thousands of victims around the world. Including in germany. Much spent thirty seven years working for a visit hes since been diagnosed with lung cancer. Once a year he gets a visit from stefan shepherd who works for an Occupational Health and safety association. First they check whether his oxygen apparatus is in full working order as voters sickness is an officially recognized occupational disease he qualifies for support from the association when he started working as a miner he had no idea of the hazardous nature of his work few. People outside the mine talked about the risk of getting lung cancer but you never heard a word about it from the company you couldnt see it. It could only be detected on a Geiger Counter. When it made a lot of noise you knew there was a lot of or there. Around nine and a half thousand former employees developed lung cancer as a result of working in the mines and thats all he gets are you doing with your. Breathing compromised how far can you go when youre outside indoors to even when youre not doing anything when youre running an exploitation began here in the late one nine hundred forty s. The miners work was especially Hazardous Health and safety stipulations were later improved while the radiation the men were exposed to decreased. The higher the volatility or else the more intense the radiation. Thats the crux of the matter. So you dont need to have worked in the mines for long to get sick. But. Considering that there will be hardly any miners from the one nine hundred seventy s. Onwards who suffered the same kind of harm as those who started in one nine hundred forty seven. Dead likewise in the former communist east germany this much is cleaning up settling basins this served iranian Processing Plant across an area covering Thirteen Hundred hectares of land. From. The ground underneath these men is unstable under the surface is a lake of mud replete with residue from uranium processing. The team carefully dries out the land to one section at a time. They use what are called weak drains to remove the water from the underground like so far theyve laid around seven and a half thousand kilometers of the artificial textile casing. To ensure the water flows off along the wick drains the mud is squeezed in similar style to a sponge. Layer upon layer of sand gravel and mineral soil then piled on top of the mud. The work here wont be finished for another ten years germany seems to have a plan for dealing with this toxic legacy the us less so. In the german approach as one essential difference to the us the cleanup operations there are primarily focused on the Processing Plants. Meanwhile little or nothing is done with the mining facility. So as a business to pursue things. Back on the Navajo Nation reservation dustin meets around the rigs whos also a member of hall no theyre examining him now deserted settlement that had been located right next to where your brain Processing Plant. For serrano its an emotional visit. Shes reminded of her grandfather who used to live and work here. A few years ago he died of cancer alone in his kitchen. Nobody had been aware that he was sick because. He had just for now i really think about it i reflected that it really brings me a lot closer to why i am or why really. His is one of a litany of tragic stories all too familiar to everyone in the Navajo Nation. Cultures will be based around stories and you know prayers and songs their language and this day in age all of thats disappearing rhenium really took a lot of the elders away from us and now the stories that were going to be passing along as adults you know on to our children are stories of hurt and pain because of your and because of things that happen to us. A few days later theres a march near the town of blending in the neighboring state of utah. The group is protesting against white mesa mill a facility that process is uranium and Nuclear Waste from across the country. The uranium from canyon mine is also scheduled to wind up here at some point. Here to the operator insists everything is completely safe. But the Geiger Counter suggests otherwise the radiation here is far higher than normal one. And again the people in danger are native americans the youth tribe lives less than five kilometers away. Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh and the fact that its primarily Indigenous People suffering the consequences of uranium mining says dust and is not a coincidence but racism. Exists in a way the cultural genocide genocide on its own terms because theyre not listening to us not seen that were still here first of all life. You know what i know as a Business People can be resilient even though hearts are still sort of stand tall and go against it. And i think sponsor down. A. Little equality for the workers. Can Digital Technology help make our World Affairs place and receive global inequality. Climate change. Waste. Pollution. Isnt it time for good news eco africa people and projects that are changing our environment for the better. Its up to us to make a difference listen to each other. When it comes to the environment magazine. On d w. Shift hash tag. 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