Mark Kelly Advocates For New EPA Office To Help Clean Up Mines In Navajo Nation

2 days ago

During Wednesday's Senate Environment & Public Works Committee hearing, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) advocated for the EPA to explore cost-effective methods for cleaning up mines within the Navajo Nation.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Gomez, good morning. I want to ask you about, for your

00:07perspectives, about a group of Superfund sites, the more than 500 abandoned uranium mines on the

00:15Navajo Nation. I've discussed these frequently before this committee. I want to get your

00:20perspective on how we address this issue. First off, as you may know, the Navajo Nation is spread

00:26across three states, actually four now with a little purchase in Colorado. The majority of the

00:33nation, it's in Arizona. It's about the size of West Virginia, the Navajo Nation in Arizona, but

00:39it stretches into both Utah and New Mexico, as well as, and there are abandoned mines in all three

00:47states, 500, more than 500 of them. And as you may also know, those three states are all served by

00:55different EPA regional offices. Arizona's Region 9, Utah's 8, New Mexico's Region 6. And while Region 9

01:04is the lead office for all issues on the Navajo Nation, we've run into issues because of this

01:10split jurisdiction. For example, mines just off of tribal land are coordinated through other regional

01:18regional offices. And often it's other EPA regional offices in New Mexico or Utah that have relationships

01:26with hazardous waste landfills and contractors and responsible parties to carry out this mine

01:33cleanup. Mr. Gomez, are you aware of other similar instances where a group of Superfund sites stretch

01:42across EPA regions? That's a really good question. And I'm not aware that that is the case, but we can look

01:53to see if other tribal nations, right, are sort of spanning across multiple EPA regions. But at this point,

02:03I can't recall of one, but we'll double check. Okay. And so Congress has periodically established

02:10geographic offices at EPA to help carry out programs within a region that faces similar

02:16issues by virtue of geography, including the Great Lakes office or the Chesapeake Bay office.

02:22When it comes to Superfund cleanups, what role have these offices played in helping to coordinate

02:28circle efforts in a more streamlined fashion? Yeah, I'm not sure that we've done work on that,

02:35but we can look at that. So I am obviously very familiar with the Great Great Lakes office. As you noted,

02:41that's a separate office as well. And we can look to see to the extent that they've worked with the EPA Region 5,

02:49in this case, for the Midwest, to see whether they go back and forth and share information. That's a good question.

02:57Yeah, I think my sense is that they probably do. Okay. Another challenge that has been faced in

03:05cleaning up the Navajo Nation mines is that the remedial actions identified for mine sites are

03:12extremely costly and it's technically challenging. In many instances, the preferred solution would require

03:17digging up hazardous waste rock and transporting it hundreds of miles to a waste repository. And this seems

03:27like a classic case of needing to find a new and different technological solution to address this

03:35kind of cleanup. So Mr. Gomez, what tools and authorities exist within the Superfund program to help accelerate

03:41research and development efforts to find new and more efficient and more cost-effective site cleanup methods?

03:48Sure. I mean, so currently the Office of Research and Development at EPA is the one that does a lot of

03:53that research that the Superfund program relies on, for example, on toxicity studies, on research on new

04:00technologies to make sure that the remedies are working as intended. So there are those opportunities

04:09there that are currently taking place and go back and forth. And you are right that mining sites are the

04:14sites that are very costly. So in our past work, when we've looked at the cost to remediate sites, mining sites

04:21are pretty high because of the things that you talked about in terms of having to dig it out, transporting

04:27the waste, removing it off site, then treating it. So those are challenges for for EPA. Well, it's good that

04:34you at EPA there, EPA has research and development efforts underway to solve challenging problems like

04:43this. I'll note that a lot of the West faces very similar issues to what we're seeing on the Navajo Nation.

04:52And I think the entire region could benefit from the expertise of a geographic office, like the Great

04:57Lakes office. So that's why Senator Lummis and I introduced legislation called the Legacy Mine Cleanup Act,

05:06which would authorize an Office of Mountains, Deserts and Plains at EPA to address issues unique

05:12to the western United States. So Madam Chair, I know we've had a good conversation with your staff,

05:19and I hope to find a path forward for this legislation through the committee process here in coming

05:24weeks. Take a look at it. Thanks. Thank you.

05:26Mm-hmm.

05:31Mm-hmm.

05:38Mm-hmm.

05:42Mm-hmm.

Mark Kelly Advocates For New EPA Office To Help Clean Up Mines In Navajo Nation

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