Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Roca Honda Mine

Chapter 3. Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences
be deposited in the kidney, bone, and liver. The main health impact of ingesting uranium is kidney
disease. There is no conclusive evidence that uranium causes cancer (ATSDR, 2011).
Some workers on the project would be exposed to these substances while on the job. Worker
health and safety is regulated by MSHA, OSHA, and the New Mexico Environment Department
and companies are required to follow their regulations. Worker exposure to hazardous substances
and situations is covered by the field of occupational health and safety, and is outside the scope of
this section. Brief discussions of worker health and safety are included in the “Air Quality” and
“Environmental Justice” sections.
However, potential exposure of community members to dust remains relevant. Community
members, and in particular workers’ families, could be exposed to radioactive mining dust if dust
is inadvertently carried home by the worker on his/her clothing or person.
RHR has developed a system to reduce the exposure of workers and their families to mining dust.
When workers exit the mine they would immediately enter personal change stalls where they
would change from their soiled mine clothes into their street clothes. Mine clothes would be
placed in a basket and removed from the work stall, washed, and returned to the worker for the
following shift. All soiled clothes including boots would remain onsite. Miners will also have
showers in their stalls to clean thoroughly before returning home in their clean clothes (Velasquez
et al., 2012). These methods would greatly reduce family exposure to radioactive materials. Also,
all water collected from the showers, from mine operations and any water runoff on the site
would be treated before being released back into the environment. This mitigation measure would
decrease the public exposure of uranium, radium and radon through water pathways.
Another pathway through which the public might hypothetically be exposed to radioactive
materials is via vehicles exiting the mines either carrying radioactive ore material or by spreading
dust that accumulated on the vehicles while they were on site. All trucks carrying ore materials
would be sprayed down before leaving the site at the vehicle washing station located onsite. As
previously stated, all water from the wash stations would enter the water treatment plant and be
treated before being used as irrigation water on private ranch land.
Decommissioning would present a health risk to the community if the mine were not properly
reclaimed after mining activities have stopped. This could occur if mine operations were to be
suspended because reductions in the price of uranium made it no longer viable to mine or once
the natural mine cycle has been completed. As previously and subsequently stated in this EIS,
there is a legacy of contaminated mining sites in the project area (ATSDR, 2009; USEPA 2011a;
Shuey and Ronca-Battista, 2007). These contaminated sites are of great concern to residents in
the local area (Head-Dylla et al., 2012; Gunnell, 2012; Luarkie et al., 2012; Bonne et al., 2012;
Juanico et al., 2012). RHR has submitted detailed plans to reclaim the mining site and new
regulations require the reclamation process to be bonded, meaning that sufficient funds for
cleanup must be set aside before project construction can begin. This is a requirement that did not
exist in the past, which allowed many companies to walk away from their sites when project
operations halted mid-production. Because of these past actions of uranium mining companies
and the perceived slow progress of the government to clean up the contaminated sites, there is
substantial skepticism on the part of community members that the Roca Honda Site would, in
fact, be properly reclaimed in a timely manner (Head-Dylla et al., 2012; Gunnell, 2012).
410 DEIS for Roca Honda Mine, Cibola National Forest