Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Roca Honda Mine

Chapter 3. Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences
• Ensuring all measures are in place to minimize alterations to land, water, and air to the
greatest extent possible.
• Ensuring tribes are aware of and invited to participate in project-related conversations
about issues of importance to health—particularly water (hydrology) issues.
• Collaborating with the tribes to determine opportunities to mitigate harmful health
impacts
Effect Characterization
Actual contamination of water, air, and soil from the proposed action is predicted to be minor or
minimal at most. However, perceived contamination on the part of Native Americans, along with
actual changes to water and land from the project in the vicinity of sacred lands, especially within
the context of uranium mining and milling legacy issues, may have real effects on the mental and
physical health of some community members.
Overall then, the likely impacts to health from environmental exposures during construction,
operation, and decommissioning of the proposed action are expected to be of moderate
magnitude, to have a medium geographic extent, and to be of medium to long-term duration.
There is a probable likelihood of these impacts occurring and the precedence or uniqueness is
moderate. Therefore, the overall level of environmental health impacts would be less than
significant.
Effects Stemming from Employment
Figure 79 depicts potential links between the proposed action and employment impacts.
Figure 79. Links between the project and employment impacts
Employment resulting from the proposed action has the potential to impact health through two
pathways: through providing jobs and income to individuals and through exposing those
individuals to a specific set of working conditions.
Jobs and income are strongly associated with a number of beneficial health outcomes (HDA,
2004; Cox et al., 2004). These include an increase in life expectancy, improved child health
status, improved mental health, and reduced rates of chronic and acute disease morbidity and
DEIS for Roca Honda Mine, Cibola National Forest 415