uranium contamination

There are at least 302 “orphan sites” in New Mexico, where “known or suspected contamination is causing a threat to human health or the environment,” according to the New Mexico Environment Department.

It’s been 45 years since the largest radioactive release in U.S. history occurred at Church Rock New Mexico. Members of the Navajo Nation will gather on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary of the uranium spill.

New Mexico and Arizona have more than 650 abandoned uranium mines, and contamination has affected water supplies.

On this episode Associate Professor Myrriah Gomez talks about her book “Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos.”

In a historic move, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission made the trek from Washington D.C. all the way to western New Mexico on April 22 to meet with Navajo tribal members and leaders who desperately want uranium contamination off their lands. KUNM talked with New Mexico In Depth’s Marjorie Childress to find out what the community was saying.

Thousands of uranium mines lie abandoned across New Mexico and the Southwest. Now, lawsuit settlement money from large corporations and the U.S. Government is being pumped in to cleaning them up. Could that mean jobs as well as a healthier environment for New Mexicans?

New Mexico legislators advanced a pillar of the governor's tough-on-crime agenda Friday with House approval of a bill that increases penalties for some murder and attempted-murder charges and eliminates the statute of limitations for filing those charges.

As the U.S. prepared to detonate the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in the ’40s, the federal government sought uranium on Navajo land. Decades later,…