Making and Unmaking the “Grants Uranium District” of Northwestern New Mexico

• In Event: Settler Colonialism and Scalable Scholarship: Studying Up on The Technopolitics of Indigenous Displacement And Dispossession - II

Abstract

During the second half of the twentieth century, northwestern New Mexico became the primary production site for one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals. From 1948 to 2002 the “Grants uranium district” provided roughly half of the total uranium ore accumulated by the U.S. federal government for the production of nuclear weapons, in addition to becoming a national source for commercial nuclear energy in the 1960s. By the twenty-first century, after a prolonged period of economic decline that began in the late 1970s, uranium mining and milling in the state had ceased, leaving a legacy of environmental health impacts. What was once referred to as “the Uranium Capital of the World,” now encompasses about a thousand abandoned uranium mines and seven massive uranium tailings piles; each of which is associated with expansive groundwater plumes of uranium, radium, selenium, and molybdenum. The former mining district also encompasses parts of Acoma Pueblo, Laguna Pueblo, the Navajo Nation, and Hispano and Anglo settler communities. Stakeholders in local communities, government employees, and transnational mining corporations all have different, often conflicting perspectives regarding appropriate technical applications and outcomes of environmental cleanup, not to mention different terms and values. This paper reports on a sociocultural ethnographic study of the different stakeholders involved in the environmental remediation process, as they deliberate about the possibility of restoring the natural and cultural resources of northwestern New Mexico. I will contribute to STS by showing how environmental engineering can be positively improved through the inclusion of diverse forms of knowledge.

Author

• Thomas De Pree, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute