Brandon Loomis and Michelle Ye Hee Lee

The Arizona Republic

A $1 billion cleanup of abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Reservation could soon begin under a record U.S. Department of Justice settlement announced Thursday.

The $5.15 billion settlement, described as the largest ever recovered for environmental enforcement, includes cleanup projects at several locations nationwide.

It stems from a bankruptcy case involving Kerr-McGee, an oil-exploration and energy company that mined uranium and left behind 85 years' worth of pollution across the country. Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which acquired Kerr-McGee in 2006, will pay the settlement.

Federal officials said Thursday that Kerr-McGee left "significant, lasting environmental damage" and should be held accountable for what it left in its wake.

In Arizona, uranium contamination — both to one-time Navajo miners and to people who live and draw water near the mines — has wrought untold health consequences. Victims frequently report kidney maladies or cancers, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has advised against using some wells that previously served rural communities. University of New Mexico researchers are working on a study of the effects on pregnant women and their children.

The settlement dwarfs any single contribution to remedy the exploitation of Navajo lands. By comparison, from 2008 to 2012, government earmarks or economic-stimulus funds contributed about $100 million.

Both funding mechanisms are now gone.

"(The settlement) puts in our hands resources that would take forever if we were relying solely on federal appropriations," said Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency.

The $985 million earmarked for Navajo cleanup projects must be spent on old Kerr-McGee mines, which number 50 out of more than 500 abandoned and contaminated uranium mining and processing sites on the reservation.

That should be sufficient to clean those 50 completely, including removal of the hottest wastes to out-of-state radioactive dumps, EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said.

"There's very few environmental settlements in the history of the nation that reach this level," Blumenfeld said. "It's a big deal."

The settlement grew out of a lawsuit filed against Kerr-McGee by the government and Tronox Inc., which was spun off from Kerr-McGee in 2005 and declared bankruptcy four years later. As a part of its bankruptcy proceedings, Tronox alleged that Kerr-McGee had fraudulently transferred billions of dollars in environmental liabilities to Tronox, eventually leading to its bankruptcy.

In December 2013, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper ruled that Kerr-McGee had evaded its liabilities, including environmental liabilities associated with contamination left by the company across the country.

The settlement announced Thursday will also be distributed to other projects across the country, including $1.1 billion for a trust that will clean up two dozen major contamination sites; $1.1 billion to clean up a former chemical manufacturing site in Nevada that led to contamination in Lake Mead; and lesser amounts for cleanup of two federal Superfund sites in New Jersey.

The settlement will be reviewed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York after a 30-day public-comment period.

There is still much work to do to clean up pollution on the Navajo Reservation, starting with identifying owners of old mines or the companies that may have inherited them.

Currently, Blumenfeld said, the government has identified the responsible parties for maybe half of the Navajo Nation's abandoned or contaminated mines.

Knowing the owners is especially important in cleaning up additional properties, as federal funds have grown tighter across the board.

The tribe and the EPA are negotiating with other companies, including General Electric, United Nuclear, Chevron and Kinder Morgan, Etsitty said.

"We definitely need more responsible parties," he said. "A billion dollars puts a dent in our problem, but it doesn't solve it."

Radioactivity is not the only hazard stirred up by the mining.

"We're finding arsenic is creating a lot of health issues for our population," Etsitty said.

Both the tribe and the EPA said they hope cleanup work can begin by the end of the year. The EPA will control most of the funds but will work with the tribe.

"The pervasive uranium contamination on the Navajo Nation is an American tragedy," U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a written statement Thursday.

Waxman conducted a 2007 congressional hearing into the lasting health and environmental legacy of the Cold War uranium bonanza.

Other payouts

In a settlement with the Justice Department, Anadarko Petroleum Corp., on behalf of Kerr-McGee Corp., agreed to pay $5.15 billion to remedy pollution at several sites across the U.S., including $985 million to clean up 50 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Reservation. Also included:

• $1.1 billion for a trust to clean up two dozen sites across the U.S.

• $1.1 billion to clean up a chemical site in Nevada.

• $224 million to remedy thorium contamination in New Jersey.

• $217 million for creosote cleanup at another New Jersey location.