Anaconda, New Mexico

Uranophane on calcite, mineral specimen from the historic Jackpile mine.

Anaconda was a small mining community in Cibola County, New Mexico. The town came into existence in the early 1950s when the Anaconda Copper Company of Butte, Montana opened up a uranium ore processing plant 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Grants, near the Jackpile Mine (or Jackpile-Paguate Mine [1][2] ), then the world's largest open-pit uranium mine.[3] Anaconda was the site of somewhere around 100 homes for the supervisors and management of the company. The Mill was also located on the same property. Many of the homes were built using "radioactive" material from the plant and eventually had to be torn down. The Mill closed sometime in the 1970s and the housing was removed and the land reclaimed during the next 20 years. Testimony given before the New Mexico Legislature's Economic and Rural Development Committee in 2008 claimed that the mill had polluted local aquifers.[4] Presently there is little to show that the area was once a community.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Laguna Pueblo Indian Reservation Case Study: Jackpile-Paguate Mine, New Mexico, MiningWatch Canada, Jan 08 2007
  2. ↑ Native Americans denounce toxic legacy, by Danielle Knight. Third World Network,
  3. ↑ Native American Philosophy and the New Environmental Paradigm, Antonio A. Arce
  4. ↑ La Jicarita News, A Community Newspaper for Northern New Mexico, December 2008

External links

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