Church Rock: Beauty and a Buried Disaster
Near Gallup, New Mexico
The Church Rock uranium mill tailings spill of July sixteen, nineteen seventy-nine, is the largest release of radioactive material in United States history by volume, larger than Three Mile Island. A dam holding waste from a United Nuclear Corporation uranium processing facility near Gallup failed, releasing ninety-four million gallons of radioactive liquid and more than a thousand tons of solid waste into the Rio Puerco. The spill flowed downstream for roughly eighty miles.
Navajos downstream were told not to drink the water or let livestock graze along the river. Many did not receive the warning in time. The federal response was slow and the cleanup limited.
Today Church Rock is the name most New Mexicans associate with the sandstone spire visible to the northeast, but for Diné families who live along the Rio Puerco, it carries a second meaning that has never fully healed.
