Op-Ed
What impact do community members make when an international mining giant wants to walk away from obligations to keep our drinking water safe? After making money from mining and milling uranium for decades, the groundwater contamination from those operations persists, threatening Milan and Grants’ drinking water. Homestake Barrick Gold (Homestake), an international mining company, proposes to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the company no longer be held to required groundwater standards for uranium contamination. Homestake wants to walk away from groundwater to remove uranium and other harmful elements after creating the extensive contamination.
Homestake complains that it has “tried everything” to clean up the contaminated soil and groundwater. But what would be a truly effective clean up by Homestake has not been done. Homestake could remove the tailings to a properly controlled pit with an appropriately engineered cover to prevent contamination of groundwater, soil, and air. It is the one proven solution that has not been attempted. HBG has refused to try this solution, not because it cannot be done, but because it is “too expensive.”
In Homestake’s recent application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, HBG asks to walk away from the site and no longer be required to meet NRC standards governing uranium concentrations despite the devastating health impacts suffered from uranium exposure over the decades. One Homestake request is to greatly expand the Homestake mill site boundary or “long term care boundary” almost tripling its current site boundary to make land all the way to Milan’s border “off limits.” Through this expansion request, Homestake wants to walk away from meeting groundwater standards, even greatly reduced standards, in an exceptionally large land area beyond the mill site.
Coupled with its requested expansion of “off limits” land and weakened standards, Homestake also asks that it no longer be required to treat the contaminated water through its reverse osmosis plant. The reverse osmosis process has decreased uranium levels in the groundwater and needs to be maintained. Homestake claims the continued operation of the groundwater treatment system is providing diminishing returns while consuming water resources but offers no other solution except to put more contaminated groundwater associated with residential subdivisions under its control.
Homestake’s ultimate goal is to convince the NRC and EPA (because of the extreme level of contamination at the Homestake mill site, Homestake remediation requires oversight by two federal regulators) that it is too expensive to continue cleanup of the groundwater and to turn over the Homestake site to the Department of Energy Legacy Management (DOELM). A transfer of the Homestake site to DOE presumes that cleanup has been successful, which is simply untrue. The harsh reality is that uranium contamination cannot be fully remediated but either clean up must continue or the tailings must be removed by Homestake into a controlled site.
Federal and state regulators must hold Homestake accountable and hold them to remediation and existing standards. Communities that are impacted by Homestake’s pollution, along with NMELC and other groups, will in turn continue to hold state and federal regulators accountable. A multinational corporation’s bottom line can no longer be the basis for whether life-threatening pollution is cleaned up.
A community meeting on Homestake’s revised application is being held at the NMSU Grants Campus next week. We invite you to show up to send a message that clean up matters and have your voice heard. Attend the community meeting to find out what is before the NRC and help protect our groundwater!
Ava Curtis is the Environmental Justice Coordinator for the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE). Ann McCartney is Staff Attorney at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center.
Homestake Barrick Gold is holding a hybrid Public Meeting on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, from 5 - 8 p.m. at NMSU Grants in the Theater Room at 1500 N. Third Street.