From Deseret News archives:

Is cancer Utah mill's legacy?

Monticello residents to testify of ills they suffer

Published: Thursday, May 25, 2006 12:09 p.m. MDT
 |  E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + - 
MONTICELLO — The children called them "sand hills," a name that in retrospect is one of the heartbreaking details about this town's not-too-distant past.

Surrounding the giant hills was a cattle fence, two simple strands of wire with plenty of space for a child to crawl through. So, the children played there, making forts in the hills of uranium mill tailings and in the contaminated water of the ponds and creek. And the grown-ups hauled away the tailings to make mortar for their houses, to pave their streets and to fill the sandboxes in their back yards.

This was in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, after the "uranium frenzy" of the 1940s and 1950s, and after the federal government abandoned the uranium mill on the south side of town — but before the government finally came back to clean up the site.

"It was a paradise for kids," Bruce Adams remembers.

After the uranium mill closed in 1960, he and his best friend, Alan Maughan, used to swim in the evaporation ponds. In 1966, when he was 16 and captain of the Monticello High School basketball team, Alan died of leukemia.

Forty years later, there have now been 24 leukemia deaths, 77 serious respiratory diseases and a total of 407 cancers — and counting.

Story continues below
"I have two more victims," said Adams on Tuesday when he ran into Barbara Pipkin at the courthouse. Pipkin wrote down the names — a woman and her son who had moved away from Monticello years ago.

Pipkin is a member of VMTE, the Victims of Mill Tailings Exposure, a small committee formed two years ago to carry the banner for the on again-off again battle to get the federal government to pay attention to the health problems of Monticello. They want the government to do a "dose reconstruction" that will determine, as Pipkin says, "what we were contaminated with and at what levels." That includes not only radiation but toxic chemicals, she adds.

This week the committee is having a victory of sorts.

Representatives from the Utah Department of Health, the federal Centers for Disease Control and several other state and federal agencies will be in Monticello to listen to resident concerns. The UDOH and CDC will also release their own findings about the town's cancer rates. The town meeting is tonight at Monticello High School at 6 p.m.

Townspeople aren't sure what to expect. But VMTE member Fritz Pipkin says, "They're not getting out of here telling us we don't have a cancer problem."

Comments

You can be the first to comment on this story.

Image

Bruce Adams, a San Juan County commissioner, lost a close friend to cancer.

previousnext

Latest comments

"What's the big deal. When I graduated, our valedictorian bore her testimony...

read the post on the lose of language and you'll see what's up! and this is a...

with Bronco in every facet. I happened to be visiting Provo from Vegas,...

Kennecott smelter turns 35

I had no idea that that it ranked so among other structures. I know when I...

The MWC has made some real progress since those eight broke away from the...

Religious speech appeal rejected

There is a difference between thanking God and proselytizing. If she had...

@Of Course, Splitme --- There is a HUGE difference between "crediting God for...

Wounded Utes limp home

Seems like to me the state of Utah has a bunch of babies as sports fans. It...

We are inflicting this same terrible suffering on others in the middle east a...

I am a Bronco fan and I'm not sure if some of these posts are really made by...

Advertisements
Advertisement