Woman blames mine for cancer

YERINGTON, Nev. — Peggy Pauly remembers when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer four years ago.

"My doctor asked if I'd ever been exposed to radiation and I said, 'No,' " she said.

Now, she isn't so sure.

Up until a month ago, Pauly never worried much about the abandoned Anaconda copper mine next to her family's home of 10 years in the high desert's irrigated oasis of the Mason Valley, 55 miles southeast of Reno.

"The north end of the mine is my back yard, basically. We built our home here because this was the land we could afford," said Pauly, 55, the wife of a Baptist pastor and mother of daughters ages 8 and 9.

She knew of tests for arsenic, mercury and heavy metal contaminants in the groundwater at the mine covering nearly six square miles. And she noticed last spring when Atlantic Richfield Co., which is primarily responsible for cleanup, started providing free bottled water to neighbors as a precautionary measure.

But she had no reason to doubt Bureau of Land Management officials who said there was no evidence any toxins had gravitated off the mine site itself, or Nevada Division of Environmental Protection officials who said the high levels of uranium in nearby domestic wells most likely were naturally occurring.

Both agencies have resisted calls to make the mine a federal Superfund site.

"I'm a housewife, not a geologist," Pauly said. "My husband and I have never been pro-Superfund. In my naivete, I thought we were being pretty well informed."

That started to change last month when she was mailed a newsletter from the BLM, NDEP and Environmental Protection Agency describing the "radiological hazards that warrant protection of workers in certain areas of the site" and the need to conduct an aerial survey "to determine where radiation may be both on and off site."

"That was scary to me," Pauly said.

Then she learned of a whistle-blower complaint filed by the BLM's former project manager at the mine, Earle Dixon, who claims he was fired in October because he drew attention to alleged attempts by state and federal regulators to suppress information about health and safety risks.

She started asking questions, writing letters and making calls. And the more she learned, the madder she got.

"I'm finding that Arco and the state have known for a very long time that there is radiation there," Pauly said. "The monitoring well samples showed it was there in 1984 and they just sort of shrugged it off. Why didn't they follow up back then?"