About this episode
In July 1979, just months after a nuclear accident at Three Mile Island gripped the nation, the largest radioactive spill in U.S. history quietly unfolded on a Navajo reservation in Church Rock, New Mexico — and almost no one noticed. A dam at a uranium mine tailings pond burst, causing 94 million gallons of toxic waste to flood a nearby river, poisoning the water, livestock, and people. Through the eyes of an activist who worked at the mine, we reveal how decades of corporate cover-ups and government indifference turned the ‘yellow dirt’ on America's largest Native reservation into something dangerous.
Featured in this episode:
Larry King
Sources:
Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed by Judy Pasternak
The River that Harms documentary
Marley Shebala’s Navajo Times article “Poison in the earth” https://navajotimes.com/news/2009/0709/072309uranium.php
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