Nota: quando i Navajos erano liberi, quando non esistevano le perline di vetro chiamate dollari, non esisteva nemmeno la parola "disoccupazione".

CHURCH ROCK N.M. Uranium mining from the 1950s through '70s meant good-paying jobs in this Navajo Indian community, but it also left a legacy of disease and death that has made the proposal for a new mining venture a tough sell with residents.

In this community named for a sandstone formation resembling a church spire, uranium-mining company Hydro Resources Inc. of Dallas is trying to convince the Indians that another round of mining won't be hazardous.

Former miners like Larry King said the work was hard and the miners were told little about the risks. Navajos who worked in the now-closed mines received daily dustings of yellowcake uranium.

"They didn't tell us what to expect in the future," said King, who in the 1970s worked in a uranium mine several hundred yards from his family's ranch near the border of the Navajo Reservation in northwest New Mexico.

"The tunnels were not ventilated," King said, pointing to a weed patch across the highway that runs by his ranch. That was where he boarded the elevator that took him to work, an area he says remains high in radiation.

"What Hydro Resources is going to do is add on to that radiation level that is already there," King said.

Hydro Resources plans to leach uranium to the surface by pumping a non-acidic, oxygenated water solution into the ground--a solution that company officials compare to club soda. Mark Pelizza, president of the firm, rebuts claims that the mine will become some sort of glowing no man's land.

"The levels of radiation emitted by natural uranium are extremely low," Pelizza said. "They are certainly much lower than the EPA would allow for radon gas to exist in a household, by almost half."

King does not suffer from fibrosis of the lungs, cancer or other diseases related to unprotected work in the mines, but like most Navajos in uranium country he knows of retired miners who are sick or have died from mining-related illnesses.

Many of those miners who became sick receive compensation from the federal government. Congress is considering adding a provision to a spending bill that would make the compensation an entitlement, requiring that money be set aside to pay sick miners rather than relying on a fund that legislators must replenish each year.

The idea has the backing of the Clinton administration, indicating it probably will be added to the bill without a partisan fight, said a spokesman for Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.).

During the Cold War, the Navajo Reservation and surrounding Indian lands had several uranium mines supplying fuel for nuclear weapons. Today the mines are idle, the last ones shutting down in the early 1980s.

Pending approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and an increase in uranium prices, Hydro Resources plans to start one mine at Church Rock and three more at the nearby Navajo community of Crownpoint. The commission has issued a permit for the Church Rock mine, but Hydro Resources still must come up with a financial assurance plan for a cleanup when the mine is exhausted.

At Crownpoint, many Navajos support uranium leach mining. Families whose government allotment land is used for mining will receive at least $40,000 each plus annual royalties. Navajo families in northwest New Mexico received federal land allotments as far back as the late 1800s.

There is no open complaining among Navajos about the fairness of some receiving what is a fortune in this dirt-poor land where many homes don't have water or electricity. Rather, Navajos say they fear the mining could pollute the aquifer that provides the community's drinking water.

"They're using the water as a front," said Wilbur Johnson, a Crownpoint resident who supports mining. His land allotment, which is scheduled for uranium mining, was received by his mother in 1907. "Just to be spiteful they're trying to stop the whole thing," Johnson said.

But a doctor at the federal Indian Health Services hospital in Crownpoint said Hydro Resources could ruin the community if the solution pumped underground to force a uranium slurry to the surface seeps into the aquifer that supplies drinking water to 15,000 people.

"If this goes through, the town will be potentially a ghost town," said Dr. John Fogarty, a family practitioner. He is concerned because mining will occur 2,000 feet from a drinking water well.

"Nobody has ever attempted to put a leach mine into a drinking water supply. It's happening because the population is poor and isolated and doesn't have the political power to stop it," Fogarty said.

But Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Bob Carlson said the commission has ruled out significant safety or environmental issues posed by the mines.

Carlson noted that uranium leach mines in Wyoming, Texas and Nebraska have operated safely. "We feel that it can be done, that it has been done in the past at other sites," he said.

Uranium from the Church Rock mine would be trucked to a processing plant in the Crownpoint area, raising concerns about spills on roads and yellowcake dust from the processing plant blowing around. Pelizza said that Hydro Resources' mining, transportation and processing standards will be safe and that no uranium dust will be ingested or inhaled.

"Almost all the emotional scare is based on the technology that was used in the past," Pelizza said.

Though King remembers the old days of uranium mining as a time of good-paying jobs--compared with an unemployment rate on the Navajo Reservation now approaching 60 percent--he scoffs at those who believe new mines will bring economic development.

"The only thing to come out of it was the bar," King said, gesturing toward on old building that today is a gas station that doubles as a liquor store.