Navajo Nation to benefit from multibillion settlement for cleanup of contaminated sites

The Navajo Nation will benefit from more than a $1 billion to clean up abandoned uranium mines that have left a legacy of disease and death on the reservation. The money is part of a $5.15 billion settlement that the federal government reached with Anadarko Petroleum Corp. for the cleanup of thousands of long-contaminated sites nationwide. The settlement resolves a legal battle over Tronox Inc., a 2005 spinoff of Kerr-McGee Corp. that Anadarko acquired in 2006. Federal and tribal officials on Thursday hailed the settlement as the largest ever for environmental contamination. Kerr-McGee once operated about 50 uranium mines near Cove, Arizona, and a uranium mill in Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. The more than $1 billion will address about 10 percent of the tribe's inventory of abandoned mines.  AP