Summary

The open-pit Midnite Mine, which provided radioactive material for nuclear weapons, closed operations in 1981.

Brothers Jim LeBret and John LeBret were prospecting on the Spokane Reservation with a Geiger counter in 1954 and discovered rocks with a fluorescent green glow.

The brothers, members of the Spokane Tribe, staked the first uranium claim on the reservation. By the end of that year, the Midnite Mine shipped its first load of uranium ore to a Salt Lake City processing plant.
The mine, about 45 miles northwest of Spokane, produced uranium needed for the nation’s nuclear arsenal from 1955 to 1981.

The 350-acre area is now a Superfund cleanup site that features a series of open pits filled with mildly radioactive heavy metals and water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified a cleanup plan for the site in 2006 that involves dumping contaminated soil into open pits, then covering the pits.
Contaminated water from the Midnite Mine will be treated at a new water treatment plant before it will be permitted to be discharged into Blue Creek, which flows into the Spokane Arm of Lake Roosevelt, the EPA said. The federal government has reached an agreement with one of the world’s largest mining companies on a $193 million cleanup of a defunct uranium mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation.


The LeBret brothers and their partners contracted with Dawn Mining, a subsidiary of Newmont Mining Co., to operate the mine. Newmont and Dawn will pay for the majority of the restoration costs at the mine.

The U.S. Department of the Interior will contribute $42 million to future cleanup activities for failing to fulfill federal trust responsibilities to the Spokane Tribe through proper oversight of the open-pit mine.

Most recently, members of the Spokane Tribe who worked at the mine or who live on the reservation are questioning the high rates of cancer on the reservation.

Complete Coverage

News >  Spokane

Healthy help

WELLPINIT, Wash. – Chico Corral’s work history is scoured into his lungs. Chest X-rays for the 84-year-old show scarring from the dust he inhaled during two decades as a uranium worker on the Spokane Indian Reservation.
News >  Spokane

Cleanup of Midnite Mine on reservation to begin by 2015

Newmont Mining Co. expects to begin cleanup of a defunct uranium mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation by 2015. The company is working on design proposals for the remediation of the Midnite Mine, which opened in the 1950s to produce uranium for the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race. About 33 million tons of radioactive waste rock and ore remain at the 350-acre site above the Spokane River.
News >  Spokane

S-R honored for series on mine, tribe

A two-day Spokesman-Review series of stories and photos about uranium mine radiation and high cancer rates on the Spokane Indian Reservation was the best environmental reporting in a metro Northwest newspaper last year, a leading journalism organization said. “ Radioactivity on the reservation” by environment reporter Becky Kramer and former staff photographer Jed Conklin won first place in Environment and Science Reporting among large newspapers in the 2011 Society of Professional Journalists Northwest Excellence in Journalism Competition.
News >  Spokane

Chico Corral blames uranium industry for failing health

Chico Corral couldn’t get away from the dust. After the daily blasting, yellow-brown grit hung in the air at the Midnite Mine, an open-pit uranium mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation where Corral worked without a mask or respirator. Later, he breathed in dust during the years he worked at a uranium mill. “We sucked all that into our lungs,” he said.
News >  Spokane

Newmont Mining must pay

An international mining corporation must share the cost of cleaning up an abandoned uranium mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation, a federal judge has ruled. Newmont Mining Corp. holds majority interest in Dawn Mining Co., which until 1981 operated the Midnite Mine. The Environmental Protection Agency identified the open-pit uranium mine, now a Superfund site, as the source of radiation and heavy metals and acid contamination in Blue Creek, which flows into Lake Roosevelt at the mouth of the Spokane River.