SANTA FE (AP) – For Democratic state Rep. Wonda Johnson, the disastrous Church Rock uranium spill in 1979 is deeply personal.

She recalls standing on a porch as a young child with her grandmother as they watched radioactive waste from a breached mill pond flow down the Rio Puerco.

The potent contaminants would kill their horses and livestock and poison the soil in their cornfield – one of the largest in the area – leaving it unable to grow anything again, Johnson said.

“My grandma stood on the porch and wiped her tears with her apron,” Johnson told two legislative panels Wednesday. “And she said, ‘What will I leave my grandchildren now? What kind of livelihood will we have?’”

The Church Rock spill is just part of the vast uranium waste that the mining industry left behind in Indian Country. Now, some tribal advocates, state officials and lawmakers believe cleaning up the waste would not only remove an environmental and health hazard but create good-paying jobs in the affected communities.

A report about the economic benefits of creating an industry to tackle uranium mining waste was presented to the state Indian Affairs Committee and the Rural Economic Opportunities Task Force at a Wednesday hearing.

Jobs produced from waste remediation would help replace jobs that were lost because of changes in the global energy market, including decreased demand for uranium, the report said.

McKinley, San Juan and Cibola counties – all with high Indigenous populations – are among the hardest hit, their unemployment rates all above the state average, it said.

The University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research compiled the report.

There are a number of potential funding sources for this endeavor, but a key one could be a $1 billion settlement the Environmental Protection Agency secured in 2015 from Tronox, a company that mined uranium around Navajo Nation before declaring bankruptcy.

The $1 billion alone could generate 1,040 jobs over 10 years in this new sector, Susan Gordon, coordinator with the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, said during the presentation.

“Workers who have lost jobs could be quickly retrained to work in a remediation industry,” Gordon said, noting that many people who have been displaced have transferrable skills.

The goal is to make environmental remediation the state’s 10th target industry, Gordon said, explaining that target industries are given special attention and higher priority.

The American West has an estimated 15,000 abandoned uranium mines, with about 550 on Navajo lands, the report said.

Church Rock is the most well-known and a massive source of uranium pollution.

It’s the largest radioactive spill in U.S. history but received only a fraction of the publicity as the Three Mile Island nuclear plant leak, which happened several months before – largely because Church Rock is a rural Indigenous community, Gordon said.

About 1,100 tons of uranium tailings and 94 million gallons of toxic wastewater polluted the Rio Puerco for 80 miles, Gordon said.

Church Rock is a stark example of how long remediation can take, she said. In 1983, it was put on the national priorities list for sites in the most urgent need of cleanup, and 38 years later the federal government still has done little, she said.

“You can see how complicated it is to get a plan in place, and it’s still years now before shovels will hit the ground,” Gordon said.

Several lawmakers bemoaned what they called unjustifiable foot-dragging in dealing with uranium waste. A few agreed that creating a larger workforce dedicated to cleaning up the waste could only help.

Rep. Eliseo Lee Alcon, D-Milan, who once worked in uranium mines, said he’s baffled about why cleanup efforts are perpetually stalled, even though tens of millions in federal money is allocated to remediating various uranium waste sites.

“It’s just sitting there,” Alcon said. “We’re not doing anything.”

Sen. Shannon Pinto, D-Tohatchi, called for a vote to have letters sent to the Environmental Protection Agency, state Economic Development Department and New Mexico Bioscience Authority, asking that they look into what it would take to create this industry, including the funding. The two committees voted in support of the letters.

After the hearing, Pinto said uranium is particularly hazardous to water, so it’s critical to clean it up.

A recent “underground” study shows that the Navajo Nation has a high rate of cancer linked to uranium, said Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero, D-Albuquerque, explaining that people were interviewed confidentially.

“That was earth-shattering,” Caballero said of the findings.

Johnson said the memory of her grandmother mourning the devastation of the Church Rock spill has stayed with her.

“That’s why this is an important project for me,” she said.