“Cow Pie/Yellow Cake” Uranium Mine

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Homestake Mining Company, a uranium mill operating from 1958 to 1990, was cited as a “Superfund Site” in the EPA quarterly report, a publication that Nagatani regularly received. Its uranium waste piles, totaling around 22 million tons spread over 245 acres measuring 100 feet high, had begun seeping into the site’s groundwater aquifer. Nagatani sets a prize-winning cow that he photographed at the New Mexico State Fair in front of the rusting remains of the Homestake Mining Company. The yellow sky and the yellow cow pie call attention to “yellow cake,” the nickname for the uranium concentrate obtained in processing the ore.

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