Ethnographic interview methods were utilized to determine the social costs of energy development (i.e. uranium mining) and the mitigation of these costs. Determination was made from the viewpoint of the Navajos in the Burnhams Chapter (a geopolitical unit) in Western New Mexico; they anticipated four major costs (losses) to their present way of life: emotional and economic support of the extended family, livestock and land, security made possible through raising livestock in one place, and activities upon which their cognitive principles and means of teaching these principles are based. Burnhams residents have formulated tradeoffs, in the form of mitigation of these costs, and these tradeoffs have been explicated through a linear decision model. The explicitness of both the costs and the tradeoffs by Burnhams residents was due in great part to their having witnessed the effects of energy development in the form of relocation upon Upper Fruitland residents (where open-ended interviews revealed intense feelings of material insecurity, loneliness, despair, frustrating idleness, and shame as well as increased illness, delinquency, poor housing conditions, and overcrowding). The methods used and results obtained should aid the Navajo Tribal government in talks with business and with the federal government and also in social planning with the Navajo people to mitigate the social costs. (Author/AN)