Environmental Justice Must Include White Mesa Uranium Mill

 by Tim Peterson, Cultural Landscapes Director

In a hopeful move for the future of efforts to close and clean up the White Mesa uranium mill, President Biden’s first full week on the job included two key actions that can help address radioactive and toxic pollution in southeast Utah on the doorstep of Bears Ears National Monument and next to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s White Mesa community. Taken together, these orders are a marked departure from the last four years, and they demonstrate a real commitment to prioritizing tribal nations, confronting the climate change, and advancing environmental justice.

1. Respecting tribes as sovereign nations

The first action was a presidential memorandum on reaffirming tribal sovereignty through strengthened tribal consultation. Reversing years of neglect and damage done to government-to-government relationships by the previous administration, President Biden said of the memorandum: “I'm directing the federal agencies to reinvigorate the consultation process with Indian tribes. ...respect for tribal sovereignty will be a cornerstone of our engaging with Native American communities.

2. Prioritizing environmental justice

The second action was an executive order on tackling the climate crisis. Provisions pausing oil and gas leasing on public lands and committing to protect 30 percent of public lands and waters by 2030 got a lot of attention, but big steps taken to address environmental injustice are significant too.

What is environmental justice?

Environmental justice means all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, have the same protections from health hazards and are meaningfully involved in decision-making around a healthy environment. For environmental justice to happen, frontline communities need to be at the table when it comes to making decisions about environmental policies, regulations, and how we enforce environmental laws.

Environmental justice strategist Mustafa Santiago Ali said of the president’s actions: “You cannot win on climate change if you don’t win on environmental justice. ...that’s why this historic set of executive orders that are being rolled out today are so transformational.”

This means recognizing that people and their environment are intertwined, and that the high costs of pollution have been disproportionately paid by communities of color, including Indigenous communities like White Mesa.

President Biden’s climate order adopts a whole-of-government approach to environmental justice by creating one advisory council and strengthening another to deal with environmental justice across many government agencies, including the departments of interior, energy, and agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

With an eye toward easing ongoing health impacts wrought by the uranium industry across the Colorado Plateau, particularly on the Navajo Nation, the climate order also commits to create jobs by remediating “environmental harms from tens of thousands of former mining … sites.”

The White Mesa uranium mill sits near former uranium mines. And, as a recipient of mined uranium as well as a processor of uranium-laden waste and a de facto low-cost radioactive waste dump that stores the toxic leftovers from that processing and mining on-site, the mill must be viewed through the lens of environmental justice as well.

Environmental justice at White Mesa

Fair treatment means that no population bears a disproportionate share of negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial … operations or from the execution of … laws; regulations; and policies. 

— U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Legacy Management

When an Indigenous community like the Ute community at White Mesa bears the brunt of pollution, it is not fair treatment — it is environmental racism. Community members are concerned about the uranium mill just over three miles from their community that belches acrid smoke from its stacks and dumps toxic and radioactive waste in ponds built atop ancient burial grounds. The mill pollutes the air, the water, and the land. Community members worry about the health of their kids and their elders. They worry about radioactive spills along the highway that runs through their community, past the mill, and toward the nearest grocery store. They worry about pollution of the water table beneath the mill — water that flows toward their community underground, and that feeds springs important for spiritual purposes. 

This is a story that’s too familiar — the toxic legacy of uranium and the nuclear fuel cycle have disproportionately harmed Indigenous communities across the nation, from the Midnite Mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation to the contaminated piles of radioactive tailings left over from the Cold War uranium boom on the Navajo Nation.

The concepts made law in President Biden’s order represent more than half a century of labor by environmental justice advocates, but this is just a step forward, not the finish line. Robert Bullard, a Texas professor widely recognized as the father of the environmental justice movement, underscored the challenge at hand, saying: "The job ahead is to make sure we follow through. It won't be easy. There is always resistance to change. We just have to keep working."

Change at White Mesa means better consultation between government agencies and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe on issues related to the White Mesa uranium mill, including plans to import radioactive waste to the mill from Estonia and Japan, and elevating the mill as a national environmental justice priority. We’ll keep working to support the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the concerned citizens of the White Mesa community in their tireless effort to close and clean up the White Mesa Mill. Environmental justice means that the White Mesa Ute community has a fundamental right to live free from radioactive pollution, and it is time that their voices are taken seriously. 

Stand with White Mesa by voicing your opposition to plans to import radioactive waste to the mill from Japan: