by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director
In May, Ute Mountain Ute tribal members led their annual spiritual walk from the small reservation community of White Mesa to the nearby White Mesa uranium mill, the only operating conventional uranium mill in the United States.
Hugging the gravel shoulder of U.S. Highway 191, just east of Bears Ears National Monument, the spiritual walk marked the latest protest in the community’s decades-long struggle to protect tribal members’ health, water, air, land, culture, and sacred sites from the uranium mill, located just a few miles north of their reservation.
Community members and the tribe’s environmental department worry that the mill — a destination for uranium ore mined across the Colorado Plateau and for waste from toxic and radioactive sites across the country — could contaminate groundwater.
"We want to make sure that water is okay forever. We're thinking about the long-term," explained Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Environmental Programs Director Scott Clow.
“The last two generations of Utes in White Mesa have lived with the knowledge that a uranium mill is contaminating our homelands — our pure water, clean air and even the burial grounds of our people,” wrote community member Yolanda Badback. “The mill was built on top of burial grounds and contaminates the bones of my ancestors.”
Numerous Native American archaeological sites affiliated with the San Juan Anasazi, who occupied this area of Utah from the first to the 14th centuries, are located on the mill site. In some cases, mill infrastructure, including waste ponds, was constructed directly atop the original locations of these sites.
Some community members see the mill as an environmental justice issue, since the reservation town is the mill’s nearest neighbor. Nationally, over 90 percent of all uranium milling in the U.S. has occurred on or just outside the boundaries of American Indian reservations.
Earlier this year, state regulators renewed the mill’s radioactive materials license, which governs how the mill operates and how it will eventually be cleaned up, despite concerns raised by community members, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and conservation organizations, including the Grand Canyon Trust.
The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Grand Canyon Trust, and others have appealed to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality to review the decision to renew the license. Those appeals are pending.
What lies ahead for the White Mesa Mill as the sole destination for uranium ore mined on the Colorado Plateau? The administration is working to enhance access to uranium while the uranium industry pushes for policies that would drive up prices. Last week, at the request of Energy Fuels, the U.S. Department of Commerce opened an investigation into uranium imports that could lead to tariffs designed to boost the bottom line of companies mining in the U.S.
Meanwhile, back in February, the Bureau of Land Management approved an expansion of the Daneros uranium mine, also owned by Energy Fuels, which would allow the company to truck up to half a million tons of uranium ore through Bears Ears National Monument to the White Mesa Mill. The Grand Canyon Trust and others are currently challenging that decision before the Interior Board of Land Appeals.
A February 2018 search of the agency’s LR2000 database revealed that, as of that date, Energy Fuels held 117 active mining claims within the original Bears Ears National Monument, and an additional 179 claims to the west of it, near the Daneros Mine.
We won’t see a uranium boom without a surge in prices, but if that did happen, every ounce of uranium ore that is mined in the U.S. the old-fashioned way (rather than through underground leaching) will be processed at the White Mesa Mill. And more processing means more waste, and more risk of contamination.
The White Mesa Mill has long flown under the public’s radar. But revelations that Energy Fuels lobbied (with the assistance of Andrew Wheeler) to reduce the size of Bear Ears National Monument has earned the mill mentions in the New York Times. Community members continue to speak out and share their stories in the media.
A short documentary the Trust worked with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe to produce, Half Life: The Story of America’s Last Uranium Mill, will make its world premiere at the International Uranium Film Festival in Berlin in October, and will be featured in the festival’s U.S. tour in Window Rock, on the Navajo Nation, the following month.
In addition to working to ensure that the mill operates safely and in accordance with the law, the Grand Canyon Trust is dedicated to challenging the Daneros Mine expansion and opposing the listing of uranium as a critical mineral, as well as attempts to enhance access to uranium or artificially inflate demand.
More than 275,000 pounds of radioactive materials imported from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency headed to Utah's White Mesa Mill.
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"We want to have healthy lives. We want to have access to clean water," says Chairman Manuel Heart.
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