Imagine your neighbors were always hollering and carrying on, having wild parties, making it hard to breathe with their campfire smoke, and giving you headaches day and night. Imagine the police came and told them to knock it off. Then suppose that months went by, and parties next door only grew louder and wilder.
Our neighbors at Energy Fuels’ White Mesa uranium mill next to Bears Ears and just up the road from the White Mesa Ute Community are putting us through a similar ordeal, except that their party could give us cancer.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, since at least June 2020, the mill has been violating the Clean Air Act. One of the mill’s liquid waste pits is partly uncovered, exposing radioactive materials to the open air. The EPA estimated that 10 times the cancer-causing radon emissions are coming off the uncovered portion of the pit than the part that’s underwater...