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- Energy Fuels has reached an agreement with the Navajo Nation over uranium ore transport and will soon resume shipments.
- Ute Mountain Ute Tribe reps, however, are still concerned over transport through their reservation and the presence of a nearby Energy Fuels uranium processing facility.
- Energy Fuels has committed to additional safety measures in transporting ore through the Navajo Nation.
WHITE MESA, San Juan County — An accord between Navajo Nation and Energy Fuels officials over transport of uranium ore from Arizona through the reservation into Utah — focus of a flareup last summer — is prompting concern from some Ute Mountain Ute Tribe representatives.
"Right at this moment, I'm pretty upset ... that they had passed it," Yolanda Badback, a leader of White Mesa Concerned Community, said Thursday. Her organization has called for the White Mesa Mill near the White Mesa Ute Mountain Ute community in southeastern Utah — a destination for uranium ore coming from Arizona through the Navajo Nation — to be closed or moved.
Scott Crow, environmental program director for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, said transport of Energy Fuels uranium ore north through the White Mesa reservation to the White Mesa Mill south of Blanding has been a "consistent complaint" in the tribal community.
"The trucks go through in the middle of the night," he said, when no one is typically awake to monitor them. Those worries, he said, are one element of the "bigger, longer-term concerns" of tribe members related to the White Mesa Mill, where uranium from Energy Fuels' Pinyon Plain Mine in Arizona is processed into uranium concentrates used to produce nuclear power.
Navajo Nation officials cried foul last July, charging Energy Fuels with "illegally" transporting uranium ore from Arizona through the Navajo Nation en route to the White Mesa Mill. The officials from the Navajo Nation, which covers portions of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico where the three states meet, had expressed concern that movement of the material posed a safety threat.
Energy Fuels at the time rebuffed charges that the shipment was done illegally or that it posed a risk, but shortly after that, the two sides started meetings to further discuss the issue. On Wednesday, Energy Fuels issued a statement saying it had reached an agreement with the Navajo Nation governing transport of the material through the reservation and that shipments would resume "shortly," possibly in February.
Under the agreement, the Denver-based company said it would "add additional protections and accommodations" in transporting uranium ore, above and beyond federal requirements. Energy Fuels will also help transport materials from abandoned uranium mines within the Navajo Nation, though the company had no involvement with them.
Energy Fuels officials "demonstrated a genuine understanding for the Navajo Nation's and the Navajo people's trauma regarding uranium and engaged as a partner in good faith to build a trusting relationship," Heather Clah, the Navajo Nation's acting attorney general, said in a statement. Uranium mining dating to the Cold War era left "a legacy of uranium contamination" on Navajo Nation lands, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Energy Fuels President Mark Chalmers noted the legacy, saying it has "understandably caused mistrust" among the Navajo Nation community. "I am personally honored that the Navajo Nation was willing to work with us in good faith to address their concerns and ensure that uranium ore transportation through the Navajo Nation will be done safely and respectfully," he said in a statement.
In hauling shipments through the Navajo Nation, Energy Fuels will abide by additional insurance requirements, get transport licenses from reservation officials, use covering systems to prevent fugitive dust and more.
Regardless, White Mesa Ute Mountain Ute representatives aren't so happy. The small reservation, located south of Blanding and north of the Navajo Nation, is part of the Larger Ute Mountain Ute tribe based in Towaoc, Colorado. "We're very concerned about it. We're very concerned about the growing relationship between Energy Fuels and the Navajo Nation," said Crow.
Though Energy Fuels officials have vigorously defended the White Mesa Mill facility as safe and subject to strict monitoring, Badback and other community advocates worry it poses a danger to those who live around it. They protested against the facility last October in Salt Lake City.
Bradley Angel, of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, which has advocated for the Ute Mountain Ute community on the issue, worries about disposal of uranium ore at the mill site and the threat of radioactive contaminants, minimized in a 2023 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report.
He and other advocates "will continue to work with both Ute and Navajo and Havasupai people and many others from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities who are standing together to oppose the continued operations of Energy Fuels," he said.
