The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Smaller Bears Ears frees land for uranium miners
Spike in claims a painful flashback for the Navajo.
MONUMENT VALLEY, UTAH
Garry Holiday grew up — among the abandoned mines that dot the Navajo Nation’s red landscape, remnants of a time when uranium helped cement America’s status as a nuclear superpower and fueled its nuclear energy program.
It left a toxic legacy. All but a few of the 500 abandoned mines still await cleanup. Mining tainted the local groundwater. Holiday’s father succumbed to respiratory disease after years of hacking the ore from the earth.
But now, emboldened by the Trump administration’s embrace of corporate interests, the uranium mining industry is renewing a push into the areas adjacent to Holiday’s Navajo Nation home: the Grand Canyon watershed to the west, where a new uranium mine is prepar-
ing to open, and the Bears Ears National Monument to the north.
The Trump administration is set to shrink Bears Ears by 85 percent next month,
potentially opening more than 1 million acres to mining, drilling and other industrial activity. But even as Inte- rior Secretary Ryan Zinke declared last month that “there is no mine within Bears Ears,” there were more than 300 uranium mining claims inside the monument, according to data from Utah’s Bureau of Land Management office that was reviewed by The New York Times. The vast majority of those
claims fall neatly outside the new boundaries of Bears Ears set by the administra- tion. And an examination of local BLM records, including those not yet entered into the agency’s land and mineral use authorizations database, shows about a third of claims are linked to Energy Fuels, a Canadian uranium producer. Energy Fuels also owns the Grand Canyon mine, where groundwater has flooded the main shaft.
Energy Fuels, with other mining groups, lobbied extensively for a reduction of Bears Ears, preparing maps that marked the areas it wanted removed from the monument and distributing them during a visit to the monument by Zinke in May.
Energy Fuels’ lobbying campaign, elements of which were first reported by The Washington Post, is part of a wider effort by the long-ailing uranium industry to make a comeback.
The Uranium Producers of America, an industry group, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to with- draw regulations proposed by the Obama administra- tion to strengthen ground- water protections at uranium mines. Mining groups have also waged a six-year legal battle against a moratorium on new uranium mining on more than 1 million acres of land adjacent to the Grand Canyon.
For the Navajo, the drive for new mines is a painful flashback.
“Back then, we didn’t
know it was dangerous — nobody told us,” Holiday said, as he pointed to the gashes of discolored rocks that mark where the old uranium mines cut into the region’s mesas. “Now they
know. They know.” Supporters of the mining say that a revival of domestic uranium production, which has declined 90 percent since 1980 amid slumping prices
and foreign competition, will make the United States a larger player in the global uranium market.
“If we consider nuclear a clean energy, if people are serious about that, domestic uranium has to be in the equation,” said Jon J. Indall, a lawyer for Uranium Producers of America. “But the proposed regulations would ing impact have on had our a industry.” devastat- “Countries like Kazakhstan, they’re not under the same environmental stan- dards. We want a level playing field.”
Scaling back a monument
The trip was one of the earliest made by Zinke to the vast lands he oversees as secretary of the interior: a visit to Bears Ears, where he struck a commanding figure, touring the rugged terrain on horseback.
A notable presence on Zin- ke’s trip was Energy Fuels, the Canadian uranium producer. openly Bears Ears’ Company lobbied borders, for executives shrinking handing out the map that marked the pockets the company wanted removed: areas adja- cent to its White Mesa Mill, just to the east of the monu- ment, and its Daneros Mine, which it is developing just to the west.
“They wanted to talk to anyone who’d listen,” said Commissioner Phil Lyman of San Juan County, Utah, a Republican who participated in the tour and is sympathetic to Energy Fuels’ position. “They were there representing their business interest.” Zinke has insisted that min- ing played no role in the decision to shrink Bears Ears, and a department spokeswoman said he had met with inter- ested parties on all sides.
But President Donald Trump has prioritized scrapping environmental regulations to help revitalize domestic energy production. His executive order instruct- ing Zinke to review Bears
Ears said improper monument designations could
“create barriers to achieving energy independence.”
In theory, even after President Barack Obama established Bears Ears in 2016,
mining companies could have developed any of the claims within it, given proper local approvals. But compa- nies say that expanding the sites, or even building roads to access them, would have required special permits, driving up costs.
Energy Fuels said it sold its
Bears Ears claims to a smaller company, Encore Energy, in 2016. But Encore issued shares to Energy Fuels in return, making Energy Fuels
Encore’s largest shareholder, with a seat on its board.
Curtis Moore, an Energy
Fuels spokesman, said the company had played only a small part in the decision to shrink Bears Ears. The company proposed scaling back the monument by just 2.5 percent, he said, and was prepared to support a ban
within the rest of the original boundaries.
Yet two weeks after Zinke’s visit, Energy Fuels wrote to the Interior Department arguing there were many
o ther k nown uranium deposits within Bears Ears
“that could provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future” and urging the department to shrink the monument away from any “existing or future operations.”
A bill introduced last month by Rep. John Cur- tis, R-Utah, would codify
Trump’s cuts to the monument while banning further drilling or mining within the original boundaries. But envi- ronmental groups say the bill has little chance of passing at all, let alone before the monument is scaled back next month. “Come February, anyone can place a mining claim on the land,” said Greg Zimmerman, deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group.
A Senator Steps In
In court, mining groups led Association a mining watershed, 2012 istration. predates 20-year by by the in the (The the the moratorium National have Obama established Grand moratorium.) Canyon challenged Canyon admin- Mining Mine on in upheld month. A federal the But moratorium court the U.S. of appeals Forest last Service rolling back has the recommended protections, meaning the Trump administration could soon reverse them on its own. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce, which represents mining interests, also backed an effort to defeat a separate proposal that would have permanently banned mining on 1.7 million acres surrounding the Grand Canyon. An Energy Fuels executive testified in Congress against the ban. Republican John And Barrasso with senators the of Wyoming, help like of the the industry EPA to withdraw has pressed an Obama-era proposal that would strengthen groundwater protections at uranium mines. The EPA said in a statement that it was “reviewing options for next steps.” Last month, Barrasso again called on the agency to withdraw the rule, calling it “unreasonably burdensome.”
A town still struggles
The Navajo town of Sanders, Arizona, a dusty outpost with a single stoplight, is a reminder of uranium’s last
ing environmental legacy. In Sanders, hundreds of people were exposed to
potentially dangerous levels of uranium in their drinking water for years, until test
ing by a doctoral researcher at Northern Arizona University named Tommy Rock exposed the contamination.
“I was shocked,” Rock said. “I wasn’t expecting that reading at all.”
Rock and other scientists say they suspect a link to the 1979 breach of a wastewater pond at a uranium mill in Church Rock, New Mexico, now a Superfund site. That accident is considered
the single largest release of radioactive material in U.S. history, surpassing the crisis at Three Mile Island.
It wasn’t until 2003, however, that testing by state regulators picked up uranium levels in Sanders’ tap water. Still, the community was not told. Only in 2015, after Rock raised the alarm,
did local regulators issue a public notice.
The town’s school district, whose wells were contaminated with uranium, received little state or federal assistance. It shut off water fountains and handed out bottled water to its 800 elementary
and middle-school students. The schools f i nally
installed filters in May. Parents remain on edge.
“I still don’t trust the water,” said Shanon Sangster, who still sends her 10-year-old daughter, Shania, to school with bottled water. “It’s like we are all scarred by it, by the uranium.”