Clad in mint-green T-shirts, members of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe and allies marched along Highway 191 south of Blanding Saturday morning to protest the White Mesa Mill, the country’s last conventional uranium-processing facility.
The mill, which tribal members have argued pollutes nearby air, water and wildlife, currently processes uranium in unconventional ways. It extracts the element from waste materials called “alternate feed” and recently branched into producing rare-earth compounds used in electric-vehicle batteries.
That, however, will change somewhat over the coming months as Energy Fuels Resources, the mill’s owner, prepares to open two dormant mines amid soaring uranium prices.
Curtis Moore, the senior vice president of marketing and corporate development at Energy Fuels, said the Colorado company is readying for production at its La Sal Complex mine south of Moab and the Pinyon Plain Mine near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.
“We hope to be producing ore at those facilities next year,” Moore said.
The La Sal mine — really seven mines that stretch east and west of La Sal along Highway 46 — last produced uranium and vanadium in 2012, according to Energy Fuels’ 2022 financial report. The Pinyon Plain Mine, formerly known as Canyon Mine, has never produced ore, per the U.S. Forest Service.
The decision to open the two mines is concerning to the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, according to the tribe’s Environmental Programs Director Scott Clow. Ore produced at both mines will be processed at White Mesa, which Clow worries will worsen radiation that he said is already infiltrating air, infecting local game and seeping into groundwater.
The alleged existing pollution is why members of the Ute Mountain Ute White Mesa community protested the mill on Saturday.
Marching against the mill
On the nearly cloudless morning of Oct. 7, Ute Mountain Ute Chairperson Manuel Heart addressed a crowd gathered in front of the Ute Mountain Ute White Mesa Community Center.
Speaking just before the tribe’s annual protest walk against the White Mesa Mill, Heart said the march was about achieving health equity between local tribal and non-tribal populations.
“We’re facing health disparities in Indian country — huge health disparities,” Heart said. “Not only diabetes, but cancer.”
Some White Mesa residents have long been concerned that the mill, which lies four miles north of the community, is contaminating nearby groundwater, air and wildlife with radon that allegedly blows and seeps off the mill’s tailings impoundments.
In late 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency briefly barred the mill from accepting Superfund waste due to an improperly exposed impoundment that contained radon-emitting solids.
At the same time, a June report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that radiation levels in White Mesa’s water and air are too low to hurt health. Citing that report, Moore said the mill’s operations are totally benign. He said much of the concern has been fomented by outside environmental groups.
“A lot of the concerns that are raised by these environmental groups … [are] really based on misinformation and false perceptions,” Moore said.
Moore also pointed to the mill’s recent outreach efforts. A new foundation has distributed about $150,000 to community groups in the last year, and the mill had an open house scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday to share its work with the community.
Clow acknowledged that the tribe’s air-quality monitors have so far revealed only background amounts of radiation, but said the community isn’t done investigating the mill.
Crawling behind the march in a white van to pick up stragglers, Clow said the mill’s tailings impoundments lack proper barriers to exclude rabbits, deer and other animals that some tribal members hunt.
“We’re very concerned about wildlife,” he said.
Michael Badback, a Ute Mountain Ute member who attended the march, said he’s noticed rabbits and squirrels disappearing from the mesa. Badback added that the mill’s impacts can vary by season.
“When it’s wintertime…the smoke settles here on the mesa and we can smell it, it smells like sulfur,” he said.
Clow also pointed to “whopping” levels of uranium he’s measured at local springs. The CDC report didn’t monitor radiation in seeps, springs, soil or vegetation.
The tribe is also starting to develop a long-term epidemiological study with an Albuquerque-based organization to identify tribal health problems and interrogate possible causes. Clow said anecdotal evidence suggests an uptick in cancer rates among White Mesa members.
“We are setting the stage for a very long-term thing here,” Clow said.
Ahead of Clow marched Davina Smith, a Blanding resident and Diné (Navajo) member who campaigned unsuccessfully last year to unseat Utah State House Rep. Phil Lyman. Wearing the march’s signature green shirt, Smith said Blanding “turns a blind eye” to their southern neighbors in White Mesa.
“I’m here to give my support in any way that I can,” Smith said. “It’s so astonishing and so disappointing.”
Adding mines to the mix
While some Ute Mountain Ute and community members are already concerned about the White Mesa Mill, its operations are slated to shift somewhat in the next year as the mill begins processing regional uranium ore.
It’s a result of a global spike in uranium prices: Reuters reported last month that uranium prices exceeded $65 per pound and could climb to $80 per pound by the end of the year.
Moore said markets are still responding to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and more recent disruptions in other uranium hotbeds.
“It really has highlighted the importance of having a domestic source of uranium for our nuclear power plants,” Moore said.
Amid the boom, Energy Fuels has geared up to reopen its La Sal Complex Mine and to open for the first time the Pinyon Plain Mine near Grand Canyon National Park. Moore said he expects the facilities to produce a total of 1 to 1.2 million pounds of uranium each year.
Lying about 10 miles south of the Grand Canyon’s south rim, Pinyon Plain lies within the roughly 917,000-acre Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument that President Joe Biden established this summer.
The monument made permanent a 2012 halt on new mining claims but grandfathers in approved mining operations, including Pinyon Plain.
Energy Fuels this summer released a statement calling the monument “an overreach of executive power” but acknowledged its recognition of existing operations.
Moore said the monument is “bad policy” as it cuts off access to some of the nations’ best and lowest-impacts sources of uranium.
“We’ve shown that we can mine that uranium completely safely with zero impacts to groundwater, zero impacts to air, wildlife, any of that stuff,” he said. “Then to just cut all of America’s best and lowest-impact uranium deposits off doesn’t seem to be particularly good policy.”
Nearer to Moab, the seven mines that comprise the La Sal Complex last produced uranium and vanadium ore in 2012, when they were placed on standby likely due to low uranium prices, per Energy Fuels’ 2021 federal filings.
Moore said ore from both facilities will be processed at White Mesa Mill. The mill also extracts uranium out of “alternate feed,” or waste materials derived from metals processing that has originated from as far away as Estonia.
Looking ahead, however, Moore emphasized the mill’s new processing of rare-earth elements, which are crucial components of the powerful magnets used in electric vehicles. Energy Fuels has been stepping up its game, he said, working to produce more sophisticated products that lie farther down the supply chain.
“If I’m looking 10 years down the road … I think uranium and rare earths will be of equal footing at the mill,” Moore said.
But for White Mesa members, that shift doesn’t necessarily signal the end of their woes. Before the march, Heart and Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Councilor Conrad Jacket said the underlying issue isn’t just the mill’s operations — it’s the precedence of profit over people.
“Energy Fuels is looking at it from a profit margin, and so is Utah,” Heart said. “I do not think money should be put before the lives of tribal members.”
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aim to inform readers across the state.