Given the dark history of Tribes and the uranium industry, it seems like this is a historic agreement.
From this Navajo-Hopi Observer article:
I italicized the parts featuring the importance of working together. Note that the footprint of the Pinyon Plain Mine (on the Kaibab NF) is 17 acres. If footprint is related to environmental impacts, it seems like nuclear might be a better bet for energy production on federal lands than wind and solar plus any required new transmission.
Also, it makes me wonder whether the way federal permitting works with the BLM or FS as intermediary, effectively keeps the applicants from working directly with communities to work out agreements that work directly with their concerns. For example, the Public Lands Rule idea that companies could offset environmental damage in one location by doing restoration work elsewhere, still leaves the local communities out of the picture. On the other hand, even if community officials negotiated directly with companies, individuals could still disagree and litigate. Oh, well.
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After months of negotiation, the Navajo Nation and Energy Fuels Inc. have signed an agreement allowing the transport of uranium ore along federal and state highways throughout the Navajo Nation, with transportation set to resume in February.
“We have a settlement agreement that will allow the Navajo Nation to monitor and inspect the haul trucks and that provides financial compensation for the expenses to improve safety and protect the environment,” Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, said in a press release.
The agreement comes nearly six months after Energy Fuels, Inc., voluntarily halted transportation following the company’s first transport through the Navajo Nation with little notice to the tribe. The company then entered into negotiations with the Navajo Nation in August 2024 after the tribe condemned their actions.
Energy Fuels President and CEO Mark Chalmers said he is honored that the Navajo Nation is willing to work with the company in good faith to “address their concerns and ensure that uranium ore transportation through the Navajo Nation will be done safely and respectfully.”
The agreement has not been made public, but a press release issued by Energy Fuels outlines some of the details.
The mining company said it has agreed to add additional protections and accommodations in addition to the existing U.S. Department of Transportation requirements, which include limiting transportation to specified routes and hours of the day and not transporting on days involving celebrations or public events.
The company also said it would follow clear emergency response procedures, abide by notice and reporting requirements, carry additional insurance and give its drivers extra training and qualifications, including obtaining Navajo Nation transport licenses.
The company also said it agreed to use state-of-the-art cover systems — instead of the tarps it had previously said it would use — to prevent uranium ore dust from blowing out of transport trucks, establish provisions for escorts and blessings at the discretion of the Navajo Nation, and additional inspection procedures that will enable the Navajo Nation to ensure that all applicable rules and agreements are being satisfied.
“We appreciate the sincere approach the Energy Fuels’ negotiation team took with the Navajo Nation,” said Heather Clah, acting attorney general of the Navajo Nation. “They 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.”
The Navajo Nation stretch of the Pinyon Plain Mine’s approved uranium ore transportation route is more than half of the roughly 320-mile journey, with a total of 174 miles traveled on major state routes through Navajo land.
“This agreement isn’t just about resolving a conflict; it’s a commitment to protecting future generations, respecting Tribal sovereignty and ensuring that all voices are heard and valued,” Gov. Katie Hobbs said in a press release.
“Today marks an important step forward for our communities and shows what is possible through collaboration, partnership, and a shared commitment to public safety,” Hobbs added. “I’m proud to have brought Energy Fuels and Navajo Nation to the table so they could come to an agreement that addresses the Nation’s long-standing concerns and includes enhanced emergency response plans.”
As part of the agreement, Energy Fuels committed to transporting up to 10,000 tons of uranium-bearing cleanup materials from abandoned uranium mines across the Navajo Nation.
They have also agreed to support the Navajo Nation’s transportation safety programs, education, environment, public health and welfare, and local economic development related to uranium issues. Details about the specific type of support were not provided.
“We are proud to be a part of a historic agreement with the Navajo Nation, and we are committed to fulfilling our promises to them,” Chalmers said. “We hope this agreement marks the beginning of a constructive relationship that restores trust with our neighbors while also paving the way for future collaborations on cleanups and other areas of shared interest.”
According to Energy Fuels, the company has safely hauled several hundred thousand tons of uranium ore and other materials along state and federal highways that cross the Navajo Nation between 2007 and 2024, with no incidents resulting in the spillage or release of ore.
“Measures outlined in the agreement provide additional layers of protection for the Navajo and others, beyond the rigorous standards set by the USDOT,” the company stated in a press release.
After visiting New Mexico in 1931 and living at Ghost Ranch during the Manhattan Project, already-wealthy artist Georgia O’Keeffe bought a dilapidated hacienda for $500 in Abiquiu, New Mexico from the Santa Fe Diocese then beginning in 1946 she spent a small fortune and over three years rebuilding it. The village is what is left of the colonial war on the Apache, Comanche and Navajo where detribalized but converted Puebloans who were captured by the Spanish or sold to the colonizers lived to work as slaves and servants.
Last May, accompanied by several others, Our Lady of the Arroyo, her man and a guest from Pennsylvania toured the sprawling but minimalist 7000 square foot villa. Our guide, Michelle conducts several visits a day from March through November. The tour ended on the edge of the mesa overlooking the Rio Chama where O’Keeffe had built a bomb shelter so she could record the aftermath of nuclear war.
Armed with the enriched uranium mined in New Mexico four Los Alamos scientists blessed the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed over 200,000 children, women and men.
In 1951 after uranium was discovered in the southern Black Hills more than 150 uranium mines were gouged into the Earth where the Oglala Lakota once made their winter camp. Beginning in 1958 Homestake Mining Company gouged uranium from New Mexico leaving piles of waste rock laden with selenium causing cancers and thyroid disease in its wake. Since then, radioactive tailings from those mines have been detected in Angostura Reservoir after a dam on the Cheyenne River broke in 1962. In 1979 an earthen dam collapsed releasing 1,100 tons of uranium waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive and highly acidic water onto Navajo tribal lands.
One person’s holocaust is another’s foreign policy solution. In 2019 because the Trump Organization despises Native Americans uranium mining was fast-tracked in and around Indian Country where tribes already suffer from diseases and birth defects wrought by radioactive contamination. In July, 2023 Canada-based Anfield Energy bought enCore Energy’s Marquez-Juan Tafoya uranium project in New Mexico. Texas-based enCore has uranium claims or operations in Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and South Dakota.
In northwestern South Dakota radioactive waste in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation because the Board of Minerals and Environment is an arm of the SDGOP. Today, the Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer is being depleted six and a half times faster than its recharge rate and nearly all the groundwater sampled from it is contaminated with uranium and nitrates from industrial agriculture.
Larry: When you make statements like: “In 2019 because the Trump Organization despises Native Americans uranium mining was fast-tracked in and around Indian Country where tribes already suffer from diseases and birth defects wrought by radioactive contamination” — you lose all credibility. Everything else you write becomes suspect, and that’s assuming people keep reading for some reason.
Hateful rhetoric is bad enough, but statements like that also come across as downright stupid. I’m not sure you actually believe that kind of nonsense, but putting it in writing in a public forum as if it is actually an intelligent insight or accepted fact should be embarrassing. At least you use your real name, though, so there’s that.
Sharon, could you please inform your other readers that staying on topic is essential to our work here?
In 1993, Trump henchman, Roger Stone constructed ad copy and radio scripts depicting the Mohawk Nation as violent criminals and drug dealers so Donald Trump could erect a casino. Then, after losing a lawsuit to the Tribe Trump declared war on Native America and in 2020 he used the Hitlerian model and launched a biological weapon on tribal communities.
Starting in New York Donald Trump targeted the Mohawk and Oneida Nations for annihilation then his Tulsa trip and his campaign rally in occupied South Dakota spread disease throughout Native America. Trump even killed the White House Tribal Nations Summit because he loathes Indigenous Americans and he committed crimes against humanity throughout Indian Country not only by slow-walking resources to reservations during a pandemic but by undercounting Indigenous populations during the 2020 Census. Trump’s erasure of protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was cruel retribution targeting Indigenous peoples. Adjusted for age and population Trump killed many more American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) per capita than he did whites.
Larry, does your statement have something to do with the Navajo and Energy Fuels, because I don’t see the connection.
“Given the dark history of Tribes and the uranium industry” seemed like all the connection this interested party needed to remind readers of some the backstory. The piece you cited was published in the Arizona Mirror a week ago and has since been updated as tribal members feel duped by leadership.
https://azmirror.com/2025/02/14/we-were-duped-uranium-shipments-begin-across-navajo-land/
Because of the autocoup underway in DC and unlike Arizona’s Republican-glutted legislature New Mexico’s is actually moving to address uranium contamination on part of the Navajo.
https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2025/02/13/shiprock-representative-pushes-for-money-to-address-uranium-contamination-impacting/
I’ve been protesting this Pinyon Plain uranium mine since Energy Fuels Nuclear started planning it in the early 1980s and I was a seasonal on the Kaibab National Forest. Because of mining laws, there wasn’t really much that could be done to stop it, only to mitigate the damage. And the concern was great among all the Tribes who have ties to the nearby Grand Canyon, from the well founded fear that the mine would breach the aquifer that feeds the Canyon’s springs, including the beautiful Havasupai falls on the Havasupai Tribe’s in-canyon reservation. Mining stopped for a couple of decades mostly due to low uranium prices, but it was taken up again when economics allowed for it. The FS consulted with all the Tribes, but there wasn’t enough to stop the mine.
That’s why it was SO symbolic to see President Biden signing the new Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument at the foot of Red Butte, the sacred mountain near where the uranium mine is located in 2023. This Monument stops all new uranium mining claims and reduces the number of current claims that can be developed. In that regard, this story also relates to the first topic on taking away Presidential Monument proclamations. I’m a big fan of the Antiquities Act.
So the Navajo Nation, which has had generations of their people damaged by unchecked uranium mining in the WWII and Cold War era (many still have active claims against the government for illness and death from uranium that is still not cleaned up), used their sovereign power over what passes over the highway across their reservation to stop trucks loaded with ore. I’m rather surprised that they reached an agreement, but then again, the mining laws are very powerful.
From my point of view, Tribes were always involved through consultation in the battle over uranium mining on their ancestral lands, but did not have decision making authority. The Forest Service didn’t want the mine on the lands they manage but their hands were tied and they ended up with mitigation measures to protect the watershed and surrounding lands.