On a windy day last August, President Joe Biden signed a proclamation protects the canyons, cliffs, and plateaus surrounding Grand Canyon National Park, nearly a million acres bordering the Navajo Nation and Havasupai Indian Reservation.
Biden said the new national monument is part of his dedication to natives to protect their sacred lands. “Preserving the Grand Canyon as a national park was used to it deny indigenous people full access to their home countries,” Biden admitted.
For Carletta Tilousi, one of the leaders of the Havasupai tribe that has called the Grand Canyon home for more than 800 years, Biden’s presence and his words felt significant. “Finally, the small voices of indigenous people have been heard in the White House,” she thought.
But she knew the fight wasn’t over. The monument prevented hundreds of mine claims, but two uranium mines were grandfathered in, partly due to an 1872 law which guaranteed their right to work. And now, nearly 40 years after first getting permission to mine uranium, a Colorado company is cashing in.
On December 21, Energy Fuel Resources announced that it had begun mining uranium at Pinyon Plain Mine, which lies within the boundaries of the national monument and had lain dormant until now.
The company’s decision was influenced by favorable federal policy supporting nuclear energy, high prices for uranium ore, and increased demand for domestic nuclear fuel. The USA bought 12 percent of its uranium from Russia in 2022, and there is growing political pressure to stop those imports in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The 17-acre Pinyon Plain Mine is 12 miles from the Grand Canyon, six miles from Grand Canyon National Park, and four miles north of Red Butte, a site sacred to the Havasupai people. where Biden gave his August address. The Havasupai tribe sued along with environmental groups to prevent the mine from starting production, but lost his case in 2022.
Energy Fuels plans to operate the mine for three to six years and estimates it will generate 2 million pounds of uranium, said Curtis Moore, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development.
“After mining operations are completed, the Pinyon Plains area will be fully reclaimed and returned to its natural state,” the company promised. “There will be virtually no evidence that a mine ever occupied the site.”
Amber Reimondo is questionable. She is energy director at the Grand Canyon Trusta nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau sued to prevent the mine along with the Havasupai tribe, saying uranium mining threatens the aquifer in the greater Grand Canyon area.
“Of course we want to reduce carbon emissions, [but] we want to make sure we do it in a way that doesn’t continue to impact indigenous communities,” she said.
According to Reimondo, water systems in the landscape are complex and interconnected. Energy Fuels’ mining process involves drilling a mine shaft through shallow aquifers into uranium deposits, and water flows into the shaft and mixes with the ore before it is pumped out. The concern is that contaminated water will be mixed back into the groundwater.
To date, the company has removed approximately 49 million liters of water from the shaft, let it evaporate in an above ground pool or share it with local farmers for their cattle once treated to EPA standards. Reimondo worries that water could eventually contaminate not only drinking water sources, but the creeks and waterfalls throughout the Grand Canyon.
“It’s really, really hard for researchers to understand exactly what that risk is because the region is so highly fractured and because we don’t know exactly where water flows to and from,” Reimondo said.
Energy Fuels’ Curtis Moore believes those concerns are overblown. He said the water the company pumps from the shaft is already highly concentrated in uranium because it was in contact with the rocks long before their mining operations began.
“Their implication is that we’re polluting groundwater, which is simply false – it’s obviously not fit for human consumption,” he said. He pointed to a 2022 permit from the state of Arizona which concluded that the geology of the mine site – such as the slope of the land and type of rock – is “expected to prevent any potential impacts on groundwater as a result of mining operations.”
A separate 2021 study by US Geological Society scientists found this the type of uranium mining conducted at Pinyon Plain Mine has historically had no confirmed effects on uranium levels in the groundwater sampled in and around the Grand Canyon. But the study also noted that it could take many years for any related contamination to reach the groundwater.
The potential for negative long-term effects is what members of the Havasupai tribe are concerned about. Dianna Uqualla, a member of the Havasupai Tribal Council, says if there is contamination in the aquifer from now on, she doubts anyone will take responsibility.
“Who will pay the price?” she asked. “Who’s going to be the one to say, ‘Yes, I did it’?” I don’t think anyone is going to do that. They’re just going to say, ‘Well, one less tribe, and we’re happy about it,’ is what the non-natives are likely to think.”
Uqualla is familiar with the long history of damage done to indigenous lands by uranium mining. In the nearby Navajo Nation, years of uranium mining causing lung cancer and a decade-long battle to get compensation. The mining was so widely harmful that the Navajo Nation banned it transport of radioactive and related materials through their countries.
Despite that ban, once mined, the uranium ore from Pinyon Plain Mine will be trucked to the White Mesa Mill in southern Utah along state and federal highways, including through Navajo Nation. Navajo President Buu Nygren begged the federal government to enter into the matter.
Once the ore makes it to White Mesa Mill, the company will extract natural uranium concentrate from the uranium ore, before selling the powder to US nuclear facilities, which arrange for the concentrate to be sent to other facilities for conversion and enrichment.
Moore says that uranium mining is much safer and better regulated than it was decades ago, and transporting the uranium ore is safe. Uqualla and Tilousi remain skeptical.
Tilousi wishes Congress would update the 1872 mining law that allowed Energy Fuels to continue operating a mine on a national monument. It’s something the Biden administration has also recommended, in part because of the law allow companies to hold mining rights for long periods of timewhich sows mistrust among local communities including indigenous peoples.
Tilousi hopes reform can happen, but doesn’t expect it anytime soon.
“As a Native American living in this country, we’re always fighting something,” Tilousi said. “We always seem to be fighting for our existence.”
