Uranium Mining Protections Needed Across the West
The Biden administration needs to protect communities and water supplies across the West from the dangers of uranium mining.
Geoffrey H. Fettus Senior Attorney, Nuclear, Climate & Clean Energy Program
President Biden’s designation of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni—Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument will go far in protecting the rich cultural and ecological value of this majestic landscape. It will safeguard some of the most iconic public lands in the American West from the ravages of destructive mining and destructive waste. This protection has been a top priority for tribes in the area, and the designation is long overdue.
“That’s our aboriginal homelands,” Dianna Sue Uqualla, a Havasupai tribal council member, told the Bureau of Land Management at a public meeting according to Bloomberg Law. The monument will “keep at bay these mining people that are coming in,” and will protect the Grand Canyon from companies that are “desecrating, raping the Mother Earth.”
This is wonderful news, but there is much more to be done about uranium mining across the American West. And there’s also a lot of misinformation out there that muddies what should be a clear path forward to protecting all the people and watersheds of the West from unchecked uranium mining.
Uranium mining contaminated tribal lands for decades
The uranium mining industry has left a dreadful history of contamination and harm across vast swathes of the American West, but especially with respect to the Indigenous People who call this area home. It’s a complicated history that intertwines with the Manhattan Project and the Cold War, and it’s a legacy that has yet to be addressed.
On Navajo land alone, nearly four million tons of uranium ore were extracted from 1944 to 1986. The industry and the U.S. government left behind hundreds of abandoned uranium mines, four inactive uranium milling sites, a former dump site, and the widespread contamination of land and water; this includes the 1979 collapse of a tailings dam in Church Rock, New Mexico, that deposited 93 million gallons of radioactive and chemically contaminated liquid and 1,100 tons of solid radioactive tailings into the Rio Puerco, contaminating the river for more than 60 miles downstream. After decades of pressure, the government has finally started to assess and mitigate this contamination.
Much is left to be done: More than 500 abandoned uranium mines remain on Navajo land.
We need new standards
Back in 2016, the Obama administration was poised to take action on uranium mining standards, but then Donald Trump was elected president. It will come as no surprise that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Trump administration cast aside the Obama EPA’s long-overdue protective environmental standards. In an about-face, the Trump EPA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) moved to weaken uranium mining rules.
Once Biden took office in 2021, NRDC had hoped for a new approach. So far, however, we haven’t heard anything from either the EPA or NRC, despite repeated requests by NRDC and other major environmental groups, tribal representatives, and regional groups across the West.
It is time for the EPA to clear the obstacles and move forward on the uranium protections it drew up years ago.
The Biden administration can begin to protect the communities and water resources that have been negatively affected by uranium mining for decades by taking two steps: (1) dissolving a 2020 memorandum of understanding between the EPA and NRC that undercuts the EPA’s ability to enact standards; and (2) issuing protective uranium in situ mining standards that have been sitting on a shelf for years. ……………………………………………………………….
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