Uranium transport through Native Nation sparks concerns in New Mexico

Yahoo

07-04-2025

Orange roadside markers are staked along the six-mile gravel road leading from the Pinyon Plain uranium mine, indicating the road is a uranium haul route. The small markers are the only signage along the road showing it is a uranium haul route. (Photo by Shondiin Silversmith/Arizona Mirror)
A provision in the secret, controversial agreement allowing a private company to transport uranium ore across the Arizona side of the Navajo Nation has New Mexico anti-nuclear advocates increasingly worried about the prospect of new mining activity near a mountain sacred to the Navajo people.
The Navajo Nation in late January agreed to let Energy Fuels transport uranium ore from its Pinyon Plains Mine in Arizona to its mill in White Mesa, Utah. Neither party has released the agreement, calling it confidential, they have described what it says in broad terms, and a transport policy, overseen by the United States Forest Service, details plans in case of an emergency.
Two to three truckloads a day are making the trek across the western edge of the Navajo Nation into Utah, officials have said at recent public meetings. That number could increase to 10, said Stephen Etsitty, director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, at recent chapter house meetings, according to video attendees shared on social media.
In exchange, Energy Fuels agreed to pay the Navajo Nation $1.2 million and also clean up as much as 10,000 tons of material from old uranium mines for free. Energy Fuels would also pay the nation 50 cents per pound of uranium processed at the mill.
Energy Fuels also owns the Roca Honda mine near Mount Taylor in New Mexico. The shortest route from Roca Honda to the White Mesa Mill in Utah also runs through the Navajo Nation.
Energy Fuels spokesperson Curtis Moore declined to say exactly what the transport agreement said regarding the Roca Honda mine, citing the agreement's confidentiality. But he did acknowledge the agreement contemplated the New Mexico mine's eventual operation.
'If Roca Honda were to proceed, we agreed to take quite a bit more cleanup material at no charge to the Navajo Nation,' Moore said in an email Friday to Source New Mexico.
Cheyenne Antonio, an advocate with Diné C.A.R.E, told Source that she asked Navajo Nation officials at a recent meeting about the prospect of uranium transport in New Mexico. She said Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, told her that no roads had been approved yet in New Mexico for uranium transport.
Etsitty told Source New Mexico on Monday that it's far too early to say what the route could be, but that the Cibola National Forest has presented some options in old draft environmental impact statements in the mine.
Estimates Etsitty has reviewed show that far more trucks would cross the Navajo Nation each day from the Roca Honda mine, based on assessments of the amount of uranium could produce. Between 50 and 60 trucks a day is the maximum, Etsitty said.
The Navajo Nation has, for years, opposed the development of any mine near Mount Taylor, known as Tsoodził in Navajo, Etsitty said.
But if the Roca Honda mine is approved, Etsitty said the new transport agreement contains 'a framework' that would require Energy Fuels to remove 30,000 more tons of abandoned uranium mine material, on top of the 10,000 tons the company has already promised to remove as part of the Pinyon Plains transport agreement.
Energy Fuels pushed for the provision, Etsitty said, because the company believes it is far enough along in getting that mine approved that it was necessary.
'We looked at it and and we agreed, but we also stipulated that we were not waiving, we were not pre-judging, nothing was pre-decisional,' he said in a phone interview Monday with Source New Mexico. 'Meaning that we were not agreeing with them that we support the Roca Honda project. Because we reserved our right to comment fully and vigorously on that project.'
The company has listed the Roca Honda project as in the 'advanced' stage of permitting on its website, but the website has said that since at least 2019, according to the Internet archive.
Antonio and Leona Morgan, who heads up Haul No!, a group opposing the transport agreement, organized a small gathering at an Albuquerque library on Thursday to discuss the latest on uranium mining in Arizona and New Mexico and brainstorm ideas to oppose its extraction and transport.
'My question,' Morgan asked those in attendance, 'is what is our solution to fighting it? How are we going to deal with it? How are we going to beat this monster?'
Uranium mining between the 1940s and the 1970s in and around the Navajo Nation left cancer and pollution in its wake. Companies operating in the area back then abandoned hundreds of uranium mines that continue to poison groundwater and otherwise hurt public health.
So the prospect of new mining and its transport has incensed members of the Navajo Nation, Antonio said. At a meeting late last month at the Mexican Water Chapter in Utah, one elder woman spoke up to say, in Navajo, that the agreement amounted to the tribe killing the Navajo way of life without members' input.
'You agreed to kill our whole Navajo universe without our consent,' the elder said, according to Antonio's translation.
Moore, the Energy Fuels spokesperson, noted that the company had nothing to do with the legacy uranium mines, which were drilled to produce weapons material, and that it is doing its part as 'good samaritans' to clean up the old companies' messes.
'Our uranium is only used for clean, carbon-free … nuclear energy, not weapons,' Moore said.
While outside observers and both parties to the agreement agree many hurdles remain in the way of the state's first new uranium mine in more than 50 years, they see the transport agreement as the latest domino to fall.
Already this year, Cibola National Forest officials deemed the Roca Honda mine a 'priority project,' following an executive order from President Donald Trump seeking to boost domestic energy production. Trump's pushes to make public lands profitable and his newly announced tariffs could also point in the direction of new uranium mines here, Moore said.
'Roca Honda is a large and high-grade uranium deposit that could enhance U.S. energy independence considerably,' Moore said. 'We are not sure what the executive orders mean yet in terms of concrete actions. However, the Trump administration is moving quickly to reduce America's dependence on Russian and Chinese uranium and rare earth imports, which are the two commodities Energy Fuels produces today.'
Long-stalled NM uranium mines now 'priority projects' at Cibola Forest, leader tells employees
As for tariffs, Moore said the taxes on imports could 'support domestic uranium and rare earth production.'
Also, the price of uranium has risen steadily since 2020, including cresting at a little more than $100 a pound last January. That's close to the point at which new mines are profitable, according to Eric Jantz, legal director at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center.
Etsitty, speaking to a small crowd gathered at a chapter house in Crownpoint last month, said the price hitting $100 last January is what prompted the new speculation in and around the Navajo Nation.
'That's what drives all of this. When people say, what is this all about? Is it just about money? Yes, it's just about money to the industry,' Etsitty said.
Moore said regulatory review can take years, even decades, for a new mine, especially if anti-mining interests get in the way.
'Anti-nuclear and anti-mining interests can severely delay good domestic mining projects,' he wrote. 'Therefore, we would welcome any shortening of permitting timelines, and reductions in 'lawfare' and nuisance lawsuits, to get domestic critical mineral projects into production to support energy, economic and national security quickly.'
Navajo Nation officials have defended the agreement as the best deal they could strike in the face of a lawsuit they feel they would likely lose. In the Crownpoint meeting and a question-and-answer virtual meeting shortly after they struck the agreement, Nation officials cited the Supremacy clause of the United States Constitution, which they said pre-empts the tribe's right to restrict uranium transport over roads that course through the Navajo Nation.
'We are supportive of the overarching desire to not have these functioning and operating, but we can't stop it,' Etsitty said in the meeting. 'So now we're trying to manage it.'
Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: [e-mail].
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