Trump administration expedites permitting for Utah uranium mine to a two-week process
Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum participates in a swearing-in ceremony of state lawmakers on Dec. 2, 2024, in Bismarck, North Dakota, shortly before completing his term as governor. (Photo by Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)
Permitting reviews for major mining projects may take years to complete, usually gathering input from the community and vital information on the natural and cultural characteristics of the sites. However, the Trump administration announced on Monday that, under newly established emergency procedures, a uranium mining project in Utah would have a completion timeline of just 14 days.
After a portion of it was already mined, the Velvet-Wood mine located in San Juan County is set to be reopened by Anfield Energy, a Canadian energy development company, according to an economic analysis of the project. The project is expected to yield significant results, since the Velvet mine has already produced 400,000 tons of ore containing 4.2 million pounds of uranium, often used as fuel at nuclear power plants, and 4.8 million pounds of vanadium, which is used in steel production and energy storage.
But, environmental advocates worry that accelerating the approval process for this project would set a dangerous precedent for the country and may cause harm to the already scarce water resources in the area.
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'These processes, which are enshrined under one of our bedrock environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act, are really fundamental to being able to do an objective, well-thought out assessment of what the potential harms of a project like this might be,' Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of the environmental nonprofit HEAL Utah, said. 'And they also, under the normal process, give the opportunity for public comment.'
The project sits in a Utah area that has seen the boom and bust of uranium mining over time, leaving abandoned mines without any cleanup plans, Tuddenham said. It is also near the Navajo Nation, which has been affected by uranium mining and processing throughout history. In such a rushed process, it would be extremely difficult to consider public comments from tribes.
By shortening the process to just two weeks, there's essentially not an opportunity for the people who may know the landscape best to provide important information on the site's characteristics.
'One of the things being said about this mine is that it would only require about three acres of surface disturbance, but that's not accounting for the underground disturbance that happens as part of the mining process,' Tuddenham said. 'There's really complex hydrology, like aquifers and just different water tables throughout our landscape, and when you mine into them, sometimes you permanently alter them.'
When the U.S. Department of the Interior announced the permitting review would be expedited to 14 days, it cited the national energy emergency declared by President Donald Trump on his first day in office.
'America is facing an alarming energy emergency because of the prior administration's Climate Extremist policies. President Trump and his administration are responding with speed and strength to solve this crisis,' Doug Burgum, secretary of the Interior, said in a statement in a news release. 'The expedited mining project review represents exactly the kind of decisive action we need to secure our energy future.'
The department added in the release that the U.S. 'is dangerously reliant on foreign imports to meet its demand' to fuel nuclear reactors.
However, at the same time, a court battle is ongoing over the Trump order that allowed the process to be fast-tracked. Fifteen blue states are suing the federal government for issuing an energy emergency declaration without an actual emergency.
'The Executive Order is unlawful, and its commands that federal agencies disregard the law and in many cases their own regulations to fast-track extensive categories of activities will result in damage to waters, wetlands, critical habitat, historic and cultural resources, endangered species, and the people and wildlife that rely on these precious resources,' attorneys general for the states wrote in the suit.
While Tuddenham believes there may be ways to make it easier for the public to engage in the process, expediting the years-long timelines, making substantial mistakes at the beginning of the permitting analysis would make wait times even longer and put a bigger burden on taxpayers.
'If you really skip around and skip around this bedrock environmental law and try to basically do it wrong, you're, quite frankly, opening yourself up to a lot more litigation and red tape,' she said. 'So going faster at the start doesn't mean going faster overall. It's sort of a performative thing.'
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