A Colorado-based mining company has reached an agreement with the Navajo Nation that allows it to resume transporting uranium across tribal lands in northern Arizona.
The agreement comes after the company began the transports over objections by the tribe and local governments last year.
Energy Fuels started shipping uranium from the Pinyon Plain Mine last July to its processing plant in Blanding, Utah. That sparked protests by the Navajo Nation, which said at the time it hadn’t received warning. Transportation was halted as Arizona entered the negotiations.
Under the terms of its new agreement with the Navajo Nation, the company said it will limit shipping the ore to specified routes and times of the day, not ship ore on days of public events and ceremonies, use state of the art cover systems to keep dust from falling off trucks and make provisions for blessings and escorts at the discretion of the tribe.
"We’ve entered into what all parties believe to be a landmark agreement between Energy Fuels and the Navajo Nation," said Curtis Moore with Energy Fuels.
He said the agreement "even more importantly is going to help the Navajo Nation deal with some of those old uranium mines on their land that resulted from those old government weapons programs from the 1940s to 1960s that, you know, have caused Navajo people so much trauma over the decades."
Energy Fuels committed to transporting up to 10,000 tons of uranium-bearing materials from abandoned mines.
For context, the Navajo Nation has 523 inventoried uranium waste sites, said Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo EPA.
"Our largest mine has over 1 million tons of abandoned uranium mine waste," he said.
There is also a financial agreement. Energy Fuels will pay a $450 license fee for the trucking of ore. And a one-time, $1.2 million payment that Etsitty says will be used to augment emergency response programs.
The tribe will also be paid 50 cents per pound of processed uranium.
"This will equate to approximately $40,000 to $50,000 per month depending on the quality and richness of the uranium ore," Etsitty said.
He said he plans to discuss the agreement with other tribes and with advocates opposed to transporting ore across the region.
"I just would like to make sure that they know we did a really thorough review on our ability to move forward in that manner. But with the legal doctrine of federal preemption, we found that it was in our best interest to sit down at the negotiating table as opposed to potentially getting into legal battle with the company," Etsitty said.
Ultimately, the tribe doesn’t have a choice. Etsitty said the Navajo have restrictions against radioactive material transport across the land, but those restrictions exempt the state and federal highways that Energy Fuels will use between the mine and Utah.
As for the limits Energy Fuels will operate under: "I would say we’ve signed off on them. So we’re fine with what we negotiated. Happy? I would just say we approved them and look forward to implementing them," Etsitty said.
Transportation is scheduled to resume in February.
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