When uranium ore rolled down rural roads through the Navajo Nation en route to Utah last week, it set off a firestorm within the tribe and Arizona.
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren unsuccessfully sent tribal police to stop the Energy Fuels Inc. trucks hauling the ore. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes called the shipment, done without notice or an emergency plan, “unacceptable.” The Grand Canyon State’s governor, Katie Hobbs, brokered a deal to temporarily halt the transportation of the material.
But in the Beehive State, whose leaders also did not get a heads-up about the shipment, Gov. Spencer Cox was silent, Attorney General Sean Reyes’ office said only that it is “monitoring” the dispute, and state agencies can’t seem to agree on which department or division is responsible for overseeing the movement of hazardous materials.
The Utah Department of Environmental Quality said the shipments are overseen by the state Department of Transportation, which directed questions to the Division of Emergency Management, which pointed back to DEQ as the agency tasked with managing such loads.
For its part, Cox’s office said that duty falls on the Department of Public Safety, which houses the Division of Emergency Management.
“It’s easy for bureaucracies to pass the buck, and it’s a lot harder to have concrete and firm responsibilities spelled out,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, an advocacy group that operates in Western states.
Statutes and regulations, he said, give agencies an excuse to either act or not.
“From a public safety perspective, there shouldn’t be any wiggle room on matters like this. The company shouldn’t get a pass, either,” Roerink said. “Companies that are doing this need to work at the highest standard for public safety. There should be some onus on them, because they’re the ones ostensibly profiting off of using our roadways to transport this good that they have an expertise in transporting.”
Company says it followed laws, regulations
Energy Fuels said last week that when it trucked uranium from the Pinyon Plain Mine, near the south rim of the Grand Canyon, to the White Mesa Mill in Blanding for processing, it wasn’t required to notify anyone.
“We have done more than is required by law to inform and engage communities along the route, including tribal leaders, on safety measures and emergency response,” Mark Chalmers, president and CEO of Energy Fuels, said in a news release.
The company said it alerted the U.S. Forest Service about the specific time and date for the transport. At a July 19 meeting, the company stated, Energy Fuels let representatives from Arizona, the Navajo Nation, Utah’s San Juan County and Arizona’s Coconino County know of the window during which the ore would be shipped.
“Others were invited,” the company said, “and declined to attend.”
The driver for a shipment of hazardous materials must have the proper federal permits to carry those substances, UDOT spokesperson John Gleason said. Carriers must also have a security plan for the transport that includes elements such as route information, so the shipment can avoid areas where hazardous materials may be restricted — like the Navajo Nation or a dam area.
Federal regulations list no requirements for where that plan should be filed.
Gleason said UDOT doesn’t have its own restrictions on the transportation of hazardous materials. The only UDOT inspection that carriers may encounter is when passing through a port of entry, he added, but that review focuses on the size of the truck, not what it’s packing.
Federal regulations, according to Energy Fuels, say that all roads that are part of the state and national highway systems are open to the transportation of hazardous materials as long as the cargo is being carried in accordance with U.S. Department of Transportation laws and regulations for the specific type of cargo.
“As long as the carriers have their safety plans in place, proper packaging, and they’re meeting all of the federal hazardous materials requirements,” Gleason said, “then they can travel throughout the state and they wouldn’t notify the Department of Transportation.”
What happens in an emergency?
If there is an issue or an emergency with the movement of hazardous materials, Utah’s emergency manager, Wade Matthews, said, the response would “start local and end local.”
Command of the response could, however, be elevated depending on the type of hazmat emergency and its severity.
The state Division of Emergency Management sometimes receives notification when transports carry hazardous materials through Utah, Matthews added, but it’s not required.
The notifications are shared with Emergency Management by DEQ, said Hillary Koellner, a spokesperson for the Division of Emergency Management.
The last time the Division of Emergency Management was notified of a hazardous material transport was in March. That notice included a list of recipients, the travel routes, details about the material being carried, and its origin and destination.
“We’re basically just notified for awareness,” Matthews said. “The agency that regulates this is the Department of Environmental Quality for the state.”
DEQ’s Waste Management and Radiation Control website states that the department is responsible for “licensing and regulating” three uranium mills in Utah, including Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill.
A DEQ representative said, however, that UDOT is charged with overseeing hazmat transports. DEQ did not answer questions about whether it receives emergency plans for such shipments or if the department is notified when a load travels through Utah.
A DEQ spokesperson said the agency would be involved only if a spill occurred on Utah roads.
Shipments are safe, company insists
Energy Fuels said late last week that uranium ore poses “far fewer risks to human health or the environment” than gasoline, diesel, propane and other materials that travel daily on roads or rail.
If a shipment runs into an issue while on the road — a scenario the company characterized as “unlikely” — the material would not explode or leak toxic chemicals.
“It is solid rock,” the company said, “and only has low levels of radioactivity.”
Chalmers, the head of the company, also cautioned that activist organizations were “recklessly exploiting this process by ignoring facts and scientific data to spread unwarranted fear.”
Roerink countered that the need for public safety shouldn’t be based on statistics about whether a truck might crash.
“The need for public safety,” he said, “comes out of a long and complicated legacy of dealing with these elements in industrial ways.”