No radioactive material can be transported across the Navajo Nation without the agreement of the tribe, President Buu Nygren said Wednesday, in an executive order that will be in effect for the next six months.
“This was much needed,” Nygren said in a statement. “We’re taking this stance of interpreting and executing the law to ensure the safety of our people and respect for Navajo sovereignty.”
The order follows the unsuccessful attempt by tribal police Tuesday to stop two trucks that carried uranium ore across the reservation from an Arizona mine to a Utah mill for processing. Nygren said he was not notified that the trucks would be entering the tribe’s land.
Energy Fuels Inc., which owns both the Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon and the White Mesa Mill in Blanding, said it had informed federal, state, country and tribal officials of its trucking plans at a meeting on July 19. The company also said it had shared “extensive information on legal requirements, safety, and emergency response.”
But Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Wednesday that Energy Fuels had promised to give a two-week notice before transporting the ore — then did not alert the tribe or others before the trucks left the mine Tuesday.
The company also had not provided an emergency plan as of Tuesday, after county officials and other stakeholders had asked for it several times, Mayes said.
“Hauling radioactive materials through rural Arizona, including across the Navajo Nation, without providing notice or transparency,” Mayes said, “and without providing an emergency plan is unacceptable.”
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Energy Fuels, a Canadian company with headquarters outside Denver, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mayes’ statement or Nygren’s executive order. Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers said in a Tuesday statement: “We have gone far above-and-beyond the legal requirements, and we look forward to future dialog on these important issues.”
The trucks were loaded with an estimated 50 tons of uranium ore, according to a news release from the Navajo Nation president. They crossed the border into Utah Tuesday afternoon before law enforcement reached them.
Under the new executive order, anyone transporting radioactive material across Navajo land must enter into an agreement with the tribe.
The Navajo Nation banned uranium transport across the reservation in 2012, but a legal loophole exempted state and federal highways U.S. 89 and U.S. 160. Nygren asked President Joe Biden in March to stop uranium transport on those roads and approved a resolution in April repeating the request.
Even without action from Biden, Energy Fuels’ failure to seek approval from the Navajo Nation for the transportation of radioactive materials across its land disregards the Nation’s governmental authority and sovereignty, Nygren asserts.
“If you’re going to smuggle uranium into our borders and across our Nation and outside, that’s pretty much illegal,” he said in his statement. “I’m very disappointed that this is happening in this day and age.”
Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, said he alerted Energy Fuels in April 2024 of the tribe’s ban on transporting uranium mining products without notice and other requirements.
“I informed them of this particular law that we’re invoking in this executive order,” he said in a statement. “I encouraged them to understand that this law is in effect and that we would be concerned, and we will be using this law in regard to these issues of imminent transport.”
Etsitty said Energy Fuels had been informed of the new executive order.
Navajo Nation Chief of Police Ron Silversmith said tribal officers “were out there early this morning to ensure they don’t come through again.”
The department has the duty “to ensure the wellbeing and safety of our Navajo people,” he said and to “ensure that laws have been followed as far as motor carrier operations that travel through the Navajo Nation.”
On Tuesday, tribal officers had encountered Energy Fuels’ contracted trucks after they were emptied and on their return to the Pinyon Plain Mine, Silversmith said.
Energy Fuels maintains that the ore trucked across the Navajo Nation poses “no adverse health or environmental affects,” and is just 1% uranium. “Ore is simply natural rock,” Chalmers said in a statement Tuesday. “It won’t explode, ignite, burn or glow, contrary to what opponents claim.”
Navajo officials say they are not willing to take the risk, especially given the legacy of radioactive contamination on the tribe’s people and land.
“Anyone bringing those substances onto the Nation should undertake that activity with respect and sensitivity to the psychological impact to our people,” said Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch, “as well as the trauma of uranium development that our community continues to live with every day.”
Mayes also voiced concern about the Pinyon Plain Mine’s potential risks to groundwater, the only water source of drinking water for the Havasupai Tribe, who live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Over 500 abandoned uranium mine claims from the 1940s to 1980s remain on Navajo land, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Water sources on the reservation still showed contamination from uranium and other radionuclides as recently as 2008, federal and tribal agencies found, a result of past uranium production there.