SIGN OUR PETITION TO STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES OPPOSED TO ENERGY FUELS' URANIUM MILL!
The Background
The uranium industry in Utah has a legacy of environmental and health impacts on residents, especially in the southwest where the majority of mining and milling has historically occurred. Currently, the only licensed uranium mill operating in the United States is the Energy Fuels Uranium Mill, which is located on land sacred to the Ute Mountain Ute tribe and many other indigenous communities one mile east of Bears Ears National Monument and less than five miles north of Ute Mountain Ute White Mesa Tribal lands.
The Impact of the Uranium Mill
The extraction and processing of uranium has contaminated water and devastated landscapes across the state. These activities have jeopardized Utah’s delicate ecosystems and pose ongoing risks to public health for generations. The radioactive byproducts from uranium mining and milling are linked to increased rates of cancer, respiratory disease, and other serious health conditions suffered by communities in proximity to the mill and mines. In Utah, the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain Ute White Mesa Community have historically borne the brunt of these impacts. Contaminants from the Energy Fuels Uranium Mill will remain toxic to human health for thousands of years to come. Even as radioactive waste from as far away as Estonia and Japan is sent to the Mill for processing and disposal, waste from the first atomic bomb continues to harm tribal communities and residents around the Mill’s disposal sites.
Grassroots Resistance
The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and White Mesa Concerned Community have advocated against mill operations for years. Community members remain exposed to decades-long contamination of their air, water, and land. These individuals continue to suffer cultural and sacred land losses as their interests, sovereignty, and cultural ties to the land are deprioritized in favor of uranium mining, milling, and waste disposal at the Energy Fuels Mill.
The persistence of uranium mining endangers the long-term sustainability of Utah’s environment, economy, and public health by prioritizing short-term profits over the well-being of residents and future generations. Utahns must hold this industry accountable for past and present harms in order to protect citizens’ health, environment, and heritage.
Learn more at: https://protectwhitemesa.org/
The Letter
We, the undersigned, stand in firm solidarity with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, White Mesa Ute Community, White Mesa Concerned Community group, and all impacted communities in rejecting the ongoing operation of Energy Fuels’ uranium mill. The mill, located adjacent to the White Mesa Ute Community in southern Utah, represents a clear and continued threat to the health, land, water, sacred sites, and cultural landscapes of the Ute Mountain Ute people and surrounding communities.
We reject continued operation and any further dumping of radioactive waste, including alternate feeds, and the shipment and processing of uranium ore at the Energy Fuels uranium mill. This practice perpetuates environmental harm and systemic injustice against Indigenous peoples who have long borne the disproportionate impacts of the nuclear industry. White Mesa must not continue to be treated as a sacrifice zone for international radioactive waste dumping by the nuclear industry and governments.
We extend our solidarity to all communities impacted at every stage of the nuclear supply chain, from uranium mining to radioactive waste disposal, and to those advocating for the cleanup of existing uranium sites on or near tribal lands and ancestral homelands. We stand with the Havasupai Nation in rejecting the operation of the Pinyon Plain uranium mine on their sacred traditional lands near the Grand Canyon. We also stand with uranium-impacted communities including those on the Navajo Nation, Havasupai Tribe, San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in opposing the transportation of radioactive materials through their lands. As we collectively face the ongoing consequences of uranium contamination, we uplift the urgent calls for cleanup efforts on the Navajo Nation including proper disposal of waste which does not further perpetuate harm to White Mesa or any other Indigenous community. Justice demands that no community bear the burden of toxic and radioactive waste.
We call on the government and private companies to assume responsibility and take action to establish long-term, safe, and equitable solutions for radioactive waste disposal, including uranium, alternate feeds, and rare earth minerals. This includes developing regulations and better practices in collaboration with Native communities that do not compromise the well-being or sovereignty of communities and the environment. We call for the cleanup of contamination from the Energy Fuels’ uranium mill near White Mesa, which should include disposal of all materials at another site that the Tribe, affected communities, and appropriate regulatory agencies agree upon. We demand that free, prior, continuous, and informed consent processes guide regulations and proposed siting of projects across the supply chain. We firmly reject the development of any new nuclear weapons or nuclear energy projects when they continue to perpetuate an already too long history and present realities of the environmental injustices they cause and the reality that there remains no safe, permanent, waste disposal solution for radioactive waste.
We stand together in demanding accountability, environmental justice, and a future free of uranium contamination.
In solidarity,