The wheels of environmental racism are turning in southeastern Utah. The company that owns the White Mesa uranium mill has applied to import radioactive waste from a metals-processing facility in the European nation of Estonia. If Utah regulators sign off, hundreds of tons of radioactive waste would travel across the Atlantic Ocean, and across the country, to the White Mesa uranium mill, in the backyard of our Ute Mountain Ute relatives on their reservation in White Mesa, east of Bears Ears National Monument.
I know from personal experience the poisonous legacy of uranium. I grew up being unknowingly exposed to uranium tailings at a former uranium mill in Tuba City, on the Navajo Nation.
Indigenous homelands are often considered sacrifice zones, and we, the indigenous peoples, are not seen or heard. Our tribal communities continue to live with the permanent radioactive wastes left behind by uranium companies without our consent. My relatives in the White Mesa Ute community, whose drinking-water aquifer lies below an already contaminated shallow groundwater aquifer beneath the mill’s waste pits, will bear the brunt of radioactive contaminants from the White Mesa Mill. The White Mesa Concerned Community group has been organizing for years for the closure and cleanup of the White Mesa Mill. Each year they hold a protest walk […].
Some tribal members don’t go outside anymore because of the toxic smell, and fears of contamination grow with each new truck hauling radioactive material to the mill. What are the cumulative impacts of being exposed to radioactive contaminants over decades?
White Mesa, like so many tribal communities, has been asking for extensive studies to establish baselines and measure the long-term impacts, but who is paying attention? In Utah, and around the country, our most vulnerable, such as indigenous communities and communities of color, experience the worst pollution because of systemic racism, which separates us and suppresses our voices. The desecration of indigenous cultural landscapes by uranium has left scars on the land and the health of all living things who continue to be exposed. The consequences of mining, milling and waste are burdens we will all carry for generations. As our communities work to heal, we continue to face nuclear colonialism, but we will never stop fighting. The Utah Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control must reject this application to accept radioactive waste […].
Talia Boyd. “The world’s radioactive waste not welcome here.” Special for The Salt Lake Tribune. 20 June 2020.
A long-anticipated Trump administration report aimed to “revive and strengthen the uranium mining industry” was released Thursday [23 April 2020], and if its recommendations are implemented, it could provide direct government support for uranium production in San Juan County where the country’s last conventional uranium mill and several idled mines are located. Uranium companies applauded the plan within hours of its release while numerous conservation groups and Native American tribal leaders announced opposition. […] Residents of the Ute Mountain Ute community of White Mesa, which is located several miles south of Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill, have long worried that groundwater contamination around the mill site could worsen and eventually reach its drinking water aquifer. […].’ [Source: Zak Podmore.“ Trump administration plan could revive the uranium industry in Utah, raising concerns from conservationists.” The Salt Lake Tribune. 25 April 2020.]
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