Families near the White Mesa uranium mill survive off bottled water, buying cases whenever they can. Although the nearest steady supply lies at a Walmart location in Cortez, Colo., about 70 miles away, they said.
Michael Badback takes a moment from working on his car on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation on April 5, 2022, in White Mesa, Utah.and potentially exposing the area to radon emissions.
A sign warns of radioactive materials near the White Mesa Mill on April 4, 2022, in White Mesa, Utah. “It looks like things were relatively stable until 2010, 2011 and then they really took off,” Campen said. “This is a really bad trend.”Juniper Link, 7, plays outside his home on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation on April 5, 2022, in White Mesa, Utah.Just south of the mill, Badback squinted and watched as Juniper, his seven-year-old great-nephew, played in a yard dotted with empty water bottles, rusty car parts and tattered canvas sheets. Flotsam and jetsam of the desert.
Most shake their heads and refer questions to the Badback family, one of the few willing to speak out.live at or below the federal poverty line. She speaks of her childhood and her ancestors. They used to gather native teas and herbs in the area for medicinal and ceremonial uses. Sumac for basket weaving. Now the plants are all too dry to be of any use.
“We didn’t always have this and now it’s looking a little fishy when people are being diagnosed with cancer at earlier ages and higher instances of breathing issues,” Lopez-Whiteskunk, a former Ute Mountain Ute councilwoman, said.Dr. John Samet, dean of the University of Colorado’s School of Public Health, said the concerns are valid.
The mill’s rectangular white buildings stand out above the desert sands. Scores of blue plastic barrels, piled two high, sit behind a fenced-off area. They contain vanadium, an element that can be used to make steel. Because the process isn’t perfectly efficient, waste leftover still contains some uranium as well as compounds used in the refining process itself.
Water from the tunnel must be treated and cleaned before it can be emptied into the nearby Fraser River, Erin Garcia, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said. The site also produces vanadium, which can be used to make steel, and rare earth elements like neodymium, which are used to make magnets and critical for the production of batteries, wind turbines and electric vehicles, Moore said.A worker at the White Mesa Mill site on April 4, 2022, in White Mesa, Utah.As Russia, a major global uranium exporter, continues its invasion of Ukraine, American lawmakers are calling for higher levels of energy independence.
The White Mesa Mill underscores the contrast. It’s an economic driver for the region and nationally strategic facility but also a place that has been repeatedly cited for environmental violations. That was when the agency was controlled by former President Donald Trump’s appointees. During his term, Trump reduced the size of Bears Ears by more than 85%, cutting protections from more than a million acres of land in the area., once more protecting the land, and he appointed new officials to the EPA who promised to restore protections dropped under the previous administration.
Some of those samples turn up compounds at levels many times acceptable limits with spikes especially noted in uranium concentrations at multiple wells. Some of the uranium spikes are coming from wells directly between tailing ponds, Campen noted. And the levels appear to be worsening year after year, he said.The newer tailing ponds have leaked in the past, “which prompted significant repairs,” according to a 2015 study commissioned by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. So leaks in the older ponds are “almost certainly occurring,” the report indicated.
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