Navajo, Arizona attorney general question safety of newly reopened uranium mine

AUGUST 24, 2024 5:00 AM ET
By Ryan Heinsius



Protestors, led by Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren, marched along Highway 89 in Cameron on Aug. 2, 2024 to protest uranium hauling through the reservation. The highway was part of the route taken by trucks from the Pinyon Plain Mine near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon three days earlier when they began uranium ore transportation through a large swath of the nation.
Ryan Heinsius/KNAU

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Uranium mining in the U.S. is picking up after the nuclear fuel’s price hit a 16-year high earlier this year. But now that a mine near the Grand Canyon is producing ore, Native American tribes, local officials and Arizona’s attorney general are questioning its safety.

Last year, on a remote stretch of northern Arizona forest, President Biden designated the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni—Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.

“From time immemorial, more than a dozen tribal nations have lived, gathered, prayed on these lands,” Biden said as he addressed an enthusiastic crowd of tribal leaders, members of Congress, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and advocates.

The monument designation permanently banned new uranium mining claims on nearly a million acres adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park and blocks what could have been hundreds of new operations in an area that is culturally significant to the Havasupai, Hopi, Navajo and others.

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