Uranium Boom Revives Tribal Health Concerns at White Mesa Mill
核心洞察
The U.S. push to revive domestic uranium (搜索) production, including a 2024 law banning Russian uranium imports by 2028, has intensified activity at the White Mesa Mill, the nation's only remaining conventional uranium mill.
Tribal members of the White Mesa Ute Community, living about 5 miles from the mill, report distrust of local water and air quality, with many relying on bottled water despite regulators' assurances that pollution is contained.
A 2023 federal health assessment found radiation levels unlikely to harm human health, but could not evaluate radon (搜索) emissions near bordering properties, while the EPA cited the mill in 2021 for an "egregious" Clean Air Act violation.
The White Mesa Mill in southeastern Utah — the nation's only remaining conventional uranium (搜索) mill — has become a flashpoint for renewed tribal health concerns as the United States accelerates its push to revive domestic uranium production. The mill, built in 1980 near what is now Bears Ears National Monument, produces yellowcake for nuclear power fuel and is owned by Energy Fuels (搜索), which has operated the facility since 2012.
The urgency stems from a federal law passed in 2024 that bans imports of Russian uranium (搜索) by 2028, increasing pressure to develop domestic fuel supplies. President Donald Trump set a goal to quadruple U.S. nuclear energy capacity by 2050 and issued orders to prioritize mining on federal lands and fast-track approval of mining projects. The Velvet-Wood uranium mine in Utah, for instance, zipped through federal environmental review in 11 days, to the dismay of local tribes who were given one week to offer input.
David Hart, a senior fellow for climate and energy at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that Trump's goal of quadrupling nuclear power capacity will be hard to meet because it would require constructing more reactors, which are difficult to build and often meet local opposition. However, data centers and rising electricity demand have intensified interest in nuclear power as a low-carbon energy source, and more states are opening the door to it.
A Community Living in the Mill's Shadow
Concerns run especially deep in the White Mesa Ute Community, where Malcolm Lehi and about 200 members of his tribe live some 5 miles south of the facility. For decades, the mill has sparked debate over whether radioactive contamination threatens human health by getting into the water and the air. State regulators and Energy Fuels (搜索) contend that any pollution associated with the mill is contained, but many nearby tribal members — aware of uranium (搜索)'s deadly legacy across the Colorado Plateau — won't drink the local water, relying on bottled water instead.
Yolanda Badback, a Ute Mountain Ute member and leader of the White Mesa Concerned Community advocacy group, has been fighting the mill for decades. "I don't trust it," Badback said of the local water. "My main goal is to shut the mill down."
The mill receives 10 to 15 trucks each weekday, according to Curtis Moore, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development at Energy Fuels (搜索), with the majority passing through White Mesa. Moore said the mill's business is picking up after a quiet 15 years: the White Mesa Mill produced 1 million pounds of yellowcake last year, and the company plans to more than double that this year.
A History of Distrust
The current tensions are rooted in a uranium (搜索) boom driven by the U.S. government from the 1940s through the 1980s, much of it concentrated around the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. That era exposed miners to heightened rates of mortality from lung and other cancers. Federal reviews found that the miners, many of them Navajo (Diné), were not warned about radiation risks even after government scientists understood the dangers. Mining companies left behind thousands of abandoned waste sites that have leached contamination into surrounding soil and water, including over 500 spots on and near the Navajo Nation.
"When it comes to tribes in the area, I do very much understand their skepticism of uranium (搜索)," Moore said. "They've been lied to before." Moore maintained that things have changed since the 1950s, saying workers today are exposed to 15% to 20% of allowable radiation limits, and outside the mill it's "effectively zero."
Government agencies and Energy Fuels (搜索) officials have said there's no evidence that the mill is affecting White Mesa's drinking water supply, which comes from a deep aquifer protected by a thick rock barrier known as an aquitard. "It really is the perfect site for a uranium (搜索) mill," Moore said.
Scott Clow, environmental programs director of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, said that deep aquifer does have quality issues — including arsenic, iron, and manganese — but the public drinking water is filtered and safe to drink. Adam Wingate, uranium (搜索) recovery manager at the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said that based on available evidence, locals' "health is not at risk because of the mill." Even so, Lehi and Badback said the tap water smells of sulfur and has a milky color, and that people in White Mesa typically don't drink it.
Air Quality and Regulatory Findings
In 2021, the tribe passed a resolution stating that the White Mesa Mill "has had severe health impacts on the residents of White Mesa and should cease entirely." While psychological stress is palpable, other health effects have been hard to prove.
A 2023 federal health assessment concluded that radiation levels measured at the tribe's air monitor in the center of White Mesa from 2013 to 2019 were unlikely to harm human health. However, the authors said they could not evaluate whether the mill's radon (搜索) emissions could affect bordering properties or residents, and recommended that the tribe collect air samples closer to the mill during times of heightened activity.
In December 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency found the mill was violating the Clean Air Act by failing to cover one of its tailings cells with liquid to limit emissions of radon (搜索), a known cause of lung cancer (搜索). The EPA called the violation "egregious in nature and duration" and temporarily barred the mill from receiving waste from Superfund cleanup sites. The mill corrected the problem, according to state regulators, and passed its latest air quality review in 2025.
Badback and Lehi have complained of odors they attribute to the mill, and Badback has raised concerns about air quality and rates of cancer and asthma, which are being explored by a University of Utah health survey. Moore denied that any odors from the mill could be smelled beyond the mill parking lot, and Utah air quality officials said the state does not conduct ambient air monitoring in White Mesa and does not regulate odors.
Watching the Water
The tribe, the state, and the company monitor seeps and springs near the mill because they offer clues to whether the mill's waste ponds are leaking into a less protected aquifer. In the late 2000s, an EPA report found elevated contamination by radionuclides at Entrance Spring, with uranium (搜索) concentrations at times exceeding the federal drinking water standard. EPA and U.S. Geological Survey fieldwork suggested the uranium at Entrance Spring came not from leaking waste ponds but from dust that blew off the mill's ore storage pads.
The latest tests from 2025 showed Entrance Spring had uranium (搜索) levels at 22.5 micrograms per liter (µg/L) — within the federal drinking standard of 30 µg/L but still elevated. "We're concerned about the pollution of those springs," Clow said. "We are looking towards many generations in the future here."
Clow is also closely watching the Burro Canyon Aquifer, which lies beneath the mill's toxic waste cells and feeds the local springs. A plume of chloroform and another of nitrates already pollute the aquifer, according to Wingate, who said Energy Fuels (搜索) is pumping out the contamination. When contaminants increase, it's hard to prove whether they stemmed from natural causes or mill activity, since substances such as sulfate and manganese occur naturally in the local bedrock.
Expansion Plans Deepen Tensions
Much of the opposition centers on the mill's toxic waste, which is stored in five lined pits called tailings cells occupying 284 acres of land. Badback vows to fight expansion plans that include new tailings cells located about a quarter-mile closer to the White Mesa community than the current ones. Moore said the cells will be triple-lined per modern standards.
"They want to expand south towards my reservation," Badback said. "That's the reason why I am standing up and doing whatever I can to stop that from happening."
The mill has also diversified into processing radioactive waste from as far away as Estonia and Japan, and received a $725 million conditional loan commitment from the Defense Department to scale up its domestic processing of rare earth elements. The new rare earths business alone could create 100 permanent jobs, Moore said. About half of the mill's 105 workers are Indigenous, though Moore estimated that no more than two belong to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.
For Lehi, a descendant of medicine men, the fight is about protecting the landscape for future generations. "Water is life," Lehi said, "because that's where we all began."