Permitting reviews for major mining projects may take years to complete, usually gathering input from the community and vital information on the natural and cultural characteristics of the sites. However, the Trump administration announced on Monday that, under newly established emergency procedures, a uranium mining project in Utah would have a completion timeline of just 14 days.
After a portion of it was already mined, the Velvet-Wood mine located in San Juan County is set to be reopened by Anfield Energy, a Canadian energy development company, according to an economic analysis of the project. The project is expected to yield significant results, since the Velvet mine has already produced 400,000 tons of ore containing 4.2 million pounds of uranium, often used as fuel at nuclear power plants, and 4.8 million pounds of vanadium, which is used in steel production and energy storage.
But, environmental advocates worry that accelerating the approval process for this project would set a dangerous precedent for the country and may cause harm to the already scarce water resources in the area.
“These processes, which are enshrined under one of our bedrock environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act, are really fundamental to being able to do an objective, well-thought out assessment of what the potential harms of a project like this might be,” Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of the environmental nonprofit HEAL Utah, said. “And they also, under the normal process, give the opportunity for public comment.”
The project sits in a Utah area that has seen the boom and bust of uranium mining over time, leaving abandoned mines without any cleanup plans, Tuddenham said. It is also near the Navajo Nation, which has been affected by uranium mining and processing throughout history. In such a rushed process, it would be extremely difficult to consider public comments from tribes.
By shortening the process to just two weeks, there’s essentially not an opportunity for the people who may know the landscape best to provide important information on the site’s characteristics.
“One of the things being said about this mine is that it would only require about three acres of surface disturbance, but that’s not accounting for the underground disturbance that happens as part of the mining process,” Tuddenham said. “There’s really complex hydrology, like aquifers and just different water tables throughout our landscape, and when you mine into them, sometimes you permanently alter them.”
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