Energy extraction on public lands had a lot more to do with Utah’s national monument reductions than the Department of Interior and the state’s elected leaders are acknowledging, newly disclosed documents suggest.
According to a May 25 letter obtained by The Washington Post, Utah’s primary uranium producer and waste processor, Colorado-based Energy Fuels Resources (EFR), implored Interior officials to trim Bears Ears National Monument in ways that protect its assets just outside the monument’s periphery, which included the country’s last operating uranium mill.
The company apparently feared that having a national monument abutting the mill located at southern Utah’s White Mesa — which features a sprawling network of wastewater ponds — would hurt its operations, putting at risk the nation’s domestic ore-processing capacity.