Trump's push for Southwest uranium will face stiff state review

Yahoo

22-05-2025

Mount Taylor viewed from Laguna Pueblo in an undated photo. As President Trump seeks to fast-track uranium mines in the Southwest, experts said a robust state review processwill stand in the way. (Photo by Jack Delano via Library of Congress website)
Recent federal activity suggests the Trump administration has two long-stalled uranium mines near New Mexico's Mount Taylor on its radar.
Earlier this month, a federal infrastructure agency included Roca Honda and La Jara Mesa uranium mines on a new list of 20 projects nationally that advance 'the President's directive to take immediate action to facilitate domestic production of America's vast mineral resources,' according to a statement from the council.
Then last week, the U.S. Interior Department announced that a proposed uranium mine in Utah would be subject to only a 14-day federal review period, shortening what is commonly a years-long process.
Source New Mexico spoke with state officials, outside experts and longtime anti-uranium advocates about what defense New Mexico will have against the federal government's efforts to restart uranium mining here for the first time in 50 years. While experts said hard-fought cultural protections are unlikely to present much of an obstacle, they expressed confidence that state regulations will hold up against federal encroachment.
'I think that the realities weigh against the administration's ignorant and uninformed policies that suggest to the public that these kinds of projects will happen overnight,' said Christopher Shuey, a public health researcher closely monitoring uranium developments here. 'They won't.'
Private companies have sought to develop the La Jara Mesa and Roca Honda mines for more than a decade, though interest heated up with Trump's executive order seeking to boost domestic energy production. Soon after, Cibola National Forest leaders named both mines priority projects, and then uranium company Energy Fuels then struck a controversial deal with the Navajo Nation that would allow it to transport ore from Roca Honda across the reservation. Meanwhile, Laramide Resources indicated on its state permitting application a desire to expedite the next step of its La Jara Mesa project.
DJ Ennis, program manager for the state's Mining Act Reclamation Program, confirmed to Source NM there's been a 'renewed interest' from uranium mining companies seeking to break ground in New Mexico.
But even if the federal government tries to fast-track mining here, Ennis said the state will take its time and fully review both mine proposals, which it is empowered to do under the 1993 New Mexico Mining Act, and in lieu of a federal law.
Trump administration expedites permitting for Utah uranium mine to a two-week process
'The feds are going to do what the feds are going to do,' Ennis told Source. 'It does affect us, in that it would be good if the state and the feds were on the same pace and page of permitting. But if that is not the case, the default then becomes the state's permitting process, and we have a robust permitting process.'
At the federal level, new uranium mines are subject to environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, which Trump's recent orders have accelerated. But that has no bearing on the state's ongoing review, Ennis said.
If it came down to it, Ennis said, the state could issue daily fines and potentially even deploy state police officers to stop uranium extraction at the Roca Honda or La Jara Mesa sites if the companies did so without a state permit.
So if Trump were to order a truncated federal review of the La Jara Mesa mine like he did the Velvet-Wood mine in Utah last week, and then the Forest Service issued a rushed environmental impact statement that selected its preferred alternative of extracting uranium, and then company proceeded to break ground, the state would step in and stop it, Ennis said.
'I'm not sure what that looks like, if it involves state police to enforce the order or courts,' Ennis said. 'But it is a state law that we are enforcing.'
Eric Jantz, attorney with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, said the state's permit review should offer the public some reassurance that nothing will happen immediately. He also suggested that his organization would consider suing if the federal government sought to fast-track New Mexico uranium mines.
Long-stalled NM uranium mines now 'priority projects' at Cibola Forest, leader tells employees
'I suspect that if the Forest Service either ignores its obligations under NEPA because of this executive order or its own regulations, that litigation will probably ensue,' he said.
That's because, Jantz said, he sees little basis for an 'energy emergency' that Trump claims is the reason to fast-track the mines.
'If there's one thing to impart, it's that this whole notion of premising expedited environmental reviews on some sort of emergency is preposterous,' he said. 'No emergency exists, and there's no reason why the usual environmental reviews can't continue.'
While experts and observers expressed confidence in the state's capacity to hold off a federal push to expedite mining, they said it remains unclear whether efforts by local Indigenous tribes and pueblos to protect Mount Taylor as a cultural and religious site will add another layer of protection.
In 2007, as several mining companies moved forward with plans to extract uranium from the Mount Taylor area, five tribes made the unusual step of sharing stories about their ancestral and spiritual connections to the mountain.
That rare disclosure of tribal creation myths marked an early milestone in a multi-year battle to create a 400,000-acre Traditional Cultural Property, drawing a line around Mount Taylor recognized by the state of New Mexico. Among other things, the designation aimed to give Indigenous people a voice in opposing uranium or other mining interests. After mining companies sued in 2009, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that the designation should stay intact.
Since then, the pueblos have maintained opposition, with the All Pueblo Council of Governors in December issuing a resolution to state regulators that 'Mount Taylor, known by various traditional names is a sacred landscape, central to the cultural identity, traditional practices, and religious activities of numerous Pueblos and other tribal nations.'
Even though the Navajo Nation agreed to let uranium eventually be transported from Roca Honda across the reservation, it has also long opposed any new mines in the Mount Taylor area, Stephen Etsitty, the Navajo Environmental Protection Agency director, said recently.
Uranium transport through Navajo Nation sparks concerns in New Mexico
Designation of Mount Taylor as a traditional cultural property has yet to emerge as an issue in the state permitting process, Ennis said. The designation requires federal and state parties to consult with tribes, but a collision awaits between private mining interests and cultural protections, Ennis said.
'The intersection of those two is a difficult question to answer,' he said. 'I don't know that we'll know until we get to the end of the process.'
Shuey, who has advocated against the mines since 2009 as a researcher with the Southwest Research and Information Center, said the recent federal fast-tracking prompted him and colleagues to review what the TCP designation actually meant for protecting Mount Taylor.
'We've been asking this question for the last several weeks,' he said. 'My understanding is that the impact of the TCP would be more of a, 'Pay attention to this site from the standpoint of cultural resources, and make provisions to mitigate any types of impact to cultural resources' type of thing.'
Even without an outright ban on mining or around the TCP, Shuey said, he expects greenlighting the mines to take years, during which time opponents will watchdog the process.
'A lot of these folks have lived through the 80 years of the uranium legacy. They've learned across generations of the impacts of mining,' he said. 'And so I think there's a lot of not only institutional memory but institutional knowhow of evaluating mining proposals and offering intelligent and compelling comments and testimonies.'
He likes their odds against a Trump administration that seems to 'not be particularly interested in understanding or knowing the impacts of mining,' he said, but instead has a 'weird, visceral notion that we just need more of these minerals for a variety of purposes, and we're going to go get them.'