Orange roadside markers are staked along the six-mile gravel road leading from the Pinyon Plain uranium mine, indicating the road is a uranium haul route. The small markers are the only signage along the road showing it is a uranium haul route. (Photo by Shondiin Silversmith/Arizona Mirror)
Dianna Sue Uqualla always wears traditional moccasins and regalia when she visits Red Butte Mountain. The mountain is sacred to the Havasupai people, and wearing her traditional attire is how she connects with her ancestral homeland near the Grand Canyon and shows it respect.
Uqualla said the Havasupai people once lived around Red Butte Mountain because it had everything they needed to survive, including medicinal plants, wild game and plenty of wood.
“You can still see the fire pits along the tree lines,” she said.
As a traditional practitioner for her tribe, Uqualla said that when she looks at Red Butte Mountain, she sees the medicine that has sustained her people since time immemorial.
While non-Native people may see it as just a mountain with shrubs and trees, the Havasupai people see it as a holy place where their medicine people came from.
“These are gonna die,” Uqualla said of the vegetation because three miles north of Red Butte Mountain sits Pinyon Plain Mine, where uranium ore has been extracted since the beginning of 2024 and is approved for transportation along a route that passes by the mountain.
Energy Fuels, Inc. owns and operates the Pinyon Plain uranium mine on U.S. Forest Service land in the Kaibab National Forest near the Grand Canyon. Numerous tribes, including the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe and the Havasupai Tribe, have ancestral lands there.
The Havasupai Tribe, which lives at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, has repeatedly and emphatically said that the mine poses risks to its drinking water, natural wonders and sacred cultural sites.
Uqualla said that many people from the Havasupai Tribe used to come to Red Butte Mountain to pray. However, with the mine now extracting uranium ore, the fear of contamination is high, so only some still do so.
“It’s a blessing for the land,” she said of the community’s tradition of coming together to collect medicine, dance, and pray. Now, it’s rare for the tribe to have large gatherings at Red Butte Mountain, though Uqualla still visits the mountain when she gets the chance.
She said it was heartbreaking when the Havasupai people learned that the mine was now extracting uranium ore — and when the company sent out its first haul trucks in July without any notice to the tribes or communities along the route.
Uranium ore from Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon will be transported by over-the-road 24-ton haul trucks and end dump trailers, according to Energy Fuels, Inc., and up to 10 trucks will make the trip daily.
Pinyon Plain Mine is at the end of Forest Service Road 305ab, about 6 miles from the main highway. Driving along the narrow dirt roads, there are no indications that it is the starting point of a uranium haul route.
The only identifiers along the narrow gravel road are flexible orange roadside markers staked into the ground every other mile. Uqualla said the markers are insufficient, given that she only noticed them once the Arizona Mirror pointed them out to her.
The trucks hauling ore from Pinyon Plain Mine travel along the gravel road through the dense trees of the Kaibab Forest before reaching the main highway, State Route 64.
The trucks pass Red Butte Mountain, where the main road sits about half a mile from the open area at the mountain’s base.
The Havasupai Tribe condemned Energy Fuels’ actions in July when it started transporting uranium ore. Uqualla said that many of her people did not like that the transport happened by surprise, even though the company had promised the Havasupai Tribe five days’ notice.
Uqualla thought it was in poor taste that the mining company sent the trucks out early in the morning, a time when many people would not notice them.
“That was not right,” she added.
As part of the mining company’s transportation policy, trailers hauling uranium ore must be kept closed at all times, both when containing uranium ore and when empty. That is done using a tarp, which can be removed only when loading and unloading “so that there may not be any leakage of radioactive material from the trailer.”
When Uqualla learned that only a tarp would cover the uranium ore as it was being transported, she said that was not enough to prevent contamination.
She said that if the tarp is not secure, it will start flapping, allowing more air to pass through the truck trailers and potentially releasing contaminants along the roadway.
“If they don’t maintain those things, a lot of contamination is going to be spread from here all the way up to Utah,” Uqualla added.
The roughly 320-mile route starts from a forest service road before entering State Route 64. It then travels south toward Interstate 40 to enter Flagstaff, proceeding east to head north on U.S. Highway 89 until heading east on U.S. Highway 160. The final stretch sees the trucks take U.S. Highway 191 north into Utah.
All shipments of uranium ore from the Pinyon Plain Mine to the White Mesa Mill must be transported without unnecessary delay, according to the mining company’s transportation policy.
However, in the event of a delay, they have designated safe havens for “temporary storage of transportation vehicles” along the route.
Many communities along the haul route, which passes through towns in Arizona, the Hopi Nation, the Navajo Nation, Utah and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, oppose uranium hauling and condemned the first haul in July, citing fears of contamination and accidents along the route.
Uqualla said the route raises concerns because State Route 64 attracts heavy traffic in both directions as people head north to the Grand Canyon or south toward Williams and Interstate 40.
“You have wrecks all the time,” Uqualla said, noting that speeding and poor weather are regular factors for many accidents along the highway.
“If one of those big trucks crashes, all that ore is going to come out,” she said. And then what? She said even if the mining company has an emergency plan in place and is going to clean up, the contamination has already happened and can’t be taken back.
The trucks hauling the uranium are almost impossible to distinguish from the other tractor-trailers that routinely travel the state’s highways and interstates. The uranium ore produced by the mine is classified as LSA-1 (Low Specific Activity), which means that trucks are not required to label their shipments with more than a yellow placard that reads “RADIOACTIVE” in three-inch letters, according to their transportation policy.
The placard must be placed on each side and each end of the truckload, the policy states, and it must be clearly visible from the direction it faces.
Dinolene Caska, a member of the Havasupai Tribe, said she believes that if the mining company has nothing to hide, it should clearly mark its trucks with signs indicating uranium ore so people can easily identify it and know to stay away.
“Don’t try to be discreet,” she said, adding that she believes the mine knows that many people are against it, so “they don’t want to advertise it because they’re probably going to get more opposition.”
“Why are you hiding it?” Caska asked. “You’re hiding it because you know uranium is cancerous.”
Decades of opposition span generations of tribal leaders
Uqualla said her tribe’s elders have been resisting the uranium mine’s efforts for generations; she has been part of that resistance since she was 14, and she is now 65.
“We’ve been fighting it so long,” Uqualla said. She recalls how she helped the elders in her community as an apprentice and assisted them during meetings about the mine.
“Now, I have become the elder that is fighting for this,” she added.
The Havasupai Tribe’s land is over 188,000 acres of canyon land and broken plateaus bordering the western edge of the Grand Canyon’s south rim. Supai, their main village, is located eight miles below the rim of the Grand Canyon.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the mine has a history of flooding. It drains into shallow groundwater aquifers that flow into South Rim springs. The mine also threatens to contaminate deep aquifers that feed Havasu Creek and other Grand Canyon springs.
The Havasupai Tribe, several conservation groups and other tribal nations have opposed the mine for years. The Havasupai Tribe was involved in a lengthy legal battle that sought to close the mine, but a federal judge ruled in the mine’s favor in 2020.
But that hasn’t stopped the Havasupai from trying to halt the mine’s operations. Their latest effort involves calling for a new environmental impact statement and writing a letter of opposition to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, which issued the mine an aquifer protection plan permit in 2022.
The Havasupai Tribe was also one of many that advocated for the designation Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which effectively bars mining on roughly a million acres of land near the Grand Canyon, including the land for Pinyon Plain Mine and Red Butte Mountain.
However, according to the U.S. Forest Service, Pinyon Plain Mine is exempted because of its previous existing rights.
“This is part of our history,” Caska said of the land surrounding Red Butte Mountain. “All this land around here, that’s us.”
Caska is part of the Havasupai Tribal Council’s uranium subcommittee. She advocates alongside her community to educate people about what is happening and stop uranium mining and transportation within their ancestral homelands.
Caska said she grew up wandering around Red Butte Mountain, where she would go hunting and gather medicine with her family. She said she hopes that the work the Havasupai Tribe is doing to protect the mountain will save it for the next generation.
“We’re trying to make sure that we protect our land,” she added. “This is where we came from.”
Caska said she wants the next generation of Havasupai people to be able to come out to the mountain and participate in the Havasuapi’s way of life, including hunting, gathering and other cultural customs.
“It’s our culture that we need to protect,” she added.
When she heard Pinyon Plain Mine started sending trucks along the route hauling uranium ore, Caska said she was devastated and scared. She said hauling the uranium ore across the Havasupai’s ancestral homelands and near their traditional cultural property is putting the tribe’s health and people in jeopardy.
“We are in jeopardy, whether these people see it or not,” she said.
Caska said their community has been fighting against the mine for a long time, and she wants people to understand that “uranium kills.” Having the mine continue operating and transporting ore will only end in “disaster.”
“It’s not just my people; everybody has to speak up,” Uqualla said. “Uranium doesn’t kill you right away. It makes you suffer.”
Uranium ore hauling from Pinyon Plain Mine is currently on hold as negotiations continue between the Navajo Nation government and Energy Fuels.
In addition to negotiations, other requests have been made, including calls from the Havasupai Tribe, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, and Gov. Katie Hobbs for the U.S. Forest Service to conduct a new environmental impact study for the Pinyon Plain Mine.
Caska said that when the mining company halted the transportation of the uranium ore in August after calls from their tribe, the Navajo Nation and Hobbs, it gave her some hope.
“I guess we do have people on our side,” she said, adding that it fuels their hope that the tribe will prevail. “It’s going to be a hard fight.”
However, Caska expressed concerns about the mining company’s voluntary transportation halt and ongoing negotiations with the Navajo Nation.
Caska said the mining company is only talking to the Navajo Nation, and the Havasupai Tribe should be included in the negotiation because the hauling route starts in their ancestral homeland.
“We should have a part in that negotiation because they are using our ancestral lands to get it out of here,” Caska said. “They’re coming out of our territory, so we should have the same say, but we’re left out.”
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.
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