Red mesas on the Navajo Nation can be seen in Mexican Hat, Arizona, traveling near the intersection of State Route 89 and 191 along the uranium haul route. Photo by Shondiin Silversmith | Arizona Mirror
From semi-trucks and school buses to recreational vehicles and compact cars, heavy traffic along Highway 89 through Cameron, Arizona, is not uncommon for the community as many travelers pass through to get to the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff or further north to Page.
But the smooth four-lane highway quickly turns into a narrower two-lane road, and drivers are met with a rougher ride that includes potholes, patched road cracks and bumpy sections. That section of the highway is so notorious locally for regular, and often deadly, accidents that it has spawned a morbid nickname.
“We call the road ‘Killer 89,’” said Candis Yazzie, the former vice president of the Cameron Chapter House.
Now, a mining company near the Grand Canyon has permission to haul as many as 10 truckloads a day of uranium ore along “Killer 89.”
“It’s definitely unsettling and alarming,” Yazzie said of the haul route passing through her community.
The entire uranium haul route is about 320 miles, and it passes through several communities in Arizona — many of which are within the Navajo Nation — before crossing the Utah border for the final stretch to reach its destination, the White Mesa Mill near Blanding, Utah.
Some hazards along the haul route include narrow lanes, flash floods and icy road conditions. Other areas have poor visibility and blind spots, and much of the approved route’s landscape is open to wandering horses, cows, sheep and wild animals.
Cameron is one of the first Navajo communities the trucks pass through when they enter the Navajo Nation.
“Safety is definitely a concern,” Yazzie said. “Particularly the safety of our people.”
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The community has roadside stables, housing arts and crafts vendors or food stands, which many tourists and locals visit. A trading post and motel in the community draw people from all over.
Like many other communities on the Navajo Nation, Yazzie said she did not learn about the approved uranium haul route passing through her community or how Energy Fuels, Inc., sent two trucks hauling uranium ore through tribal land until after it happened.
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 each day.
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.
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.
The trailers are kept closed 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.”
Many communities along the route have a really tainted history with uranium mining and uranium health effects. They’re ignoring that aspect of it, and they’re choosing to profit.
– Candis Yazzie, former Cameron Chapter House vice president
The route starts from Pinyon Plain Mine on a forest service road before entering the main highway, 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. In the final stretch sees the trucks take U.S. Highway 191 north into Utah.
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. They cite fears of contamination and accidents along the route.
“Cameron and many communities along the route have a really tainted history with uranium mining and uranium health effects,” Yazzie said. “They’re ignoring that aspect of it, and they’re choosing to profit.”
Haul route through Navajo riskiest
A recent analysis of fatal vehicle accidents along the Arizona haul route has revealed that uranium trucks traveling from the Pinyon Plain Mine to the White Mesa uranium mill in Utah face a higher risk of accidents over long distances, especially on the Navajo Nation.
“The most risky segments of the route are between 240% and 700% more dangerous than an average stretch of road in the United States in terms of vehicle accident fatalities per mile driven,” according to the Grand Canyon Trust, an opponent of the mine, which analyzed fatal accident data along the route.
Josh O’Brien, a senior GIS analyst at Grand Canyon Trust, said the team looked at fatal accident data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System from 2014 to 2022.
Then, the data was cross-referenced with data showcasing the average daily traffic counts collected by the Arizona and Utah state departments of transportation.
“An average road in the U.S., you’d expect about four and half fatal accidents along it,” O’Brien said in an interview with the Arizona Mirror. But, in the team’s route analysis, he said they identified a stretch of road east of Tuba City, along Highway 160, where 14 fatal accidents occurred.
“That’s over triple the number you’d expect,” he said, adding that, after running the statistics on the route, it’s “very unlikely this happened by chance” and is due to the roads being more hazardous.
That isn’t news to people who live in the region and are familiar with the roads — and the dangers they pose — but the Grand Canyon Trust analysis backs up the local knowledge with statistics.
For instance, the Navajo Nation Police Department reported a fatal head-on collision involving a pickup truck and a semitruck that occurred on State Route 89 near milepost 479, between Tuba City and Cameron, on Jan. 24. The state road shut down in both directions for multiple hours.
“Five sections of the whole route have this significantly elevated risk,” O’Brien said.
The most dangerous sections of the uranium truck haul route include the road driving east of the Mexican Water Trading Post on Highway 160, near the Highway 191 junction; east of Flagstaff near Doney Park along Highway 89; east of Tuba City and Dennehotso along Highway 160; and going through Tsegi Canyon along Highway 160, west of Kayenta.
Four of the five most dangerous sections of the route are on the Navajo Nation, according to the Grand Canyon Trust’s analysis.
“Across the nation, the fatal accident rate for passenger vehicles was about 1.2 per 100 million miles traveled in 2022,” O’Brien said in the analysis. “Along some segments of the haul route, actual fatal accident rates were 2.4 to 7 times that.”
The analysis is limited. The team examined only fatal accidents, not all accident data, and primarily examined the Arizona portion of the haul route.
“There were 113 fatal accidents along the haul route between 2014 and 2022,” according to Grand Canyon Trust’s analysis.
“The statistical analysis is very clear,” O’Brien said in the analysis. “Segments of the haul route are dangerous compared to the average for roads in the United States.”
Uranium hauling still on hold
Uranium ore hauling from Pinyon Plain Mine is currently on hold as negotiations continue between the Navajo Nation government and Energy Fuels following the company’s surprise haul in July. In response, the Navajo Nation implemented emergency measures to bar any further transportation of the ore through its land.
“We believe that talks between Energy Fuels and the Navajo Nation have progressed extremely well, and it is clear to us that all parties are working in good faith to reach a mutually beneficial agreement,” Curtis Moore, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development at Energy Fuels, said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.
“Energy Fuels is committing to voluntarily go far above and beyond the already protective federal laws and regulations on ore transport to build a bridge with the Navajo Nation,” he said.
Moore added that the resurgence in nuclear energy, which doesn’t produce any atmospheric carbon, requires uranium, and the company has a responsibility to “demonstrate to people that modern uranium mining and transport is performed much more responsibly than it was during the 1940s to 1960s,” when many issues occurred on Navajo land.
The Arizona Mirror contacted officials from the Navajo Nation multiple times for interviews and an update on negotiations, but they did not respond.
Navajo Nation officials have made their stance on the transportation of uranium over the past few months, more recently with amending the Radioactive and Related Substances, Equipment, Vehicles, Persons and Materials Transportation Act of 2012 to strengthen the Navajo Nation’s regulatory authority over the transportation of uranium and other radioactive materials across their tribal lands.
In an interview with the Arizona Mirror, Gov. Katie Hobbs said the biggest concerns for the lack of notification of transportation between the Navajo Nation and Energy Fuels occurred due to miscommunication.
“As far as I know, they resolved those issues,” she said, but no further details were given on how.
Even as negotiations continue, 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.
Mayes submitted a letter in August stating that the EIS was completed in 1986, nearly four decades years ago, and is based on “an outdated, inaccurate understanding of the risks posed by the Mine to groundwater supplies across the Grand Canyon region.”
Hobbs submitted a letter in September asking for a new environmental review of mine, a request the Havasupai Tribe has made for years.
“As Governor of Arizona, I take seriously the concerns of Indigenous community members who feel the safety of their communities and the integrity of their sacred sites are threatened by this mine,” Hobbs wrote in a letter to the Forest Service. “Members of these communities continue to endure significant, heart-breaking harm from uranium mining in our recent past.”
The final Environmental Impact Statement for the project was issued in 1986, two years after the Plan of Operations was issued. No updated impact statement or plan of operations has been issued since.
Hobb said the EIS is still ongoing, and her office is asking for an updated EIS because it’s the assurance needed of the mine.
“This mine is probably the most heavily regulated operation in the country,” she said, and the EIS will add extra regulations.
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