The Bureau of Land Management approved permits for the reopening of a uranium mine in southeastern Utah, after an environmental review period that lasted just 11 days.
It's the first mining project to be approved under the Trump Administration's new expedited environmental review process, which had an original timeline of 14 days. The Department of the Interior says this is part of the administration's declaration of a "national energy emergency," and its desire to rely less on foreign uranium.
Anfield Energy, a Canadian company, wants to reopen its Velvet-Wood Mine. The project area is located in San Juan County, southeast of Moab and Monticello, and just miles from the Colorado State line. The mine first closed in the 1980s, and the state of Utah had been doing reclamation work in the area for decades.
The BLM issued a "finding of no significant impact" for the Velvet-Wood project.
Sarah Fields is with Uranium Watch, a nonprofit organization based in Moab that advocates for environmental and public health protections related to the impacts of uranium mining and processing.
Fields said the Velvet-Wood Mine is still missing some key approvals from the state of Utah. According to the BLM's assessment, it doesn't yet have approval from the Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining for its Large Mine Permit, and it still needs approval for a pilot water treatment plant from the Utah Division of Water Quality.
"Even if everything was all lined up, it would take a couple of years for them to even begin pulling the ore out and processing it, so there was no real hurry," Fields said. "It'll take them a year just to pull all the water out of the mine. Then they have to go back into the mine and do a lot of underground work to prepare for actual mining operations."
Fields also took issue with aspects of the BLM's assessment, saying that Anfield should provide more information about their plans to mitigate environmental hazards like radon. (Fields outlined more issues with the plan of operation in a letter to the BLM dated May 12, 2025.)
"There's the issue of what kind of radon monitoring devices they're going to use and things like that," she said. "This is a very important aspect of any underground uranium mine, and it was just totally ignored in the application, and totally ignored in the environmental assessments."
The plan does state Anfield's intent to monitor for radon, but it does not specify the equipment for doing so.
Anfield says they expect that over the course of eight years, the Velvet-Wood Mine will bring 76 jobs to the area, though Fields is skeptical that they'll be able to hire people.
"Just getting good workers in this area, good experienced workers or good subcontractors could be a challenge," she said.
The numbers show that mining companies in Utah, especially those in the coal industry, are having trouble filling jobs. It's not yet clear whether the uranium industry could experience the same hiring challenges.
Fields also contended that the brief window of environmental review did not give the public adequate time to comment on the project, as is usually the case under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
"There was no opportunity for public comment either before or after," she said, adding that she had only been able to access Anfield's plan of operations through the Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining's website, not through the BLM.
There is also the issue of processing the uranium once it's been mined.
In addition to the Velvet-Wood Mine, Anfield also wants to re-open its Shootaring Canyon Mill near Hanksville, which is about 180 miles away, and is not currently operational. Utah is currently home to the nation's only licensed and operating uranium mill in the country, White Mesa Uranium Mill, operated by Energy Fuels. According to the Interior, there are only three licensed, permitted, and constructed uranium mills—with Shootaring Canyon being one of them, though it only operated for six months in 1982.
"The produced ore would be trucked approximately 178 miles on public roads and highways to the Shootaring Canyon Uranium Facility near Ticaboo, Utah," the BLM's assessment reads. "In the event that the Shootaring Mill is unavailable, ore will instead be hauled approximately 61 miles on public roads and highways to the White Mesa Mill."
Conservation and public lands advocates have questioned whether there is a national energy emergency, especially considering that the Trump Administration excludes renewable energy sources in its actions to address the so-called emergency, and in the fact that the U.S. is producing more fossil fuels than any other nation in history.
In its letter to the BLM, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club question the legality of the Velvet-Wood Mine's expedited review.
"There is no way BLM can take a hard look at a project of this complexity, and comply with the requirements of NEPA, in only 14 days," the groups write. "The incredibly short time frame, and lack of information provided by BLM, abandon the other key purpose of NEPA to inform the public and allow them to meaningfully participate in this process."
In addition to conservation and environmental advocacy groups, tribal nations in the region have also expressed concerns over the project. The BLM says it reached out to five tribal nations with in-person or virtual meetings, including the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Pueblo of Zuni, and the Pueblo of San Felipe, though it only gave them seven days to submit feedback.
According to the report, all of the tribes expressed similar concerns over "the emergency procedures, water impacts, transportation, and uranium contamination." The tribes were also concerned about cultural resources in the area, and the project's proximity to Bears Ears National Monument.
According to the BLM's environmental assessment, five cultural sites were found to be in the project area, including one that was "determined to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)." The Woods part of the project contained an additional two cultural sites, both of which were eligible for the NRHP. The agency said that with "archaeological monitoring, avoidance, other stipulations, and project design features," the project would be able to avoid and minimize its impacts on historic properties, ultimately saying that with the measures in place, the mine would not impact these cultural resources "to a degree that requires detailed analysis."
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including KSJD.
