Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) has waded into — and quieted, at least for now — a fight over uranium shipments moving through the Navajo Nation’s reservation land.
Navajo President Buu Nygren in a statement Friday revealed that he spoke with Hobbs on the phone Thursday evening. The governor, said Nygren, said she had persuaded Energy Fuels Resources to halt shipments of uranium ore from its Pinyon Plain mine through the reservation to a mill in Utah until the company and tribe can discuss looming safety concerns, Nygren said.
The pause arrives on the heels of Nygren vowing to deploy tribal police and take legal action to stop trucks full of uranium ore from the mine traversing hundreds of miles of reservation land in Arizona. The trucks are shipping ore from the Pinyon Plain mine, located in the footprint of a national monument near the Grand Canyon.
Nygren complained this week that he had been given a mere 30-minute notice Tuesday that trucks carrying uranium ore were crossing the reservation on their way to the White Mesa Mill near Blanding, Utah, close to the White Mesa Ute community.
