Interior Secretary Doug Burgum appears to be cutting corners to establish a uranium mining site in San Juan County, Utah.
Burgum plans to finish an environmental assessment of the Velvet-Wood mine project—a process that typically takes about a year—in just 14 days. His press team said on Tuesday that the fast-track was “cutting needless delays.” And for him, it seems to be a big success.
“The expedited mining project review represents exactly the kind of decisive action we need to secure our energy future,” Burgum wrote via X Monday.
However, as Burgum and President Donald Trump are shouting “drill, baby, drill,” the people whom the mines will directly impact are reportedly being silenced amid this fast-tracked decision.
“It’s really troubling,” Uranium Watch, a watchdog group monitoring the impacts of uranium mining, told Daily Kos. “The combination of Trump and the Department of Interior shortening the environmental assessment process [will make it] so there apparently won't be an opportunity for public comment.”
An old steam boiler at the site of an old uranium mine in the canyon country of southeastern Utah.
And for those living around uranium-processing facilities, public comment may be their top priority. Uranium mine workers and those living nearby such facilities have long dealt with losses from cancer cases linked back to the toxic waste.
However, as Daily Kos sought to contact local officials and environmental assessors in San Juan County, it became clear that some government workers were unaware of the project happening underneath their own noses. The local health department could not be reached for comment.
Utah has a troubled and tangled history with uranium mining as well. The state’s taxpayers are still paying to clean up radioactive waste, known as tailings, that seeped into groundwater from other uranium mines.
In the past, uranium mines were meant to adhere to a specific procedure to keep from poisoning water supplies once they demolished their work sites. However, per ProPublica, these companies more often than not would request exemptions to bypass this responsibility.
But as the Department of the Interior and Environmental Protection Agency work to demolish the need for regulation, it’s unclear how many regulations will stand in the way of companies seeking to extract energy sources from Americans’ backyards.
Of course, Burgum has been all about propping up mining and pushing out clean energy initiatives since shortly after he was confirmed as interior secretary on Jan. 30.
As Daily Kos previously reported, he recently ended a Long Island-based wind turbine project, citing failures of the former Biden administration. Oddly enough, though, it was Trump’s first administration that originally signed off on the project, in 2017.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Meanwhile, Burgum—who demands his staffers to bake him fresh chocolate chip cookies—and the Trump administration are signing off on offshore oil leases and trying to boost coal mines like their lives depend on it.
However, coal miners themselves are facing an unsure future when it comes to their health. Thanks to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s budget cuts, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health will no longer provide free black-lung screenings to coal miners.
"I'm angry that we are just being cast aside," Catherine Blackwood, a scientist who was recently fired from the NIOSH facility in Morgantown, West Virginia, told CBS News. "Every single person faces different hazards at their work every day. And without NIOSH, I think that we are all in danger."
As Trump’s team pushes forward with sending hard-working Americans into dangerous working conditions, the fear that locals won’t have a say in what happens in their own backyard is more real than ever.
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