Arizona’s attorney general has asked the Forest Service to update a nearly 40-year-old environmental review of a uranium mine on the Kaibab National Forest, saying there’s new evidence of danger to regional water supplies.
In a letter Tuesday to forest supervisor Nicole Branton, state Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) said scientific advances in groundwater modeling “unequivocally show” that the Forest Service’s past findings of no threat to water supplies from the Pinyon Plain mine were wrong.
In addition, Mayes said, a 2016 excavation mishap that’s led the mine’s operator, Energy Fuels Resources, to pump millions of gallons of water from the mine shaft suggests groundwater is closer to mining operations than believed when the Forest Service completed an environmental impact statement in 1986.
“Failure to supplement the EIS could result in devastating consequences for the region — especially for vulnerable communities like the Havasupai Tribe,” Mayes said.
