I wondered what that meant, and down the rabbit hole I sped. The contract looked interesting, especially the line that said the firm would submit to the county third-party billings and the county was to pay them immediately.
When I submitted a Utah open records act request, I received copies of the law firm’s invoices and the contract with the law firm but no work product, emails, reports or anything else. I wanted to know what happened with more than $500,000 that the then San Juan County commissioners spent with a New Orleans law firm. Zinke.”Īs an historian and a San Juan County, Utah, taxpayer, I decided to follow the money, too. to make it easier to access the radioactive ore.” The Times reported, “Energy Fuels, together with other mining groups, lobbied extensively for a reduction of Bears Ears, preparing maps that marked the areas it wanted removed from the monument and distributing them during a visit to the monument by Mr. On May 25, 2017, two weeks after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke visited San Juan County, Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers, who manages the White Mesa Mill near Blanding, Utah, wrote to the Interior Department saying the monument “could affect existing and future mill operations,” and “there are also many other known uranium and vanadium deposits located within the (original boundaries) that could provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future.” Lobbying records verify that Energy Fuels hired the firm Faegre Baker Daniels and spent $30,000 with them “to work on the matter and other federal policies.”Īccording to the Post, Energy Fuels “urged the Trump administration to limit the monument to the smallest size needed. 13, 2018, in The New York Times are revealing.
Stories by both Juliet Eilperin in The Washington Post on Dec. Energy Fuels spent thousands of dollars lobbying to shrink the monument’s size.