Navajo Nation plans to test limit of tribal law preventing transportation of uranium on its land

PHOENIX — The Navajo Nation planned Tuesday to test a tribal law that bans uranium from being transported on its land by ordering tribal police to stop trucks carrying the mineral and return to the mine where it was extracted in northern Arizona.

But before tribal police could catch up with two semi-trucks on federal highways, they learned the vehicles under contract with Energy Fuels Inc. no longer were on the reservation.

Navajo President Buu Nygren vowed to carry out the plan to enact roadblocks while the tribe develops regulations over the first major shipments of uranium ore through the reservation in years.

“Obviously the higher courts are going to have to tell us who is right and who is wrong,” he told The Associated Press. “But in the meantime, you’re in the boundaries of the Navajo Nation.”

The tribe passed a law in 2012 to ban the transportation of uranium on the vast reservation that extends into Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. But the law exempts state and federal highways that Energy Fuels has designated as hauling routes between the Pinyon Plain Mine south of Grand Canyon National Park for processing in Blanding, Utah.

Still, Nygren and Navajo Attorney General Ethel Branch believe the tribe is on solid legal footing with a plan for police to block federal highways, pull over drivers and prevent them from traveling farther onto the reservation.