The new Office of Mountains, Deserts and Plains will oversee the cleanup of thousands of hard-rock mining sites west of the Mississippi River, including the abandoned uranium mines on Navajo Nation. Most local authorities, private experts and activists agree that since 1994, when the EPA started to address the mines, cleanup efforts of uranium mining sites have been slow. And that has had potentially deadly consequences: known effects of uranium exposure include compromised immune function and various forms of cancer.
EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler has pitched the new office as an answer to a “one-size-fits-all” approach to environmental remediation. “Creating a western lands-focused office will not only give EPA the ability to prioritize and accelerate cleanup of mining sites in the West,” he wrote in a guest column for the Colorado Springs Gazette, “it will also act as a model for other regions across America needing to address their own unique environmental challenges.”
The early September announcement of the office’s opening comes as the Trump administration proposes to promote uranium mining to improve what it calls the country’s “competitive nuclear advantage.” The administration unveiled a plan in late April to relax barriers to uranium mining on federal lands and develop a $150 million uranium reserve over the next decade.
Related article: Can a New EPA Office Expedite Uranium Cleanup on Navajo Land? Not if Past Is Prologue.
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Geoff McGhee
Associate editor
Geoff McGhee specializes in interactive data visualization and multimedia storytelling. He is a veteran of the multimedia and infographics staffs at The New York Times, Le Monde and ABCNews.com. MORE »
Xavier Martinez
Editorial Assistant
Xavier graduated from Stanford in 2023 with a degree in economics and is currently a master’s student in Stanford’s journalism program. He has written about the high phone call costs faced by U.S. inmates, temporary Mexican workers’ interactions with the labor market and the efficacy of government healthcare assistance programs. A lifelong lover of charts and maps, he enjoys combining data journalism with narrative-style reporting.
‘& the West’ is published by the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, which is dedicated to research, teaching, and journalism about the past, present, and future of the North American West.
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