The Environmental Protection Agency next week will open a field office in Flagstaff.
It’s a partnership with the Navajo Nation and will focus on the ongoing cleanup of the more than 500 abandoned uranium mines on and near the reservation.
The EPA says the office will help officials understand community concerns, interests and Navajo lifeways and how the agency can work with the Navajo Nation government.
The effort to clean up abandoned uranium mines on Indigenous lands in the Southwest is a decades-long project and to date only a handful have been fully remediated.
They were left over from the Cold War when 30 million tons of uranium ore were mined in the area.
Many negative health effects like cancers and impaired kidney function have been linked to the mine sites.