Oral History | Uranium Memories Project | Moab Museum
Mon, Nov 17, 2025 • 59:07
INTERVIEWER
Megan Vickery
INTERVIEWEE
Sarah Fields

Megan Vickery 00:03
My name is Megan Vickery. It is November 17, 2025. We’re here at the Moab Museum recording this interview for the Uranium Memories Project with Sarah Fields. Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself?
Sarah Fields 00:20
I’m Sarah Fields. I have a small organization called Uranium Watch, and have lived in southeastern Utah for a number of years . I’ve been interested in and involved in uranium mining and milling issues.
Megan Vickery 00:40
Nice, just to get started, can you tell me a little bit about where you were born, where you grew up?
Sarah Fields 00:48
I was born in New York City, but I grew up mostly in Silver Spring, Maryland. My father began a job with the federal government, and then was transferred to DC. So I grew up in the DC area, mostly in Silver Spring. But then I left for college in Ohio, and I never really lived there again. So I quit college and moved to California when I was about 21, and I’ve lived in the West ever since then, in California, Colorado, Utah, a little bit in Nevada, little bit in Arizona. So the West has been my home since then, and I’ve lived in Moab since 1999 with a little bit over in Durango with my daughter and granddaughter, a little bit in San Juan County, but mostly in Moab.
Megan Vickery 02:02
What did you study in school?
Sarah Fields 02:04
I studied anthropology. I did not graduate from college. But then in about, well, it was about 1999 when I moved in to Moab and I had split up with a long time spouse. I have four children, six grandchildren and one great grandchild. So I went back to school at the, I guess, to the extension school here. So I didn’t get an associate’s degree, but I took math and statistics and learned how to operate a computer, learned how to do just things on the computer. So I became familiar with different programs and got interested in having a website, things like that. So it gave me a lot of confidence being able to go back to school and getting A’s in math and chemistry.
Sarah Fields 03:49
But around that time, one of the main issues that was facing the community of Moab was what to do with the mill tailings at the old Atlas Mill on the other side of the Colorado River. And my family had
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become interested in nuclear issues, because for a while we lived in the hills outside of San Luis Obispo, where they were constructing the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor. So this was in the late 70s and early 80s. We moved there because I had some friends there, and the friends I had and other people were very much involved in opposing the construction of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor. At the time, I was mostly taking care of my kids who were little, and then I had my fourth child in 1982 in San Luis Obispo. But my spouse would go over to the local public document room at Cal Poly, and was doing a lot of research, and I became aware of some of these issues and particularly was concerned, because we lived in one of the emergency planning zones. And I became aware of how to get information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Sarah Fields 05:51
So then, when we were back in the Moab area and meeting people and becoming aware of what was going on, we discovered that most of the people here had no clue as to how to get at information from the NRC. At the time, the NRC was just beginning to establish what they call their ADAMS program, where they have online access to just thousands of NRC documents relating to uranium mills, nuclear power plants, and other facilities that the NRC regulates. So they hadn’t — they were just beginning to get that system up. Previously, you could get documents, local public documents like they have at Cal Poly, where things were on microfiche and then you could order printouts of different documents. But the records were not available online. So we, I went to a lot of — over a period of several years — I went to a lot of hearings and meetings here in Moab after the Department of Energy took over the [Atlas Mill] site and began its, what they call a NEPA process under the National Environmental Policy Act, and had a lengthy period of public meetings. The EPA was down here a lot for meetings, as was the State of Utah. And then, finally, there was a lengthy opportunity for written comments on the Atlas tailings and what to do with them. Should they be moved off the Colorado River, or should they be reclaimed in site? So both Moab, the State of Utah, most of the residents and the EPA wanted them moved, and that’s what the final decision was.
Sarah Fields 08:45
But, I was involved with the Sierra Club, they asked me to get involved. I went to meetings and encouraged people to write comments and made my own comments. So it was a process of learning, of being involved, and one of the alternatives for the tailings was to slurry them via a pipeline down to the White Mesa Mill. So going down to White Mesa, I met Thelma Whiskers and her family. I met other people who lived on White Mesa. I met some of the Navajos who were in the area and Navajos who were part of the political organization down in San Juan County. So I became just aware of a larger community here in southeastern Utah, and also became aware of the White Mesa Mill and the uranium mines that fed the mill. So through the internet and through public meetings, I just became more and more involved, first with the Sierra Club, and then I got some funding through Ben and Jerry’s, and there was an empty office on Main Street above the Red Rock Bakery. So I rented an office. I got my own computer. I think I had that computer before, but it was like a process of both learning the technology, new technologies, and how to engage with both county and state and federal agencies. And there were proposals and I also got involved with the Western Mining Action Network, which is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations. A friend here in Utah, in the Salt Lake area, told me about them, and then I went to one of their gatherings down in New Mexico, and just gradually expanded my awareness of the whole nuclear [fuel cycle], uranium mining, uranium milling, beginning of the whole nuclear fuel chain, which starts, actually, with exploration and exploratory drilling in various areas. And then uranium mining and then milling and further processing to create the fuel that goes into nuclear reactors, and southeastern Utah is just one part of that.
Sarah Fields 12:40
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Geez, we had a whole gathering of people here from the uranium caucus, and I forget what year it was, but there were other gatherings up in South Dakota and Colorado and New Mexico. So we have a broad coalition. So when things come up, we can share information and communicate with each other about what’s going on. And currently there, there is a lot going on. I mean, you have clean up of abandoned uranium mines. You have, you still have the moving of the Atlas tailings. You still have the question of, “Well, what are you going to do with the site after all the tailings are finished? And then the only operating conventional uranium mine in the US is the White Mesa Mill, which is about 85 miles to the south. And up in La Sal, you have an operating uranium mine that provides ore to that mill. So it’s still going on, and right now, there’s a big push to open uranium mills — to open nuclear reactors that have already been shut down and to develop new, so-called “advanced nuclear reactors.” Small, what they call small modular reactors, and some are tiny — not really tiny — nuclear reactors. So they’re big issues, and the price of uranium has gone up to the point where new companies are coming in. So a new company, Anfield Resources Holding Corporation, has gotten BLM and State of Utah permits to reopen an old Atlas uranium mine down in San Juan County. I can keep talking, keep going on. But if you have any other specific questions?
Megan Vickery 15:32
Yeah, I’m curious about what you saw when you first got involved with this work with the mill remediation, in terms of what people around town kind of understood about it, and what that was like living in town at that time, and how you’ve seen that change in Moab over time?
Sarah Fields 15:59
Well, there was a lot more awareness of what was going on, because it affected Moab, and it had been going on for a long time. Because before we moved here, well, we spent a couple of summers in the late, late 80s, and spent other times camping out and before — I moved into town in 1999. But there were a couple of people who were on the County Commission, Bill Hedden and Peter Haney and they were pushing to get the tailings moved off the floodplain of the Colorado River, because it just did not make sense, and the NRC — it did not make sense to leave the tailings there. There had been floods where the flood water from the Colorado River had gone up the side of the tailings, and the tailings would be there forever, and you have no idea what the changes in the river would bring. Right now we’re going through a dry period. Well, dry periods, we also have wet periods. In previous times, there had been a lot of flooding on the Colorado River. So it just didn’t make sense. And then a lot of people came out to the meetings, because previously, the NRC had determined that they could just leave, leave it there, and they did just an environmental assessment. Well, the people in the town just were really mad, and they were really mad. And so the NRC actually had to withdraw that decision and withdraw that environmental assessment. And so the NRC would come out and have some meetings, and there were local people, I only know one person who would come and would say, leave the tailings in place. Everybody else wanted them to be moved.
Sarah Fields 18:33
And Dianne Nielson was, I think, head of the [Utah Department of Environmental Quality]. But she would come, they would come down for meetings. So, not only was there local involvement, there was involvement by the state, involvement by the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], and then, when the Atlas Corporation realized that they would have to do groundwater remediation, which would be very costly, they went bankrupt. So, after they went bankrupt, the Congress, and I forget our senator’s name [at the time] [Orin Hatch], but he had a very important position in the Senate, and they ended up giving the tailings impoundment to the Department of Energy and that they would carry out a remediation as what they call a Title I site, under the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act. When that Act passed in 1978 there were Title I and Title II sites. Title I were abandoned uranium mills, and they had to be remediated at cost to the public. And then the Title II sites were the sites that were
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operating, and they would be regulated by the Atomic Energy Commission and then the NRC under new EPA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations. So what Congress did was change the site from a Title II site that would be remediated by the company that owned them to a Title I site that would be remediated at public expense. Gonna be about a billion dollars. One of the problems was the NRC was supposed to have a bond that would cover the remediation, and they only had $6 million which wouldn’t even at all cover remediating it on site. So the NRC kind of fell down in a lot of ways. And the community of Moab, over the years, had a lot of people working at this site, a lot of income came to the people in Moab, and there really wasn’t anybody who was watchdogging it. There really wasn’t anybody to say, hey, there’s all these windblown tailings, maybe we should take care of them. I think there were one or two people who were writing letters to the NRC, but there were many opportunities for the public to request a hearing. But how many people read the Federal Register. How many people? I mean, they really — the community did not know how to engage the NRC, how to really learn about what was going on, what the groundwater situation was and what contamination was happening [and] going into the Colorado River. So finally, when the real issues came up about what to do the tailings, there were a lot of people who became [concerned] — they educated themselves and [were] going to hearings. Everybody wanted to have the tailings removed. And it was just getting the proper pressure. There were other people involved in this. I mean, at the time, I didn’t know that much about what was happening. So for myself, it’s been a gradual educational process.
Megan Vickery 23:57
What motivated you to be that watchdog and kept you motivated for so many years.
Sarah Fields 24:02
Um, well, I started, I started a nonprofit, and I got grants, and I got support, and I met a lot of people. I made a lot of friends. I don’t have a college degree. I substitute taught, worked in the library. There’s not a lot of good jobs around here for someone who doesn’t have have a college degree. And, I got really interested, and I found that I had a knack for doing research, and I liked to do research. And there was nobody else doing that. There still is nobody else doing that. I mean, there are no other organizations who are looking at what’s happening with the uranium mining and milling situation. I mean, there’s the Sierra Club, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, but they’re interested in potential impacts to wilderness areas and wilderness study areas. Where a lot of what’s happening is not in those areas. So it’s just becomes what you do, and what I’ve been interested in doing. And, of course, I’ve gotten to know the people at White Mesa. I’ve gotten to know other members of Native American communities, mostly in New Mexico. Where I mean, it’s just, you could spend 24 hours a day on this— doing research, finding out what’s going on. So I just work on one small part of it. But I also got interested in this proposed expansion of the Lisbon Valley Copper Mine, because I travel, have traveled down through the Lisbon Valley many times, because I take that shortcut to go from Moab over to my daughter and granddaughters over in Durango. I just go through that valley a lot. And then I lived for a while on West Summit Road. So it’s a part of Utah that I really love, and the idea that they’re going to have a big in situ leach project [is unacceptable]. It’s just a big industrial project down in the Lower Lisbon Valley, and knowing a lot about federal regulations, state regulations, I got involved. I was able to get some funding to hire an expert. So through what background I have, I was able to assist the community down there in getting expert help understanding some of what was going on. I’m still involved in that, too,
Megan Vickery 27:54
Just to work back in the story here, at what point did you start Uranium Watch? Where in the timeline? Sarah Fields 28:01
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Well, I started in 2006, but I didn’t have any funding. it was a few more years before I had any funding. And once I got some, what to me seemed like a lot of money from Ben and Jerry’s, I was able to rent an office then. And then, [yes, it was] about that time.
Sarah Fields 28:34
So it was about 2008, 2009 and then there was a proposal to build a nuclear reactor in Green River. I got involved in that because the company, Blue Castle Holdings, they had a previous name I forget. But, they leased water from the San Juan County and Kane County Water Conservancy Districts— 53,600 acre feet of water. So they had to go through a [permitting] process. They put a change application into the [Utah] Division of Water Rights. At the time, I knew nothing about water rights. I come from the east. You don’t need a water right to drill a well on your land [in the east]. But in Utah, the water belongs to the state. So if you want to take water out of a river or out of a creek or even have a well on your own land, you need a water right. And then when you have the water right, you have to show proof of beneficial use. You have to show that you have — that you use that water. So there were public notices, and then a protest, and I was working with Heal Utah, and then Living Rivers. Living Rivers is my fiscal sponsor. And John Weisheit knew a lot about water rights. There was also another organization locally, Red Rock Forests, which no longer exists, but we put together protests, we attended hearings, and think it was about 2009 that that process began. ’07 or ’09. I’m trying to — I can’t remember. But we filed our protests and went to hearings and we didn’t prevail. So we went to court and took it all the way up through the appeals court, and finally, we did not prevail. However, they made some decisions that were beneficial to us, and then it turned out that the company did not have the money to pay for the lease on the water rights. So [the reactors] never happened, but Moab started to get involved in that, because the whole idea of a nuclear reactor up in Green River, and we would be in the area that would be considered the emergency planning zone. And I went to meetings up in Green River. People started organizing down here because it’s pretty, pretty scary to have a nuclear reactor so close, and then Grand County being downwind, and also all that water coming out of the Green River. And there are companies, there are river running companies in Moab and in Green River who rely on that water, and they would be taking out a lot more water [for the reactor]. So that, just through my interest and knowledge, it was just natural that I would get involved in that. And then, if it ever came to an application for a nuclear reactor to the NRC, I would know how to get information. I know what to expect in the future. And that’s one thing that keeps me going, because I know things that other people don’t know. And sometimes in meetings… and I hope next year to have some public meetings at the MARC [Moab Art and Recreation Center]. In part because there was a really a good response when we had a meeting about the proposed Velvet-Wood Mine, which is down in San Juan County, and that’s where a new company is reopening that old Atlas mine. So I mean, here, uranium mining and the milling was such an important part of the history of Moab. I mean, my understanding was, when the mill closed down, a large population just disappeared. They closed one of the schools. I mean, it had a big effect on the community. And I wasn’t here, so I’ve talked to a few people about about that. I’ve talked to people whose family members got sick because of their participation as workers, and then also people who lived in the community [got sick]..
Sarah Fields 35:10
So I keep talking, and I kind of lose track of where, what I was answering.
Megan Vickery 35:17
It’s okay. You got there. Just to clarify also, can you describe what it means to be in an emergency planning zone?
Sarah Fields 35:27
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Okay, so the NRC for nuclear reactors had determined there are two emergency planning zones. First a 10 Mile planning zone and then a 50 mile planning zone. That means that the entity that wants to put a nuclear reactor, and the local government — whether it’s local and state — and through the FEMA (Federal Emergency [Management Agency] — I forget what FEMA stands for, but they have to be involved. They have to have plans for evacuation, I mean, and that’s where it would involve Moab, because Moab and Price are the two areas where you have hospitals and where you have a lot larger community if there needed to be evacuation from Green River, which would be just about four miles from that proposed reactor. So there has to be planning. It has to involve local communities. But at the time there wasn’t even a doctor or the clinic up in Green River. I mean, now they have a really good clinic in in Green River. They just expanded it for their dental clinic and they built some more [rooms]. So, I mean, I don’t know if that push for that [clinic] started around that time. I really don’t know how that happened, but it’s really important for the Green River Community.
Sarah Fields 37:41
So that’s generally what an emergency planning zone [is], and it has to involve the local community. There has to be public comments. And one of the concerns about some of these new smaller reactors is they’re allowed to reduce the size of the emergency planning zone to just the boundary of the site itself, rather than a 10 mile or a 50 mile [emergency planning zone].
Megan Vickery 38:22
Thank you. Yes, it does clarify, thank you. What do you hope to see in the future for nuclear and uranium? Or I guess one way to think about it, too, maybe is in a hypothetical, at what point do you see your work done?
Sarah Fields 38:50
Oh, the work will never be done. In part, because just like moving the tailings from the old Atlas Mill off the floodplain the Colorado River. It’s going to eventually be moved. All of it will be moved, and there’ll be a cover put on the site, but it has to be kept under government control forever. Right now there are
abandoned uranium mines in southeastern Utah that still have not been remediated, so that’s an ongoing process. Many of those mines produced ore for the federal weapons program, and yet the Department of Energy has not made funds available for the cleanup of those older uranium mines. They get some funding, and many of them have been cleaned up. But that’s an ongoing issue, and it’s a current issue because there’s a company who wants to use a new type of technology to clean up abandoned uranium mines, and over the next several months, it’s going to be a big issue here in Utah and in New Mexico and in Colorado, because there are specific technical and legal issues related to this type of processing called ablation. So that’s something that’s coming up in New Mexico. I mean, there are just millions of gallons of groundwater that have been contaminated. Colorado and Utah had the most abandoned uranium mines, but the biggest mines and the biggest mills were in New Mexico. And they have ongoing issues, ongoing health issues, communities who live near abandoned uranium mines that have yet to be cleaned up. I mean, these are continuing issues.
Sarah Fields 41:52
It’s a continuing issue for the White Mesa Mill because Energy Fuels wants to obtain a lot of the ore concentrate from these abandoned uranium mines as they get cleaned up. So the White Mesa Mill is going to be there forever, unless they move the tailings to another site. But that, too, is an expensive proposition, so the White Mesa Concerned Community and people on White Mesa want the mill to shut down. But as it stands now, those tailings are going to be here forever, just like the tailings from Atlas are going to be there forever up at Crescent Junction. So the US still does not have a solution for what to do with the high level nuclear waste, with the irradiated nuclear fuel. They say there’s going to be an underground storage site, but that hasn’t happened, and it’s not going to happen in my lifetime. So it’s
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many of these issues are just being pushed to the next generation to deal with. So, I mean, that’s the insidious thing. And then there are health issues, because they say, well, a human body can take so much radiation with minimal health effects, but there have been a lot of people, children, families, who’ve been impacted by the whole uranium industry. So those health impacts will also continue into the future, because some of them are genetic, and so it affects the next generation and the generation after that.
Megan Vickery 44:24
Yeah, okay, I want to be respectful of your time, so I just have a couple, one or two more questions for you. One being, is there a particular story that you can tell that is kind of reflective of what it’s like to be involved in this work?
Sarah Fields 45:21
Well one of the things that I’ve done is participated with the people in the community in White Mesa, going on their marches. Every year they have a protest march and spiritual walk that goes from White Mesa to the mill, it’s about five miles. They used to have them in May, and now they have them in October. And then before the march, the day before, there’s an educational event, and people, particularly representatives from Native American tribes in other areas, have been coming to educate themselves, to show their support of the people in White Mesa, particularly people from the communities [like] the Red Water Pond Community in New Mexico, where they’re still waiting for the EPA to clean up the abandoned uranium mine waste in their community. And I’ve been able to participate in some of the educational events the day before to speak about what’s going on with the mines, what’s going on with the mill, and just getting to know the people down at White Mesa, and getting to know the people who work with the Ute Mountain Ute Environmental Department, who have been very supportive, do a lot of research, who have been very supportive of the community. I think that is one of the most important things for me, personally. I mean White Mesa is a long ways away, and I don’t get to go down there as often as I would like, but being able to talk with them, to get to know the different families. I think that that, for me, has been one of the most important things that I’ve been able to do and experience.
Megan Vickery 48:18
What is that like down there? What is it like at those walks?
Sarah Fields 48:23
Well, a lot of people! I actually didn’t go on the walk this year. I was getting ready to fly back east. So I went to the rally, the rally at White Mesa. There were a lot of people. There were a lot of people who were dressed very beautifully in their native dress. It was good to hear people speak about their own experience]— people from other areas come and speak about their experience. But the walk is: you just walk slowly on the side of the side of the road and stop [at the Mill]. You get a ride back. But there’s usually a few members of the media who come and you talk to them, and you usually meet somebody new, and end up having a discussion with them about why they’re there and what their interests are. And the weather’s always been good.
Megan Vickery 49:50
That’s great. Nice. Okay, my last question is, what do you consider to be your biggest milestone, or greatest success in having been involved with this so long and then the biggest challenge?
Sarah Fields 50:10
Well, there have been small successes. Well, I think that our involvement with the proposed nuclear reactor in Green River ended up being a success, because what we said in the proceedings, the
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hearings, the trial before the district court, we said these people, they don’t have the money to do this. They’re not experienced. We did a lot of research to show that. And I think that was a big success.
Sarah Fields 51:09
I think that what we’ve done with the White Mesa Mill has caused the state to take a harder look at many of the issues, the groundwater contamination. I think we’ve been able to educate members of the community and making them more aware of what’s going on. I mean I’ve had small successes, like the Bureau of Land Management was supposed to have long term remediation plans for — or no, interim remediation plans for the uranium mills in the… I’ll start over with that. The BLM was supposed to have interim management plans for the uranium mines that they regulate, and they didn’t have those plans. And I discovered that in about 2014. And [I] wrote to the BLM, and they required them to have those plans. Okay, another small success was when the mines went on standby, the ventilation shafts remained open. The ventilation shafts are used to vent radon and other particulates from the mines. They’re required because radon is a gas that’s created from the breakdown of uranium, and it impacts the health of the mine workers, so they have to vent the radon. So they vent it out into the atmosphere, and when it went on standby, they weren’t required to close them up. So radon was still coming out of the mines, but they didn’t have to measure it because the mine was on standby. So I think that fact that they have to close them up now was something that I had something to do with. And I pay a lot of attention to what is happening to the doses to the nearest residents, because they have to calculate that. And just that there’s a regulatory — the regulatory agencies know that someone’s looking over their shoulder, that someone’s getting other people to make comments, that someone’s making comments on new regulations that are bringing up issues. That’s a success, because for many years in this area [there was little public participation]. There were no public comments when they built the White Mesa Mill. Did they consult with the Ute Mountain Ute tribe community? No! So just having people [involved], educating people and getting people to understand what’s going on, to write comments, to become aware of what’s going on in their community. I think that’s a success.
Megan Vickery 55:07
And the biggest challenge?
Sarah Fields 55:10
Oh yeah. And the biggest challenge, yeah.
Megan Vickery 55:13
Same answer?
Sarah Fields 55:13
I mean, for me, that’s the biggest challenge, and having to move around and to deal with other things in my life over the last couple of years. I haven’t done as much as I want. You think back, oh, I should have worked on this, or should have done a little more about that so — but, but it’s still there. All these issues are not going away.
Megan Vickery 55:50
Okay, well, I don’t want to take up too much more of your time. It’s 10:30 now. Is there anything that you hoped to say today that you haven’t had a chance to share?
Sarah Fields 56:05
It’s helped. It’s helped me think, yeah. But because there are no… The BLM and the State of Utah do not have regulations specific to uranium mines. And they went on standby from about 2012 to just 2024 and that’s when I started working on some of these other issues. But I wish I had focused more on
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getting changes to federal regulations, because they should have regulations specific to uranium mines, [and] they do not. Colorado and New Mexico have some specific regulations. They also limit the time that a uranium mine can be on standby. For Colorado it’s 10 years. So if you put it on standby, you have to either restart the mine, or you have to remediate the mine. Utah has no such regulation. Like the Energy Queen Mine up on — as you go in to La Sal, it’s up over on the right, you can see the big head frame. That last operated in 1992. It’s still been on standby. So they should not allow them to remain on standby that length of time. And there’s a problem in Utah that there aren’t more people and more organizations working on this. And now, I mean, there are concerns with different types of new nuclear reactors. I got involved in the whole Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems proposal for a small modular reactor up in Idaho National Lab, and I listened– I mean, that’s where I really got side tracked because I listened to a lot of NRC meetings — so I know something about that, but I maybe should have been… That’s when all the mines were closed down. Anyway, there’s always work to do. There’s always work to do.
Megan Vickery 58:56
Yeah, well, thank you for taking the time to share what you have. I really appreciate it and appreciate your work.
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