abqjournal.com · Justin Horwath · September 5, 2026
New Mexico bans uranium mining on state lands, countering Trump’s push for expansion
# New Mexico bans uranium mining on state lands, countering Trump’s push for expansion
Executive order from outgoing Land Commissioner Garcia Richard goes into effect immediately
State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard, left, along with U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, behind her, Sen. Angel Charley, D-Acoma, right, and other officials, celebrate after Garcia Richard signed an executive order banning uranium mining on state lands. Garcia Richard held a press conference Friday in Santa Fe.
Eddie Moore/Journal
Justin Horwath Justin Horwath Journal Staff Writer
Published September 4, 2026 - 6:03 p.m. Modified September 4, 2026 - 7:33 p.m.
Outgoing Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard on Friday announced a ban on uranium mining on state lands, a move she says will help stave off President Donald Trump’s aggressive push to mine the radioactive metal that critics call largely symbolic.
Flanked by politicians and environmental advocates at a press conference in front of her downtown Santa Fe office, Garcia Richard said New Mexico has a “painful and long history as the site of the development of the nuclear bomb and as the largest producer of uranium ore in the United States’ history.”
“This history has negatively impacted countless New Mexicans, from indigenous and local communities contaminated by nearby uranium production to the downwinders of the Trinity test site,” she said, referring to the first detonation of a nuclear bomb. “These New Mexicans have been overlooked by the uranium industry and the federal government for far too long.”
The executive order, which goes into effect immediately, has its critics.
“Banning something that doesn’t exist isn’t policy, it’s a press release,” Matt Thompson, a lobbyist and executive director for the New Mexico Mining Association, wrote in an email. He called legacy contamination from uranium mining a “real problem.” But he said the problem was created by mines that predate New Mexico’s 1993 Mining Act, which sets bonding and remediation requirements that future mining projects would have to comply with.
The executive order cites some of that history, including what it calls “one of the largest radioactive environmental disasters in U.S. history at the Church Rock mill site” in 1979, which resulted in the spill of 94 million gallons of radioactive material onto nearby lands and into the Rio Puerco. Numerous peer-reviewed studies have documented high rates of lung cancer and respiratory illnesses in New Mexico’s uranium mining population.
There are no active uranium mining projects on state land, Garcia Richard said. Garcia Richard, a Democrat, said the order is not connected to her campaign for lieutenant governor.
Rather, Garcia Richard said she issued the order in her final months in office — which, for eight years, has not approved a uranium mining project on state trust land — for two reasons. One is pressure from the Trump administration to open up uranium mining. Secondly, there are two uranium projects with leases on state land. The leases expire in the 2030s, she said.
But she acknowledged that the executive order is not “legally binding.”
“We are putting this out there so that if a future land commissioner wants to mine uranium, they’re going to have to overturn this,” she said. “And we will be asking them why they … did not uphold this document.”
Juan De Jesus Sanchez III, the Democratic candidate for state land commissioner, wrote in a text message that he fully supports Garcia Richard’s executive order.
“When it comes to uranium mining, our focus needs to be on cleanup of the dozens of abandoned mines on state trust land and hundreds throughout the state, not more mining that harms our communities,” he said.
Michael Perry, the Republican candidate, said that he considers himself an environmentalist and his “gut reaction” to uranium mining is to oppose it on state land. The State Land Office does “need to find a responsible way to replace that revenue stream in the future when oil and gas goes by the wayside,” Perry said.
“I really think we need to get the input from those local communities before we step all over them with any kind of decision,” he added. “I mean, this might be something that those communities need for gross receipts tax revenue.”
Elizabeth Bisbey-Kuehn, an environmental compliance manager with the State Land Office, said there are 50 abandoned uranium mines on state trust land. State officials are currently cleaning up four of them — remediation projects that cost the state up to $10 million each. Lawmakers have appropriated $20 million for uranium mining cleanup, she added.
Thompson, the mining lobbyist, said that “New Mexico currently has no commercial uranium production anywhere in the state, including on state trust land.”
Energy Fuels, a Lakewood, Colorado-based mining company that bills itself as the largest U.S. uranium producer, has a lease for its Roco Hondo Project, northwest of Grants in McKinley County. The company says the project could produce up to 2.7 million pounds of uranium annually. The company did not return a request for comment. The state lands lease, signed in 2015, expires in 2030, a spokesperson for the State Land Office said.
Joey Keefe, a State Land Office spokesperson, said the other project’s lease, signed in 2018, expires in 2033. Laramide Resources Ltd., a publicly traded mining company based in Toronto, owns the Crownpoint-Churchrock project through its subsidiary Nufuels Inc., Josh Leftwich, vice president for operations and strategic development, wrote in an email. A section of that project is on state trust land.
Leftwich said the company believes Garcia Richard’s announcement “should be considered in the context of the significant effort now underway at the federal level to rebuild a secure domestic nuclear fuel supply chain.”
The Trump administration has called for the U.S. to start mining and enriching uranium again for national security purposes and to support the nuclear power industry.
“The United States remains heavily dependent on foreign sources of uranium, while the federal government has made rebuilding domestic uranium production and nuclear fuel-cycle capacity a national priority,” Leftwich said.
“We also recognize New Mexico’s difficult legacy from historical uranium mining.” But addressing “that legacy and considering responsible future uranium development do not have to be mutually exclusive,” Leftwich added.
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, D-N.M., cited the cancers and birth defects created by the mining as her reason for supporting the executive order.
Asked whether she opposes all uranium mining in the United States — and, if so, where the country should acquire its uranium — she said the U.S. should push renewable energy development. She said the U.S. needs to “find a way to make (uranium mining) safe.”
“When things go wrong, they go really wrong,” she said.
Justin Horwath covers tech and energy for the Journal. You can reach him at jhorwath@abqjournal.com.
## abqjournal.com 7777 Jefferson St NE Albuquerque, NM 87109 Phone: 505-823-4400 Email: cs@abqpubco.com