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BLANDING, Utah — One of Utah’s brightest minds lives in the rural town of Blanding, home to 3,300 people.

14-year-old Luke Jeppesen is one of two contestants from Utah who recently qualified for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

“It's so cool. I go around and people know me as ‘the speller,’” Jeppesen said. “It's kind of interesting. Some people say hi to me who I have never talked to before.”

But, there's much more to the teen than just spelling.

He has been playing piano for more than 10 years. He also has a passion for roller coasters even though the nearest coaster is located hundreds of miles away from his home.

“I love roller coasters a lot – thinking about them and designing them,” he said.

When he isn’t designing coasters on his computer or practicing piano, Jeppesen is going over his spelling bee study guide.

“They are very, very hard,” he said. “I looked at them from the start and I felt like I was going to die. It was so overwhelming at the start but [I am] getting it under control.”

Jeppesen is also an eighth-grade student at Albert R. Lyman Middle School.

“I give a lot of credit to him personally because it's a lot of work and dedication,” said principal Ryan Palmer.

The school serves a diverse population with many students who are Native American.

“It’s no secret the Navajo Nation was hit hard in the pandemic, and we suffered from learning losses,” Palmer said. “That does not define the students in the district. Our students can go on to do incredible things.”

Luke is hoping to continue his incredible journey at the Scripps National Spelling Bee and be the first Utahn to claim the championship.

That’s a lot of pressure for this teen to carry on his shoulders, but Jeppesen is finding ways to manage the excitement and anticipation.

“I feel like I am more social, so I don't get scared in front of people. I don't get stage fright,” he said.

And just like getting into a roller coaster, Luke is buckling up, getting ready to enjoy the journey at the Bee.

“I don't know if anyone is the biggest fan of spelling, but I found it's my natural talent,” he said. “I don't spell for fun; I spell because I have something I am competing for and I want to win.”

The Scripps National Spelling Bee begins on Tuesday, May 30. The championship round takes place on the evening of June 1.

Copyright 2023 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

MOAB, Utah — Beginning in the last week of February through May 2023, Utah State University Moab and USU Blanding are hosting the exhibit Sentinels, an art and science project created by printmakers Todd Anderson and Bruce Crownover and social ecologist Gary Machlis.

The collaborative exhibit demonstrates the migration of piñon pine and juniper trees as a result of increased dryness in the American Southwest, as studied in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.

The idea for the exhibit started when Anderson found research papers detailing climate change and environment in the southwest, including Southeast Utah. Having spent the last dozen years working on artwork detailing the current climate crisis, Anderson saw this as another opportunity to bring awareness through art.

“I use a key question to guide my artwork: How can my artwork help with the climate crisis?” said Anderson. “I am trying to draw attention to some of these issues and show the facts to the general population. As an artist, I can show how beautiful and amazing these trees are and bring awareness to a widespread audience. I am trying my best to interpret and show the beauty of these trees and have that be a starting point for a larger conversation.”

Anderson previously worked with Crownover as both created a book about Glacier National Park and the shrinking glaciers there. Years later, Anderson invited Crownover to visit Southeast Utah, a place Crownover was already familiar with, having spent many summers near Grover, Utah, at a family ranch.

“For me, it was an invitation to go back to a place that I spent a lot of time as a kid,” Crownover said. “As a kid, I spent a lot of time roaming around Boulder Mountain and playing outside. I hadn’t been there since I was 16 years old. I am now in my 60s and I wanted to go back and see it. I was so immediately comforted by the place — it’s in my DNA. I felt very at home there and I was very keen on making some artistic record of what was happening to this place that I love.”

The two artists made sketches, paintings and took photographs of the landscape, trying to capture the piñon pine and juniper trees in as many ways as they could. They would return to their home studios to create wood prints of the landscapes.

Anderson then invited Machlis, his colleague at Clemson University, to join him in another visit to the area. Machlis, who specializes in research on conservation and sustainability, brought a scientific viewpoint to the artistic exhibit. Machlis began writing notes around the campfire and developed three different written “word paintings” of the area.

The first was a fictitious science article set in the 1970s. The second was a mock journal entry of the trip, written in the style of an 1880s travel journal. The final piece was an imagined newspaper editorial from the 1950s.

“It was a wonderful collaboration,” Machlis said. “I worked collaboratively with Todd to design the pieces to reflect these themes. These are extraordinary landscapes, ecosystems, and sacred places — and we wanted to share with the communities of Southeast Utah how we responded to the privilege of visiting.”

These word paintings, together with woodcut prints from Anderson and Crownover, were gathered together in a collection that was published as Sentinels: The Piñon Pine and Juniper Trees of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, Utah. The exhibit is four years in the making. The artists hope that their representations will be the beginning of a conversation about conservation.

“As an artist, I try to draw people to look at my work and then to reflect on why it is important,” Crownover said. “I try to show them this is a serious subject that is housed in a pretty picture.”

The Sentinels exhibit will be housed with different pieces at USU Moab and USU Blanding from late February through May 2023. Both campuses will host an exhibit opening reception with the artists that is open to the public, with a brief presentation by the artists. The opening reception at USU Blanding will be on March 1, while the open house at USU Moab will be on March 3.

“I hope people enjoy the exhibit,” Anderson said. “I am excited to come to Utah and meet the people at USU and meet students from different high schools in the area.”

Statewide Campuses 303stories Arts 199stories Climate 147stories

This story was originally published by the Land Desk and is republished here by permission.

Canada-based Western Vanadium & Uraniumannounced in a news releasethat it plans to build a “state-of-the-art” uranium, vanadium and cobalt mill in Utah to process ore “mined both from mines owned by Western and ore produced by other miners.” The announcement does not specify where in Utah the company plans to build the facility, only that it took two years to select and acquire the site, which was chosen “based on the support of local municipal and county officials.” While George Glasier, the company’s CEO, wouldn’t return our calls asking about the specific location, he told the Salt Lake Tribune it is planned for just outside Green River, Utah, near the site of a now defunct nuclear power plant proposal. It’s another twist in the weird Western politics surrounding uranium mills.

If this mill is ultimately permitted and built, it would be only the second operating uranium processing plant in the nation (in addition to the White Mesa Mill near Blanding, Utah, owned by Energy Fuels). But that’s a big “if,” as Glasier is well aware.

Glasier was the President and CEO of Energy Fuels in the 2000s. At the time, another Canadian company, Denison, owned the White Mesa Mill. But they weren’t too keen on processing ore from Energy Fuels’ mines. So, Glasier and Energy Fuels proposed building their own mill, the Piñon Ridge, in the Paradox Valley in Montrose County, Colorado. Glasier spearheaded the mill planning and permitting process up until his resignation in 2010.

Colorado regulators permitted the mill in 2011. Environmental groups sued. And as the legal process played out, a bunch of shuffling was going on: Energy Fuels bought out Denison and the White Mesa Mill, meaning they no longer needed the proposed Piñon Ridge Mill. Glasier started the Piñon Ridge Mining company, which purchased the mill license and various mining properties from Energy Fuels. And Western Uranium and Vanadium purchased Glasier’s company — and the Piñon Ridge permit — and installed him as CEO. Finally, in 2018 — more than a decade after the process began — a judge ruled the Piñon Ridge permit had been issued in error and the staterescindedit. The proposal was dead. (Uranium prices were so low by then it’s doubtful the thing would have been built anyway.)

Glasier, however, didn’t give up on uranium, instead working to keep the long-idledSunday Mine Complexin the Big Gypsum Valley near Slickrock, Colorado, from being put into reclamation status. With uranium prices shooting back up, Glasier and Western Uranium say they are preparing the Sunday Complex to produce orebeginning as early as next month.

But ore isn’t worth much until it’s milled. Although the White Mesa Mill has plenty of capacity (they’ve mostly beenprocessing other companies’ waste) and the owners of theShootaring Millnear the Henry Mountains say they want to get it up and running, Glasier and company apparently think yet another mill is necessary. One unique feature it would have is the ability to recover cobalt, a key component of electric vehicle batteries.

Western Uranium’s news release says permitting for the proposed mill has already begun. Even if that’s true, it will take years for it to wend its way through the process. Perhaps Utah regulators will be more amenable to a radioactive material processing plant than Colorado was with Piñon Ridge. But this time there’s likely to be even fiercer opposition from Indigenous and environmental advocates. And, as Sarah Fields of Uranium Watch points out: They’re going to need water to mill uranium and it’s in short supply these days.

Jonathan Thompson is the editor ofThe Land Deskand a contributing editor at High Country News.He is the author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands.

Engineers at a uranium mill in San Juan County have figured out how to produce a concentrate of rare earth elements from North American ore. The company that owns the mill, Energy Fuels, announced their accomplishment Tuesday, after producing the substance at their facility outside of Blanding.

“Rare earths are a big deal because they have a lot of high-tech uses,” said Energy Fuels marketing director Curtis Moore, “so the government is interested in bringing their production back to the U.S.”

Currently, the U.S. imports 80%of its rare earth metals from China. But Energy Fuels is one of a handful of companies working to change that. It announced its intention to process ore containing rare earth metals following a push from the Pentagon in April to spur domestic production.

Producing rare earth elements requires a long chain of actions, according to Moore. The raw material usually contains a mix of the metals, which must be milled into a concentrated substance and then separated out. At that point, they are processed into alloys, which are used in everything from iPhones to heat-seeking missiles.

He said Energy Fuels is perfectly positioned to process material containing the metals, since they can occur alongside uranium.

“This is really not that different in concept than what this facility has done for 40 years,” Moore said. “It’s basically recovering Uranium out of an ore.”

An official with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality said Energy Fuels alerted the state earlier this year of its plans to import Monazite sand from the state of Georgia in order to extract rare earth elements and Uranium from it.

Although the last mine in the U.S. producing rare earth metals closed in 2015, scientists recently discovered ore rich in the metals at certain locations in Georgia. But Moore would not say exactly which mine produced the Monazite sand used by Energy Fuels.

Since the mill is recovering Uranium from the ore, along with the rare earth metals, the Department said it is licensed to dispose of the final waste product in the tailing ponds at the White Mesa Mill.

That has some environmental groups concerned. The Grand Canyon Trust and HEAL Utah both said the White Mesa Mill has outlived its purpose, which was to mill domestic Uranium, and that keeping it open affects the nearby Ute Mesa Ute community of White Mesa.

“It perpetuates the other harm the mill causes,” said Aaron Paul with the Grand Canyon Trust. “When, 40 years on, it seems like a good time to get serious about reclamation.”

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe believes one of the mill’s tailings ponds is leaking, polluting a shallow aquifer beneath the community with chemicals. Energy Fuels acknowledges that toxins exist in the water below the mill, but claims some were there before the mill was constructed and the rest originate upstream.

Moore’s company has expanded its business model in recent years to process Uranium-containing material called “alternate feeds”. The mill is currently seeking permits to process waste material from a rare-earth producing facility in Estonia, as well as a construction site in Colorado.

“Really their business model is taking waste,” said Scott Williams with HEAL Utah. “Same is true with these rare earth metals.”

Moore said Energy Fuels will continue refining the rare earths concentration process over the next few months, before deciding whether to move forward with commercial production. He added the mill will remain focused on Uranium production, but processing ore for rare earth elements could be a complementary side business.

Utah Legislature appropriates $500,000, with $200,000 coming from Utah Navajo Trust Fund and up to $1M from the LDS Church.

| Updated: April 9, 2021, 8:43 a.m.

Westwater, a small Navajo Nation-owned community in San Juan County, may finally be on track to getting running water and power after decades of false starts and disappointments.

The southeastern Utah community is located a quarter mile from Blanding’s city limits, the county’s most populous town, where residents have enjoyed modern amenities for more than a century. But water and electric lines have never been extended to the 29 lots on 120 acres in Westwater, where 16 families live.

A breakthrough seemed imminent last year, when the Legislature approved $500,000 to address the issue, and a number of nonprofits and religious organizations pledged to help raise the remainder of the project cost, which is pegged at $2.7 million.

But the funding appropriation was approved just weeks before the coronavirus pandemic struck Utah, hitting San Juan County harder than any other part of the state and causing yet another delay for Westwater residents.

Though frustrating, the delay was not surprising for Evangeline Gray, a co-founder of the Westwater Diné Community group and a board member of the Indigenous-led nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah. Both groups have been advocating for the water and power project.

“We’re so used to not being taken as a priority as First Nation people,” she said, noting past efforts to address the problem through Indian Health Service funding fizzled in the early 2000s. There was a sense, she added, that it was “going to be the same old footpath that we’ve been following: no electricity, no running water.”

Residents of the community currently haul water from central sources and rely on small solar systems. Gray said inconsistent power and internet have made it particularly difficult for students to complete schoolwork during the pandemic.

But Gray has been feeling more optimistic in recent weeks after the Legislature again appropriated $500,000 for the project, in the wake of approval of $200,000 from the Utah Navajo Trust Fund, a state-run entity in charge of distributing oil and gas royalties collected from the Utah portion of Navajo Nation to Diné residents.

“This adds a little bit of hope that this will become reality,” she said.

Tony Dayish, executive director of the Utah Navajo Trust Fund, said there have been efforts to bring water and power to the homes since the Navajo Nation bought the land from the Bureau of Land Management in 1986 to help the families who were living there since the early 1900s, but the most recent push began in 2018.

The $200,000 approved by the trust fund was identified as a priority for the Blue Mountain Diné, the group representing members of the Navajo Nation living in and near Blanding, and the funds were approved last month by the trust fund’s Diné Advisory Committee and its board.

“It’s a priority for the Westwater folks,” Dayish said, “and it’s a priority for the Blue Mountain Diné community.”

Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, pressed for state funding at an appropriations committee hearing last month, calling Westwater “dramatically underserved and in need.” Lyman noted that Westwater fell into a jurisdictional gray area as private “fee land” owned by the Navajo Nation, but not part of the federal reservation, and just outside of Blanding.

Lyman added The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has committed $1 million toward the Westwater project. Other partners listed on trust fund documents include the Navajo Revitalization Fund, the nonprofit DigDeep, the Department of Agriculture, and the Indian Health Service.

Hurdles remain. The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, which provides water and power to much of the Navajo Nation, is considering two proposals to hook up the electric lines: a connection in nearby Blanding or a four-mile line from outside city limits to the south, the latter of which would add considerable costs to the effort.

The project will proceed in phases, with the electric hookups likely occurring first. Gray is also calling on the county, which receives property taxes from the Navajo Nation, to improve roads in the community that get muddy after rains.

“Our young people need internet and electrical lights to study,” Gray said. “Maybe within 10 years, I’m hoping that we will finish homes for our people ... the roads will be paved, and we’ll have electricity and water.”

Zak Podmore is a Report for America corps member and writes about conflict and change in San Juan County for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.

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