Grants Residents Share Observations from Nebraska ISR Visit
SANTA ANA PUEBLO, N.M. — Four Grants-area residents traveled to the Crow Butte in-situ recovery facility in Crawford, Nebraska, in July 2025 and reported a minimal surface footprint bearing no resemblance to the conventional uranium mines that shaped the region's history.
George Garcia, a Marine Corps veteran and retired Grants educator; Stanley Michael, a fourth-generation miner and lifelong San Mateo resident; Grants resident James Mercer; and Charles Lundstrom, Grants Energy's community engagement and environmental protection manager, made the trip.
The Crow Butte Resources facility sits four miles southeast of Crawford in Dawes County, Nebraska. Owned and operated by Cameco Corporation through its subsidiary Crow Butte Resources Inc., it was the first uranium mine developed in Nebraska, discovered in 1980 and entering production in 1991 using the in-situ recovery process.
"You would be blown away! I (Michael) said, ‘Amish people out here in a uranium field?’ And they went right by us. I could see hayfields—they were growing hay on the edge of it (Crow Butte Resources facility); the housing project; trees were the original pine trees," Michael noted from the trip. "This isn't what I expected. And it changed my mind."
“You see antelope running across there,” Garcia echoed the reaction. "All I saw were these small spots — the monitoring wells, the injection wells, and that's it. These conservative people were okay with that, and I said, ‘Well, our people will be okay with that.’"
Garcia, Michael, and Lundstrom joined Andrew Valencia, city manager of the City of Grants, on the "Uranium In-Situ Recovery Site Visit in Nebraska" panel April 21 at the Clean Energy Association of New Mexico's inaugural Nuclear in New Mexico conference at Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort & Spa in Santa Ana Pueblo. Valencia, who did not make the Nebraska trip, cited a City of Grants resolution supporting the project. "Grants Energy is a step forward," he said. “I want changes—and the only way we can change, is through technology and getting better when it comes to what we’re doing for our properties, or our environment.”