The notion — we hesitate to call it an actual "plan" — to build a gondola ride into the Grand Canyon at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Little Colorado River proved even more outlandish than most critics realized.

As proposed to the Navajo Nation Council, the development would have required the financially strapped tribe to pay $65 million in initial infrastructure costs.

That means the murky non-Navajo developers, operating as Confluence Partners, LLC, would have enjoyed a controlling interest in a project without laying out a penny up front. Sweet deal. For them.

Now that new Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye has affirmed his opposition to the scheme, the so-called "Escalade" development appears really, truly dead.

For those of us outside the boundaries of Navajo land who feared the damage the project might cause to the nation's greatest natural wonder, this certainly is good news. And it opens the way to an even greater opportunity to protect the "confluence" region of the canyon.