{"id":6312,"date":"2021-01-05T15:56:37","date_gmt":"2021-01-05T20:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=6312"},"modified":"2021-01-05T15:58:01","modified_gmt":"2021-01-05T20:58:01","slug":"cronkite-news-biden-administration-promises-ban-on-mining-around-grand-canyon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2021\/01\/05\/cronkite-news-biden-administration-promises-ban-on-mining-around-grand-canyon\/","title":{"rendered":"Cronkite News: Biden administration promises ban on mining around Grand Canyon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Havasupai Tribe closes out with a message to Washington: \u201cOur protest song \u2014 No uranium mining!\u201d #KeepItGrand #HonorTheSacred #Arizona<\/p>Posted by Indianz.Com<\/a> on Tuesday, June 4, 2019<\/blockquote><\/div>\r\n

\r\n Indianz.Com Video: Havasupai Tribe Protest Song: ‘No Uranium Mining’<\/a>\r\n<\/figcaption>\r\n
Biden firm on uranium-mining ban around \u2018jewel\u2019 of the Grand Canyon<\/div>\r\n
Tuesday, January 5, 2021<\/div>\r\n
By Claire Chandler<\/div>\r\n
Cronkite News<\/DIV>\r\n
cronkitenews.azpbs.org<\/A><\/DIV>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWASHINGTON – For four years, the Trump administration took steps to boost uranium mining for what it called national security reasons, a move environmentalists saw as an attempt to open the door to mining near the Grand Canyon.

<\/p>\r\nPresident-elect Joe Biden may be ready to shut that door for good.

<\/p>\r\n\r\n“I can’t believe I have to say this, but we can’t let Donald Trump open up the Grand Canyon for uranium mining,” \r\nBiden tweeted<\/a>\r\nin August, after a Trump administration task force on nuclear fuel proposed \r\nrelaxing restrictions<\/a>\r\non mining on federal lands.

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<\/P>\r\nIn a statement posted at the same time, Biden called the Grand Canyon \r\nan “irreplaceable jewel”<\/a>\r\nand blasted the Trump administration’s mining plan, saying he would focus instead on developing clean energy. While Biden did not lay out a specific mining plan, his statement was still enough for Kevin Dahl.\r\n

<\/p>\r\n“I’m thrilled that the new administration has taken that stand even before inauguration. It’s a well-considered policy,” said Dahl, the Arizona senior project manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

<\/p>\r\nMining supporters disagree, saying that “well-considered policy” is actually short-sighted and ill-informed.

<\/p>\r\n“Mining on this land can be done responsibly and would bring hundreds of good-paying jobs to my district,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Prescott. “As I have said on many occasions, this withdrawal is not about protecting the Grand Canyon, but crippling the domestic uranium mining industry.”

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<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe withdrawal Gosar referred to was then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s decision in 2012 to impose \r\na 20-year moratorium<\/a>\r\non new mines on just over 1 million federal acres around Grand Canyon National Park. The moratorium was aimed at protecting the Grand Canyon watershed from “adverse effects of \u2026 mineral exploration and development.”\r\n

<\/p>\r\nDahl said the moratorium has allowed scientists to study the risks and impacts mining could have on the environment, and has led to interesting discoveries about the watershed.

<\/p>\r\n“We are finding out more things about how water travels and how one spring in the Grand Canyon might be influenced by last winter\u2019s snowpack, and how another spring might be being supplied with water from thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of years ago, depending upon the geology that supports it,” he said.

<\/p>\r\n\r\nDahl worries the aquifers and faults make the Grand Canyon susceptible to water contamination and other negative effects of mining. He and other environmentalists point to the 17-acre \r\nCanyon Mine<\/a>\r\nin Kaibab National Forest, which was in place before the moratorium took effect and was, therefore, exempt.\r\n

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The Canyon uranium mine \r\nis located in the Red Butte Traditional Cultural Property within the Kaibab \r\nNational Forest. The Grand Canyon sits six miles to the north. Photo: Bruce \r\nGordon \/ Ecoflight<\/A> <\/FIGCAPTION><\/figure>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWhen workers drilled a 1,470-foot mine shaft in early 2018, they punched through a shallow aquifer so that “millions of gallons of water that are pouring into that mine shaft,” said Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon chapter.

<\/p>\r\n“We are concerned that it is potentially contaminating the lower aquifer and there’s a lot of concern because that has potential for contaminating seeps and springs in the Grand Canyon,” Bahr said.

<\/p>\r\nBut Gosar said the threat is overblown.

<\/p>\r\n“The Grand Canyon is synonymous with our state and more than deserving of protection, which is why mining cannot and will never occur within the Grand Canyon National Park,” he said. “The land in question is miles away, sometimes hundreds of miles away, from the Grand Canyon.”

<\/p>\r\nMohave County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Buster Johnson said he doesn’t see any downside to uranium mining on the lands frozen in Salazar’s moratorium. He points to the economic boost that mining would bring to the region and what he sees as the benefits of nuclear power.

<\/p>\r\n“If I could put a nuclear power plant here in Mohave County, I’d do it in a second,” he said.

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