The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality issued an aquifer protection plan permit to Pinyon Plain Mine on Thursday, putting the mine's operators a step closer to starting uranium extraction.
The mine, about 10 miles south of the Grand Canyon's South Rim in the Kaibab National Forest, is owned by Energy Fuels Resources, a company incorporated in Canada with corporate offices in Colorado.
It has been opposed by environmentalists and tribes, particularly the Havasupai Tribe, some of whose members live in a side canyon of the Grand Canyon and have long feared that mining would contaminate their sole source of water...