The White Mesa uranium mill is located near the small Ute Mountain Ute tribal community of White Mesa, whose residents live down-gradient and often downwind of the mill, and many of whom oppose the permit renewal. Last month, the Salt Lake Tribune weighed in, editorializing that the “Rules for White Mesa uranium mill are not confidence inspiring.” The mill is a destination for uranium ore mined around the Grand Canyon and for toxic and radioactive wastes from across the country. “[W]hat reason is there to have any faith that either the company or the state really cares about how the plant is operated or what threats it might pose to the surrounding area?” the Tribune asks.
Is groundwater beneath the mill contaminated? You bet.
Mark Chalmers, the chief operating officer of Energy Fuels Resources, the American subsidiary of the Canadian company that owns and operates the mill as well as several uranium mines around the Grand Canyon, shot back in an editorial of his own, claiming the “White Mesa Mill is regulated and environmentally safe.”
Mr. Chalmers insists that his company, Energy Fuels, runs the White Mesa uranium mill like a boy scout. So why use corporate jargon to hide the ball? “There is no evidence,” Mr. Chalmers says, “that groundwater has been impacted by the mill’s tailings cells.” But is groundwater beneath the mill contaminated? You bet it is.
White Mesa uranium mill as seen from the air. Photo by Bruce Gordon, EcoFlight.
Energy Fuels, taking advantage of the inherent complexity of groundwater science, embraces the dearth of non-technical public information to broadly claim there is “no evidence” that the cells are to blame and to imply that the case has been closed. But at least from the Tribe’s perspective, that’s still up for debate.
The mill complies “with every applicable law, rule and regulation,” Mr. Chalmers asserts. Since when? Recently, the mill’s waste pits have been emitting radon in violation of federal air-quality standards. And the alternate-feed business, per Mr. Chalmers, amounts to “recycling unusable materials into a clean energy.” But does the mill recycle everything? Nowhere close. The leftover waste — radioactive, toxic, and otherwise — is buried forever in acres and acres of space next to the mill.
So look, Energy Fuels may not be slapdash about public health or environmental safety. But if the company wants people to trust that it has a no-nonsense approach to the standards governing the mill, it should start by telling a no-nonsense story about the mill.
Badback explains: “When the mill's running, it smells like chemicals at my house. We take in radiation from the mill, me, my kids, my mom, my family, my people. The trucks that come and go from the mill are dangerous, especially for my kids and other kids in White Mesa who ride the school bus by the mill. The mill was built on top of burial grounds and contaminates the bones of my ancestors.”
Concerned community members in White Mesa. Photo by Corey Robinson.
Badback urges Utah regulators to take action to protect the White Mesa community. Between now and July 31, you can do the same.
Send your comment to the state of Utah now
The Utah Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control will accept public comments by email and postal mail until July 31, 2017.
The Havasupai Tribe recently hosted a gathering to oppose uranium mining in and around the Grand Canyon. They hope to halt Canyon Mine, a uranium mine located a few miles from the South Rim that threatens to contaminate their sole source of drinking water, and to protect their sacred homeland from an unconscionable sacrifice.
Tribal council member Coleen Kaska said: “The message that we’re trying to send is listen to us. Hear our voices. Hear the native people’s voices. Hear the Havasupai Tribe. We’re a small tribe but we have a big voice, we have a big area to protect, Grand Canyon area as our sacred religious territory and aboriginal lands. We are still here and wanting to protect our Mother Earth.”
In late June, a group of cultural leaders and young Havasupai men left their home in the bottom of the Grand Canyon to prepare a sweat lodge and ceremonial grounds on the western slope of Red Butte. The U.S. Forest service issued them a permit to use the national forest that now occupies their aboriginal land. Havasupai elders, grandchildren, and families arrived two days later — the first day of summer — and were soon joined by hundreds of relatives from neighboring tribes and native communities from as far away as Mexico and Canada.
Ceremony
For four consecutive days, singers rose before dawn to fill the basin beneath Red Butte with heart-pounding drum beats and prayerful songs.
Runners gathered under a still starlit sky to sprinkle water from their spring-fed Havasu Creek on top of Red Butte at sunrise. Many others gathered at the fire circle to pray and be smudged by smoldering sage before walking 3.6 miles in peaceful protest along the gravel road, which dead ends at Canyon Mine’s security gate. Tarp-covered ore trucks may soon be hauling uranium from the mine through several native communities to the White Mesa Mill in southeast Utah.
Speakers, singers, and dancers filled afternoons and evenings under the cover of a 6,000-square-foot tent. Elders led round dances and shared stories about their long battle to stop uranium mining. Tribal members took turns at the sweat lodge and tending the ceremonial fire at the center of the prayer circle.
Political and cultural leaders from many neighboring nations testified of their resolve to end uranium’s deadly legacy and spoke of their commitment to restore harmony to the land.
“The Havasupai are resilient people,” wrote Havasupai Tribal Council member Carletta Tilousi in an editorial. “We have resided in and around the Grand Canyon for many centuries. This struggle is not about money to us, it is about human life.”
Red Butte and persistence
Red Butte is a resistant stack of silty sandstone that stands prominently near Grand Canyon National Park’s busiest point of entry. While geologists date its deposition to the age of the dinosaurs, the Havasupai believe it to be the lungs of a living landscape, a place that is connected to the sky by surrounding peaks and to the sea by its scarce and sacred waters.
Early residents in the region placed stones pointing to where the sun sets on the summer solstice, and when followed in the opposite direction, to where the sun rises on the winter solstice. Precise tracking of changing seasons aided in gathering and growing enough food and securing sufficient water to survive in this drought-prone region, where people have been praying and persisting for millennia.
The prayer gathering coincided with this year’s summer solstice. It began during a prolonged period of cloudless skies and excessive heat warnings. Officials from the Kaibab National Forest had put fire bans in place, but they made an exception for the tribe’s ceremonial use of fire.
On the final afternoon, a soaking rain swept across the parched land and released the bittersweet scent of sage. Gathering members took this to mean that their prayers had been heard. Convinced of the power of ceremony on hallowed ground, Havasupai leaders are already planning for their next gathering at Red Butte.
Worried about uranium mining on the Colorado Plateau? So are we.
The Utah Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control has announced its plan to let the White Mesa uranium mill keep running for another 10 years by renewing the mill’s radioactive materials license. The public has until July 31, 2017 to weigh in and urge the division to take every precaution to protect southeastern Utah’s communities, lands, waters, and wildlife.
The radioactive materials license is one of three main permits that control operations at the uranium mill; it is effectively the mill’s operating permit. It governs how much uranium and radioactive waste the White Mesa Mill can process and how the mill manages its large waste pits that permanently store radioactive and toxic waste directly above southeastern Utah’s groundwater aquifers. It also lays out how the mill owners will clean up the site after the mill stops operating to reduce the chance of poisoning nearby communities, lands, waters, and wildlife.
The proposed license misses an opportunity to minimize the public-health and environmental risks the mill creates and reduces the odds that the mill’s owner and operator, Energy Fuels, walks away from cleaning up the White Mesa Mill at the expense of taxpayers and the health of southeastern Utah.
The Grand Canyon Trust’s concerns about the White Mesa uranium mill — the last of its kind in the country — are simple. We know that uranium mills in Monticello, Tuba City, and Moab have caused groundwater pollution and poisoned air, hurting nearby communities — damage that is still occurring decades after the mills have stopped operating. It’s a concerning pattern that has caused human suffering and long-term damage to lands, water, and wildlife across our region. We worry that the same problems are occurring right now at White Mesa and may persist long into the future.
So when the state of Utah issues an operating permit for the White Mesa Mill, we take it seriously. We want to be sure that regulators are taking every step they can to avoid repeating the patterns of the past.
Case study: Monticello, Utah
Take Monticello for example, a 2,000-person town located a short drive from White Mesa. A mill operated in Monticello from 1942 until 1960, producing uranium and vanadium for the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Milling activities generated thousands of cubic yards of waste containing uranium and heavy metals, which contaminated soil, surface water, and groundwater with heavy metals and radioactive constituents.
In 1986, more than a quarter-century after it closed, the mill was declared a Superfund Site – a listing that identifies an area as one of the most toxic sites in North America. Properties in Monticello and near the mill site were contaminated by windblown dust from uranium waste piles, and waste carried by water in Montezuma Creek. A plume of contaminated groundwater still sits below the former mill site and extends over a mile downstream. According to the United States Department of Energy, “the plume, primarily contaminated by uranium, has a negative effect on surface-water quality. The primary source of groundwater contamination was tailings that were impounded on the mill site.”
Monticello cancer study
Public health experts and the state of Utah have been studying elevated cancer rates in Monticello. These studies have revealed that cases of lung cancer occurred three times as frequently in Monticello as among Utah's population as a whole and also found elevated stomach cancer levels in some test groups. The methodology of the study prevented the authors from being able to definitively tie the high cancer rates to any cause, including the operation of the uranium mill. However, the study concluded that “these results suggest a potential link.” With public health risks like these, why not take every precaution possible?
But only about 30 miles down the road from Monticello, the state of Utah may not learn from the lessons of the past. If the license that Utah plans to issue to the White Mesa Mill remains unchanged, we fear a situation similar to the one in Monticello could develop — once again at the expense of southeastern Utah.
Here are a few of the biggest problems with the proposed license:
Underinsured Polluting. The license requires Energy Fuels to guarantee that the state of Utah will get a lump sum to clean up the mill if Energy Fuels doesn’t clean it up, much like an insurance policy. If that guarantee is too low and the company walks away without cleaning up the mill, those living nearby will suffer from whatever toxic mess is left behind until taxpayers fund a cleanup. Right now, the company’s guarantee is about $20 million, a figure that reflects the company’s estimates of how much the cleanup will cost if everything goes according to plan, including a cushion of just over $3 million for unforeseen costs. But cleaning up a uranium mill is a complicated and uncertain venture that can cost way more than $20 million. Energy Fuels and the state of Utah are basically planning for a near best-case scenario, but the point of insurance is to deal with the risk of a worst-case scenario. Utah should make Energy Fuels bear that risk, not the public, by requiring the company to put up a much larger guarantee.
Missing Cleanup Deadlines. Since 1994, the law has required Energy Fuels to have a deadline-driven plan for cleaning up the mill in phases while it’s still operating. Beginning in 1997, the company has submitted several cleanup plans that have no deadlines at all. We think some cleanup obligations have languished as a result. Though the company’s new proposed cleanup plan has some enforceable deadlines, others are vague, leaving too much leeway about exactly what has to be accomplished when. Utah should set enforceable deadlines for each step of the cleanup process.
Risky Business. The mill was built in the late 1970s to process mined uranium ore from southeast Utah and the surrounding region. Since the 1990s, the mill’s owners have been chasing a new source of revenue by running “alternate feeds” through the mill and disposing of the resulting wastes on site. These feeds include uranium-bearing wastes from other contaminated places around the country and may be more radioactive and toxic than typical uranium-milling wastes.
The state of Utah used to oppose this practice, but is now planning to let Energy Fuels process a new alternate feed — a radioactive sludge left over from enriching uranium at a defunct plant near the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma run by a company called Sequoyah Fuels.
Discarding wastes like the Sequoyah Fuels sludge at White Mesa is a dubious practice that relies on the convoluted legal reasoning of a few technocrats, not a painstaking, public debate about whether to bury this problem at a uranium mill not built for that purpose. For that reason alone, Utah should keep the Sequoyah Fuels waste out of White Mesa.
Are you worried? So are we. And the state of Utah needs to know that we care about the future of this place — about our neighbors, our children, our backyard, our hunting grounds, and the rivers and springs that give life to this desert landscape. You can make a difference by raising your voices. Join us in taking action now.
Take action
The Utah Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control will accept public comments by email and postal mail until July 31, 2017.
Last month, over a hundred people gathered to walk to the White Mesa uranium mill, taking a stand against uranium contamination. The protest walk was organized and led by White Mesa Concerned Community, a grassroots group based in White Mesa, Utah, whose leaders — all members of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe — have been fighting against the nearby White Mesa Mill for over a decade.
White Mesa Concerned Community was joined by Ute Mountain Ute tribal members from reservations in White Mesa, Utah and Towaoc, Colorado, concerned citizens of the nearby Navajo Nation who are directly impacted by the hauling of uranium to the White Mesa Mill, neighbors from Moab, Bluff, and Salt Lake City, and supporters from as far away as Australia — all working in solidarity to protect communities from uranium contamination.
Watch a one-minute video of the May 13, 2017 protest rally and spiritual walk:
Mill’s license up for renewal
The walk came as the state of Utah considers three key licensing decisions to allow the White Mesa uranium mill to continue operating:
The renewal of the mill’s radioactive materials license – basically its operating permit. This license will determine how the mill is allowed to operate and how it will be cleaned up.
The renewal of the mill’s groundwater discharge permit, which governs the mill’s impact on groundwater underneath the facility’s massive waste ponds.
Whether the White Mesa Mill will be the final resting place for highly controversial radioactive waste shipped from the Sequoyah Fuels site near the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
The story of uranium on the Colorado Plateau is a story of injustice. From east to west and north to south, the Colorado Plateau’s communities, red mesas, slot canyons, dense forests, and hardworking rivers and streams bear the impact of this toxic industry. And too often, just as with the White Mesa Mill, the communities most impacted have been those of Native American tribal members, left with cancer clusters, devastated lands, and poisoned waters.
This is not a story buried in the past; it is a story being written today in Utah’s red rock country and one that is memorializing its legacy in the groundwater that feeds the Grand Canyon’s seeps and springs. It is a modern-day story whose every twist and turn leads you back to the White Mesa uranium mill, the processing site for every ton of uranium ore mined on the Colorado Plateau. The only conventional uranium mill still operating in the United States, it’s located three miles from the Ute Mountain Ute tribal community of White Mesa, Utah.
Speak up during public comment period
It’s important that regulators hear from you. We’ve been working with partners and supporters to put White Mesa on the map, both literally and metaphorically, through legal action and organizing, and this public comment period is a rare opportunity to make your voice heard.
Attend in person
June 8, 2017
1-5pm
Public Hearing
Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Room 1015
195 North 1950 West, Salt Lake City, Utah
*Regulators will answer previously submitted questions, but will not take new questions from the audience.
June 15, 2017
5-7pm
Public Meeting
Blanding Arts and Events Center
715 West 200 South, Blanding, Utah
*Audience members will have a chance to comment publicly and pose questions to regulators.
Submit written comments by July 31, 2017
Mail comments to the Utah Division of Waste Management and Radiation Control, P.O. Box 144880, Salt Lake City, UT 84114-4850.
Email comments to dwmrcpublic@utah.gov with the subject line: “Public Comment on White Mesa RML Renewal.”
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more information about specific concerns you might consider including in your comments.
The Colorado Plateau and its communities have borne the impacts of the uranium industry for too long. Now is the time to stand up for White Mesa and to protect the communities, land, water, wildlife, and clean air of the Colorado Plateau from toxic uranium contamination.
For decades, regulatory agencies and mining companies have said it’s safe to mine uranium in and around the Grand Canyon. But accumulating evidence and events are debunking that belief.
This spring, the freshly sunk shaft of Canyon uranium mine flooded with groundwater. Per the mine’s “aquifer protection permit” issued by the state of Arizona, water was pumped from the mine shaft and into the on-site containment pond. But the lined pond was already nearly filled with seasonal snowmelt. The mine’s operator, Energy Fuels Resources Inc., needed to find somewhere else for this excess water to go. Complicating matters, the company reported dissolved uranium levels in the pond at three times the safe drinking water standard.
Soon Energy Fuels started trucking water off-site to a disposal site for radioactive materials and using wastewater evaporation cannons to shoot poisoned pond water into the sky. Witnesses’ photos show mist from geysers of wastewater drifting into the surrounding national forest.
In response, neither the U.S. Forest Service, which originally permitted the mine in 1986, nor the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, established a year later, has fined the mine owner for violating any state or federal regulation. The state agency did require the company to add “particulate matter” to Canyon Mine’s air quality permit to account for the new source of air pollution — essentially giving it permission to pollute.
Same old thinking applied to an emerging problem
Both agencies assume that Canyon Mine’s containment pond is sufficient to prevent any risk to ground or surface water. In the past, regulators have said there will be little harm should the mine shaft fill with groundwater.
Energy Fuels has denied a problem exists. Industry experts, such as mining consultant and former federal geologist Karen Wenrich, have testified before Congress that uranium mines near the Grand Canyon are small and “dry” and pose no risk to the underlying aquifer that feeds the Grand Canyon’s seeps and springs. “The water table is way below the level of the [Canyon] mine,” Wenrich said in a recent interview.
The mining we do here is heavily regulated. There are major controls for water protection, both ground and surface water protection, which basically means that no water can enter or exit the site except through precipitation.
The regulators are failing us, relying on insufficient measures
In claiming that there is no evidence of groundwater contamination, the company fails to mention that Arizona does not require monitoring wells for uranium mines. Unlike copper and other types of mining elsewhere in the state, Canyon Mine’s aquifer protection permit requires no monitoring wells. Nor must it comply with the best management practices and compliance measures developed by the Forest Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service for the Grand Canyon uranium mining district in 2012.
Updated conservation measures include commonsense practices such as drilling at least one monitoring well up-gradient and two down-gradient from the mine to detect when dissolved uranium reaches the nearby aquifer. This precautionary measure would trigger emergency action to stop a plume of contamination from spreading to water wells and groundwater-fed springs, before it is too late to prevent irreparable harm.
In 2010, the U.S. Geological Survey reported 15 springs and five wells already permanently polluted as the result of uranium mining in the Grand Canyon region. Nonetheless, when the U. S. Forest Service reviewed Canyon Mine in 2012, it ignored this new information and allowed the owners to resume sinking the shaft after the mine had been on “standby” for more than two decades.
The regulatory agencies’ willingness to put the Havasupai people’s sole source of drinking water at risk is of grave concern to the tribe. Standing outside Canyon Mine’s security fence in 2015, tribal councilwoman Carletta Tilousi predicted that the mine “is going to contaminate our groundwater source…And when this contamination does reach our home, there’ll be no more Havasupai.”
Earlier this year the Havasupai Tribal Council and community members learned that the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality failed to notify a Navajo community in eastern Arizona that their drinking water contained unsafe levels of dissolved uranium. This example fuels distrust in the same agency that issues aquifer protection permits for Canyon uranium mine, while conceding to industry claims that monitoring wells are unnecessary.
Why ban Grand Canyon uranium mines?
In 1986, the U.S. Forest Service permitted Canyon uranium mine to open within miles of Grand Canyon National Park and in the headwaters of Havasu Creek. The agency concluded that “neither the water quality on the Havasupai Indian Reservation nor Grand Canyon National Park should be environmentally affected either directly or indirectly by the development of the Canyon Mine.”
Nonetheless, state and federal regulators are so far standing behind the mining industry’s assurance that Canyon Mine poses no risk to the Grand Canyon or to the Havasupai people who live there.
Why ban uranium mines on public lands that surround the Grand Canyon? One clear reason is because regulatory agencies are prone to capture by the same industries that they regulate. If we cannot count on them to act in the public interest, then the public must act. To fully protect this region, the temporary ban on new uranium mines near the Grand Canyon must be made permanent and monitoring wells should be required at Canyon Mine, where contamination of the aquifer may already be well underway.
Less than 10 miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, a trip by the Canyon Mine might warrant a detour on your journey to one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Especially if you’re curious to see how the newly revived uranium mine, with its out-of-date environmental review, is progressing toward eventually producing uranium ore on land you, as an American citizen, own in the Kaibab National Forest.
If you’ve taken that detour over the past couple of weeks, you were likely greeted with a rather big surprise: large volumes of water being pumped out of the mine's shaft into a pond and misted into the air over the pond using "land sharks"—water cannons meant to speed up evaporation.
on
February 22 2017
Tim Peterson
by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director
Bears Ears National Monument is not yet two months old — hardly enough time to settle into its new protected status. Yet a now idle uranium mine — the Daneros Mine — threatens to truck more than 500,000 tons of radioactive rock through the new monument, one of the densest and most significant cultural landscapes in the United States.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is considering allowing the Daneros uranium mine to expand to 10 times its current footprint. Located less than three miles from monument boundaries, the enlarged mine would significantly impact the monument and continue southeast Utah’s sorry history of radioactive contamination resulting from unsafe, uneconomic, and unnecessary uranium mining and milling.
The backstory
In July 2016, the mine operator announced its intent to expand and prolong the life of Daneros Mine:
on
January 26 2017
Blake McCord
by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director
On January 17, 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated its rule meant to curb toxic air pollution from radioactive uranium-milling wastes like those generated by the White Mesa uranium mill in southeast Utah. This was the first update to the rule since 1989.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA regulates emissions of hazardous air pollutants, which are known to cause cancer and other serious illnesses. One of the 187 contaminants currently listed by the EPA as a hazardous air pollutant is radon, a gas produced by the radioactive decay of uranium. Radon is emitted from the waste tailings generated by uranium mills and other uranium-recovery facilities. Those emissions are regulated by a rule called “Subpart W.”
In 2014, the Trust and many of our members commented on the EPA’s proposed revisions to Subpart W. Thanks to public comments, the EPA made some positive changes to the proposed rule. Most important, an existing numeric limit on radon emissions that the agency had planned to eliminate was instead retained, with a few modifications. That will make it easier for the public to keep tabs on how much radon is being put off by some of the White Mesa Mill’s wastes, and it maintains a clear line as to exactly what amount of radon emissions is prohibited.
The agency, unfortunately, made some other changes that may turn out badly for public health and the environment. One of the major goals of the EPA’s rule is to force uranium producers to clean up the messes they make as they go. That reduces the hazards posed by the industry’s wastes — and leaves a smaller mess for taxpayers to clean up — if those producers abandon their facilities without reclaiming them. The new rule still has that objective, but it may let some facilities keep a much larger waste area open and defer reclamation costs to the detriment of the environment, the public’s health, and the public purse.
Although it will take some time to judge exactly how the EPA’s new rule will work on the ground, one thing is clear now: The EPA should have looked at ways to further reduce radon emissions from uranium-processing wastes. When the EPA regulates emissions of hazardous air pollutants like radon, the agency’s first step is to require industry either to reduce emissions as much as technologically possible or to use “generally available” technologies to control emissions. In its revisions to Subpart W, the EPA chose to require only that “generally available” technologies be used, meaning that the agency didn’t look into whether greater reductions in radon emissions were possible. We think that decision was out of step with the Clean Air Act, and, because of it, there’s no way for the public to be sure that the restrictions the agency imposed are truly the most appropriate for protecting the environment and human health.
For people living near the White Mesa Mill, the fact that the revised rule retained some protections may come as a small comfort. The mill’s wastes will remain radioactive for lifetimes, and unless they’re dug up and buried elsewhere, they’ll continue to pose a threat to the environment and those living nearby. We believe places like White Mesa, Utah, that brave the menace of the uranium industry’s radioactive wastes, deserve a tougher rule. But we don’t intend to let the rule that the EPA wrote get in the way of our commitment to pressing for the White Mesa Mill to be properly cleaned up.
Yesterday, the White House informed Arizona Representative Raúl Grijalva that President Obama will not designate the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument before leaving office later this month, leaving more than a million acres around the Grand Canyon vulnerable to uranium mining.
Grijalva introduced the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument Act in October 2015. Drafted in close collaboration with the Havasupai, Hualapai, and Hopi tribes and supported by the Navajo Nation, Zuni, Paiute, and Yavapai leaders, the proposed monument would have protected 1.7 million acres of tribal homeland around the Grand Canyon, including water sources and sacred sites, and banned new uranium mines and claims. It also would have made the current 20-year mineral withdrawal, which bans new uranium mines on a million acres around the Grand Canyon, permanent. No such luck.
“The Havasupai people are on the verge of human extinction due to massive uranium development on the rims of the Grand Canyon. As the original people of this country, we are the most targeted by international mining companies who come into our territories and contaminate our waters and homes. We are very disappointed in the Obama administration for failing to protect the Grand Canyon,” said Havasupai Councilwoman Carletta Tilousi.
Presidential proclamation off the table
With a presidential proclamation via the Antiquities Act (like the one President Obama used to protect Bears Ears last month) off the table for the Grand Canyon, Grijalva is reintroducing the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument Act today and making a final push for the bill in Congress. However, with the clock ticking and Arizona’s congressional delegation staunchly opposed to the monument, despite overwhelming support for the monument from voters in Arizona and nationwide, most likely, when the 115th Congress adjourns, the only thing protecting a million acres around the Grand Canyon from thousands of new uranium mining claims will be the temporary 2012 Department of Interior mineral withdrawal, which is currently under attack in the courts.
This is a real setback for the Grand Canyon. As of today, the 20-year mineral withdrawal issued by then Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in 2012, which currently bans new uranium mines around the Grand Canyon, is in danger, whether it be from attacks by the Trump administration, Congress, or the National Mining Association. We expect opponents of the withdrawal to come at it with everything they've got. Within months, or even weeks, the withdrawal could be revoked, opening up the Grand Canyon to more than 3,000 new uranium mining claims.
Defending the Grand Canyon in court
This is gut-check time. To stop a rollback of protections around the Grand Canyon, the Grand Canyon Trust and partners are currently in court, defending the 20-year withdrawal from an attack by the National Mining Association and demanding that the Forest Service require mine operators to conduct a new environmental review before allowing uranium mining to resume at the Canyon Mine, near Grand Canyon National Park.
Three generations of Havasupai Tribe members perform a round dance in protest at the Canyon uranium mine, near Grand Canyon National Park.
On December 15, 2016, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard two cases that will determine the future of uranium mining within the Grand Canyon’s watersheds. It could be months before we learn the panel’s decision, plus the Trump administration or Congress may try to jettison the 20-year ban on new uranium claims that the Secretary of the Interior ordered in 2012.
Here’s a quick look at the two cases:
National Mining Association v. Jewell
In National Mining Association v. Jewell, the National Mining Association (NMA) and others challenged the 20-year withdrawal of new mining claims around the Grand Canyon. Earthjustice Attorney Ted Zukoski represented the Grand Canyon Trust and others in supporting the Secretary of the Interior’s 2012 withdrawal. Zukoski argued alongside a U.S. Department of Justice attorney that the withdrawal is legal and the NMA’s suit is without merit. The withdrawal was upheld in 2014 by the district court. The NMA appealed the lower court’s decision to the Ninth Circuit.
Watch the oral argument:
Depending on what the appellate court and the new administration decide, Grand Canyon National Park will enter its centennial-year celebration in 2019 either as a place where citizens and common sense have prevailed, or as a prize under siege by corporate interests.
Havasupai Tribe v. Provencio
In Havasupai Tribe v. Provencio, the Havasupai Tribe and the Grand Canyon Trust argued against the U.S. Forest Service for allowing the Canyon uranium mine, near Grand Canyon National Park, to reopen without completing consultation with the Havasupai Tribe and without conducting a new environmental review.
Richard Hughes, attorney for the Havasupai Tribe, stated that because the government granted Traditional Cultural Property status in 2010 to the Red Butte area—which encompasses Canyon Mine—the agency should have completed tribal consultation prior to permitting the mine to reopen. He said: “The question in this case is…whether the U.S. Forest Service violated section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act in making the determination that EFR [Energy Fuel Resources, the company that owns and operates the mine]…could recommence the development of the Canyon Mine after a 20-year hiatus in activity without conducting any bona fide consultation…[or developing] measures to avoid, minimize, or mitigate what would certainly be the adverse impacts, the serious adverse impacts, of the Canyon Mine on the Red Butte cultural property, including the meadow [where the Canyon Mine is located].”
Watch the oral argument:
A long history of resistance
No matter the outcome of these looming decisions, be assured that people who are committed to protecting the Grand Canyon will remain undeterred. The Havasupai, for example, have a long history of resistance against those who threaten their sacred headwaters.
The dozen or so Havasupai elders and elected officials who attended the appeals court hearings in San Francisco in December made it clear that this fight is for their survival as a people. Havasupai Chairman Dan Watahomogie said: “We are the Havasuw ‘Baaja, which means people of the blue-green water. Our very being and continuance as Havasupai depends on the continued flow of our water and our ability to continue that reliance forever.”
Water is the Grand Canyon’s lifeblood. The Grand Canyon Trust stands with the Havasupai in defending against uranium mines and many other developments threatening Grand Canyon watersheds. Decisions made during the next few months are consequential. Together we are contributing a positive difference.
The first bucket of uranium ore may soon be lifted from Canyon Mine’s 1,400-foot shaft, stockpiled, and then trucked along the two-lane road that leads to Grand Canyon National Park’s busiest entrance. Its trail of radioactive dust will then blow along gateway town boulevards, where tourists enliven local economies, and through Native American communities—where last century’s uranium boom ended in a deadly bust.
Public commenters had asked that, before the ADEQ re-approved the permits, it assess the cumulative effects of radon gas, radiation, and radioactive dust in the Grand Canyon region. The state’s air pollution permitting agency refused, stating “State law does not allow the Department to consider results of a study like this in a permitting decision for a specific site.”
The ADEQ will, however, allow for up to 26 million pounds of mined ore to be stockpiled to a height of 20 feet without a covering. The radioactive ore will be sprayed to control dust, and the runoff water must be contained in a plastic-lined pond so that it cannot leach into the aquifer that feeds springs deep within the Grand Canyon.
The permit also requires annual soil and quarterly gamma radiation sampling, the installation of anemometers, which measure wind speed, and a halt to truck-loading activities if wind speed gets above 25 mph. If dust or radiation monitors reach certain thresholds, the ore stockpile must be reduced by half, covered with a tarp, and protected by wind barriers.
The ADEQ responded to public concerns regarding tarps covering the radioactive ore on the 24 haul trucks per day—traveling at speeds up to 65 mph—by requiring that the tarp “be lapped over the sides of the haul truck bed at least 6 inches, and secured every 4 feet with a tie down rope.”
“We are very upset that ADEQ approved the air quality permits,” stated Havasupai council member Carletta Tilousi. “Even though we stood firm on protecting the lands and sacred areas, again the state of Arizona won’t protect our Grand Canyon homelands as they went ahead and issued the air quality permits. We are very disappointed with the agency.”
Photo: Havasupai council member Carletta Tilousi testifies in favor of permanently banning uranium mining in Grand Canyon watersheds. (Photo credit: Amanda Voisard)
Grand Canyon’s Uncertain Future
In 1986, the U.S. Forest Service approved the development of Canyon Mine on public lands within a few miles of Grand Canyon National Park. When issuing the permit, it stated that “neither the water quality on the Havasupai Indian Reservation nor Grand Canyon National Park should be environmentally affected either directly or indirectly by the development of the Canyon Mine.”
Havasupai leaders appealed the decision but lost. However, due to a downturn in the uranium market, the mine shut in 1991 after sinking its shaft only 50 feet.
During the next two decades, water samples drawn from a spring below the nearby Orphan uranium mine confirmed that the now defunct mine is causing unsafe levels of dissolved uranium. The National Park Service now warns hikers against drinking from it. In 2010, water samples taken by the U.S. Geological Survey identified more contaminated sites “related to mining processes.” They found 15 springs and five wells that contained dissolved uranium concentrations in excess of the Environmental Protection Agency's standards for safe drinking water.
An upsurge in uranium prices in 2007 brought new life back to uranium mines and a wave of new uranium claims.
Despite mounting evidence that uranium mines are polluting Grand Canyon’s fragile seeps and springs, the U.S. Forest Service allowed Canyon Mine to resume operations, without updating its 1986 plan of operations and environment impact statement as required by law. The Havasupai Tribe, the Grand Canyon Trust, and other plaintiffs’ 2013 lawsuit against the agency was denied in federal district court in 2015.
The Havasupai Tribe appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court. The Grand Canyon Trust, Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club soon followed suit. Oral argument in appeals regarding the Canyon Mine will be heard and streamed live at the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco on Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 9:30 am. Appeals regarding the mining industry’s lawsuit to overturn the 2012 mineral withdrawal—which put a 20-year ban on new uranium claims—will be heard immediately thereafter.
Depending on what the appellate court decides, Grand Canyon National Park will enter its centennial-year celebration in 2019 either as a place where citizens and common sense have prevailed, or as a prize under siege by mining interests.