Uranium

 by Anne Mariah Tapp, Energy Director

When we take a hard look at uranium mining proposals in the arid West, the calculus is clear.

We cannot risk our water resources, the lifeblood of the Colorado Plateau, to extract uranium.

In his recent article, “Hot Water,” which appears in OnEarth, an independent journal published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Brian Palmer drives this point home. 

“We may have to tell our grandchildren that we risked the one resource we knew they would desperately need, all so we could extract one we could have easily lived without.”

–Brian Palmer 

In-Situ Leaching: An Unwelcome Newcomer to the Colorado Plateau

“Hot Water” focuses on a newer type of uranium mining technology, in-situ leaching, that the uranium industry is trying to introduce in New Mexico. The target? Low-grade “roll front” uranium deposits – uranium deposits 10 to 30 feet in height that are located deep underground and only extractable by chemical processes. To extract this uranium, the company drills numerous injection wells over the deposit, injects a solution at high pressure that dissolves the uranium, and then pumps the uranium-laden solution to the surface. 

The big problem here is water. Peer-reviewed studies on this mining technique all indicate that leaching uranium out of rocks contaminates the surrounding groundwater for decades. This is not the future we want for our Colorado Plateau communities whose very survival depends on available drinking groundwater. 

The Colorado Plateau’s Future is Renewable, Not Radioactive 

Although uranium advocates tout nuclear power as a solution to climate change, when we look closely at what most states need to do to take advantage of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan’s incentives, it would be cheaper and safer to invest in renewable and energy efficient technologies such as solar and wind. Ramping up nuclear power production is simply too expensive—that’s why we see so few financiers investing in new nuclear power plants in the United States. 

And, best of all, putting our future in renewables protects the arid West’s most precious resource – our water. 

*This blog entry was updated on 10/5/2016.

A former national park superintendent, county officials, and the Grand Canyon Trust have been exchanging op-eds and letters to the editor over the last few weeks regarding the effects of the uranium mining industry around the Grand Canyon. Prompted by former Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Steve Martin’s call to reform mining regulations, officials from Mohave County, Arizona and Washington County, Utah wrote “the uranium mining industry has gone out of its way to protect the environment.”

But the uranium industry’s track record tells a different story:

 by Anne Mariah Tapp, Energy Director

Ticking time bombs like the abandoned gold mine that recently released millions of gallons of contaminated water into Colorado’s Animas River, are found throughout the West, threatening a resource much more precious than gold: water. In an effort to prevent future catastrophes, a diverse coalition of Native American tribes, local governments, and environmental groups, including the Grand Canyon Trust, have united to reform mining rules on federal lands and ensure that mine owners cannot simply walk away from old mines.

Outdated law

For years, the antiquated 1872 Mining Law, a vestige of 19^th century expansionism, has resisted legislative attempts at reform, defended by the entrenched interests of the mining industry and its powerful lobby. Now tribes and counties directly impacted by uranium mining (categorized as hard rock mining, just like gold and silver, under the 1872 law) have decided to take matters into their own hands, trying a creative new approach to reform tough-to-crack, outdated hard rock mining rules.

Our coalition has capitalized on a little-known legal tool known as an Administrative Procedures Act (APA) petition for rulemaking, which allows the public to ask government agencies to put new rules or regulations in place or modify those already in effect. We are using our APA petition to ask the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service to reform the existing rules governing mining on the public lands they manage.

Cradle-to-grave protections 

As the Havasupai Tribal Council states in their resolution of support for the petition: “the gap in regulation that permits abandonment without reclamation needs to be acknowledged and fixed by both the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management so that there is cradle-to-grave protections for the people, the wildlife, the land and the water….”

The Havasupai Tribe is particularly concerned about uranium mining, which threatens tribal sacred sites as well as the sole source of drinking water for the tribe’s reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Uranium mining has a proven track record of contaminating the Grand Canyon’s water resources. Toxic and radioactive uranium contamination from the Orphan Uranium Mine, operated in the 1950s, has left Horn Creek with uranium levels in excess of the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking water standards. 

A call for change 

To fix the problems in the current Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management rules, our coalition requests four main changes to the existing mining rules:

• limit the lifetime of a mine permit
• impose enforceable reclamation deadlines on mines
• require regular monitoring and inspections
• limit the number of years that a mine can remain inactive. 

These common-sense regulations already apply to grazing, logging, and other uses of public lands. It is only reasonable that the mining industry – with its potential to severely damage precious water resources – should be held to equally strong regulatory standards.

County governments across the Colorado Plateau have stepped forward in support of the reform effort, especially in light of the Animas spill. “As a county with hundreds of abandoned mines affecting two headwaters rivers of the Colorado Basin, we really place a high importance on sustainable uses of our public lands and protecting water,” said Art Goodtimes, a commissioner in San Miguel County, Colorado. “The proposed rules will help ensure that inactive mines are reclaimed in a timely manner and the environment will be better protected than what happened with our San Juan County neighbors.”

A reasonable path forward 

Solutions to mining contamination are direly needed, and today’s petition represents such a solution. The Animas River disaster must mark the end of the days when irresponsible mining threatens our region’s livable future. This petition, coupled with legislative solutions such as Representative Grijalva’s mining reform legislation, could bring us into a new era – an era in which toxic mining contamination does not threaten the health of our groundwater and rivers. As we move toward solutions on multiple fronts, today’s petition provides the federal agencies with a reasonable path forward that will benefit western communities, taxpayers, water resources, and our most treasured landscapes.

A united front

The 74-page APA petition for rulemaking prepared by the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic was submitted Tuesday, August 25, along with resolutions and letters of support from the Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Zuni Tribe, Coconino County in Arizona, and San Miguel County in Colorado, as well as more than a dozen national and regional environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, and others, representing millions of individuals who treasure our public lands and waters.

Under the APA, the agencies are required to review and respond to the petition.

Show your support. Sign the citizen petition calling for these key reforms!

 by Roger Clark, Grand Canyon Director

The dumping of three million gallons of heavy metal-laden sludge into the Animas River is a clarion call to action. The orange plume’s path through last week’s news cycle alerted citizens to the fact that our drinking water is threatened by a backlog of hundreds of un-reclaimed mines and a 143-year-old law that gives mining companies unfettered use of our public lands.

The 1872 Mining Law “allows mining companies to buy federal land for a few dollars an acre, demands no royalties and requires minimal environmental protections while the mine is operating and no cleanup afterward.”

Its principal legacy, if it can be called that, is a battered landscape of abandoned mines and poisoned streams.

– New York Times, "What the Gold Mine Disaster Tells Us"

Calls to reform the 1872 Mining Law are not new. Nor are toxic mine spills. But, we now have a window where national outrage needs to be focused like a laser on solutions. 

We see at least four opportunities for reeling in the antiquated law that has left “a battered landscape of abandoned mines and poisoned streams” in its wake:

1.  Petition agencies to improve regulations under existing laws;

2.  Reform the 1872 law, as Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva’s bill (introduced earlier this year) would do;

3.  A permanent ban to mining on specific public lands by presidential proclamation of a national monument under the 1906 Antiquities Act (see for example); and

4. Challenging federal agencies in court to enforce modern environmental and cultural protection laws to prevent permanent pollution to our land and water.

All four actions are red hot. We’ll need your support to turn the orange plume’s legacy into real progress.

Please watch for breaking news about our new campaign to change hard rock mining regulations—and how you can help. 

 by Anne Mariah Tapp, Energy Director

This week, over one million gallons of toxic mine waste spilled into the Animas River, turning its flows an eerie orange. The cause? An inadequately reclaimed gold mine upstream in Silverton that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was investigating due to increased acid mine drainage. EPA’s activities triggered a spill that cascaded into the Animas, and is now flowing downstream to Bluff, Utah and the San Juan River and then downstream into the greater Colorado River system.

The public health and environmental costs are yet unknown.

The Animas River remains closed and county officials say that health risks remain high. EPA regional director Shaun McGrath told Durango residents that the spill may result in long-term downriver impacts that could lead to possible closures in years to come. Impacts to the Lower Basin and the imperiled endangered fish living in the San Juan River are unclear as the contaminated pulse flow moves downstream. Bluff and its sleepy river community anxiously await the slow-motion disaster's arrival.

What is Durango without the Animas? What is Bluff without the San Juan? What is the Grand Canyon without its seeps and springs? There is no life in this desert country without water.

As Durango residents line the Animas watching the river turn orange and a toxic sheen coats the banks, we must ask ourselves whether this is the future we want for our region. History will repeat itself without action. When we sacrifice our most precious water resources to irresponsible industry, we render our arid region unlivable.

And today – as the contaminated pulse of mine waste flows downstream – Energy Fuels is beginning operations at the Canyon uranium mine. Despite being only six miles from the Grand Canyon’s south rim, the Canyon Mine lacks a rigorous well-monitoring program. The Canyon Mine has no consistent system to test water quality in mine seeps, and there is no regular spring monitoring intended to detect or prevent radiological contamination of the Grand Canyon’s water resources. Already, the USGS has found dozens of the Grand Canyon region’s seeps and springs contaminated by the legacy of uranium mining. 

The waters of Horn Creek are already too contaminated to drink due to the Orphan uranium mine on the Grand Canyon’s south rim. That the Horn Creek contamination is colorless – and thus not as dramatic looking as the Animas River spill – makes it no less a cause for concern. How many more springs, seeps, and creeks are we willing to lose? And with radioactive contamination, the loss may be for thousands of years.  

The Grand Canyon Trust is asking for improvements to the obsolete rules that govern uranium mining. Long-term groundwater monitoring and enforceable reclamation deadlines are entirely reasonable requirements for an industry that could permanently damage one of our most awe-inspiring and sacred landscapes. It’s the least we can do to protect the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River Basin – the lifeblood of the American West. And this week, the Animas shows us that the cost is far too high not to act.

You can help protect the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon from toxic uranium contamination. Sign the petition ›

In the News:

When our river turned orange – High Country News

The toxic Colorado river spill and the menace of old hard-rock mines – Los Angeles Times

Catastrophe on the Animas – The Durango Herald

EPA says it released 3 million gallons of contaminated water into river – NPR

EPA: Pollution from mine spill much worse than feared – USA Today

Environmental agency uncorks its own toxic water spill at Colorado mine – New York Times

 by Anne Mariah Tapp, Energy Director

Canyon Uranium Mine is ready to open; the trees are cleared, headrig installed, pond dug, "keep out" signs posted. Energy Fuels Inc. began activities at the site, located six miles from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, this June – the same month that researchers published a peer-reviewed article that sheds light on the legacy of uranium contamination caused by abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona.

Researchers began these studies at the request of community members in the Blue Gap/Tachee Chapter (about 25 miles west of Canyon de Chelly) after they expressed concern about the potential health effects of living near abandoned uranium mine sites. The public health and environmental implications of the article are alarming, not only for the Blue Gap/Tachee community, but also for the Grand Canyon and the greater Colorado Plateau.

Don’t drink the water

Scientists measured elevated uranium concentrations– ranging from 2-5 times the maximum contaminant levels allowable in drinking water – in the sampled seeps and springs. Blue Gap/Tachee residents used these springs and seeps before discovering the contamination, and animals still regularly drink from one of the water sources. Researchers also found elevated concentrations of uranium and heavy metals in the sampled mine waste. 

Both of these sources – the water and mine waste – threaten to expose residents to toxic and radioactive contaminants as people eat animals that drink from the contaminated water sources, inhale radioactive dust, and plant fields that flood with runoff from mine sites.

Different characters, same story

You might ask how the contamination in Blue Gap/Tachee relates to the Canyon Mine? It’s a good question. The sites discussed in the article are on the Navajo Nation, 120 miles from the Canyon Mine Site. And, the abandoned mines contaminating the Blue Gap/Tachee Chapter were last operated in the 1950s, a product of the nuclear arms race and atomic era.

The Canyon Mine has not yet begun active mining of uranium ore. It is located only six miles from the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, and its ore will likely fuel nuclear power oversees – in Korea or another one of Energy Fuels Inc.’s international customers.

But despite these superficial differences, the baseline problem remains the same. Uranium mining causes radioactive contamination of water resources – a problem we can little afford in the arid Southwest. Moreover, the article indicates that the toxic legacy of contamination from uranium mining is still unfolding more than 50 years after those mines ceased operations. The story of uranium in the Southwest is one of environmental injustice and a legacy of harm to native communities across the Colorado Plateau.

Stuck on repeat

And now, Canyon Mine is opening. A mine that, fifty years from today, may cause the same pattern of toxic and radioactive contamination in one of the world’s most treasured places – the Grand Canyon. A mine that threatens the continued existence of the Havasupai people. A mine that repeats our past mistakes.

Its shaft is already 200 feet into the ground, continuing into the depths until they hit ore. Within a year, Canyon Mine could be mining and hauling uranium ore through the roads of the Colorado Plateau to the mill in southern Utah.

The peer-reviewed article, volumes of previous studies, and the past history of documented uranium contamination across the Plateau all point to the same conclusion. Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon region threatens the Grand Canyon’s seeps, springs, and sacred places with radioactive contamination of land and water resources.

Course of action

As we look to the future, our decision-makers must understand the implications of the Blue Gap/Tachee studies for the potential future of the Grand Canyon.

First, we must have better regulation of uranium mining in Arizona. At minimum, Arizona’s mining regulations must be improved to equal those of Colorado and New Mexico – the Grand Canyon deserves no less.

Second, federal regulations must be improved to impose minimum standards on miners operating on federal land.

Finally, we must make the 2012 Mineral Withdrawal permanent to prevent uranium mining once and for all in the Grand Canyon region.

Help us protect the Grand Canyon from unsafe, unnecessary, and uneconomic uranium mining! Sign our petition here ›

Uranium Haul Trucks - Coming Soon to a Highway Near You!

The Canyon Uranium Mine, located six miles from the Grand Canyon's south rim, is set to resume operations this month. If this happens, mine owner Energy Fuels plans to truck uranium through Flagstaff on I-40, continuing north into Utah via Highways 89 and 160.

Please join us for a public meeting at the Firecreek Coffee Company in downtown Flagstaff on Thursday, June 18th at 6pm to learn about the risks uranium mining near Grand Canyon poses to northern Arizona communities. This meeting, hosted by the Grand Canyon Trust, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club, will share information and answer questions about threats to water, wildlife, human and environmental health.

 by Roger Clark, Grand Canyon Director

Consider the business of mining public lands for private profit: speculators from around the world can claim ownership of uranium ore wherever it’s located on public land in the United States. They can then mine the deposit for however long it takes, despite risking potentially devastating radioactive contamination. Not even the Grand Canyon is safe.

Case Study: Canyon Uranium Mine

In the case of the Canyon uranium mine – located within miles of the Grand Canyon’s south rim – the process of exploratory drilling began nearly four decades ago. In the early 1980s, a Canadian company moved heavy machinery into the Kaibab National Forest, where ancient pine groves grace campsites popular for hunting elk and for easy access to Grand Canyon.

After several years of punching test holes into rock strata below, the uranium company hit a sufficient amount of ore to make mining lucrative—or so they thought. The U.S. Forest Service reviewed potential environmental impacts and, after considerable public opposition, permitted the private company to occupy public lands indefinitely.

Specifically, the Forest Service granted the company permission, in perpetuity, to fence off an area the size of a big-box parking lot and turn a lovely meadow into an industrial park, displacing recreationists, wildlife, and even cattle. For its exclusive use of prime public land located next to Grand Canyon National Park, the company pays no fees to the U.S. Treasury—not then, not now, not even after valuable ore is eventually hauled to Utah for milling into “yellow cake.” Under current market conditions, owners say they will begin trucking ore to the mill in 2016, 40 years after the Forest Service permit was issued.

Booms and Busts

Even with free use of public land, it turned out uranium mining could not pay for itself back then, much less turn a profit. Two years after Canyon Mine was opened, uranium prices plummeted and its owners shut the gates and walked away, well before reaching the ore deposit a thousand feet below. Drilling was just too expensive. The mine was sold to a series of foreign companies speculating in hopes of uranium prices rising again. Sure enough, global prices for yellow cake peaked again in 2007.

Canyon Mine’s owners started preparing the site for reopening under its 1986 permit and without the Forest Service requiring any new review of environmental or economic impacts to the Grand Canyon region. But the global uranium market took a dive after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster– slowing the push for re-opening operations at Canyon Mine.

Errors in Judgement

In 2012, former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar declared a 20 year ban on new uranium mining on 1.1 million acres of land in the Grand Canyon region. For Canyon Mine to re-start operations, the Forest Service had to find that the mine was economically viable. Although the agency declared that Canyon Mine met that threshold, the agency failed to include the costs of environmental compliance and clean-up in the cost of doing business. This is a serious omission: the first phase of clean-up of the nearby Orphan uranium mine has cost taxpayers more than $15 million.

The Forest Service also concluded, yet again, that the mine’s 36-year old permit needed no revisions nor a new environmental review, despite new evidence of groundwater contamination near uranium mines and impacts to the Red Butte “traditional cultural property” held sacred by the Havasupai and other native peoples.

Canyon Mine did reopen in 2013. Miners managed to sink Canyon Mine’s shaft a few hundred more feet, hitting a perched aquifer and forcing them to pump water from the mine shaft into a lined catchment basin on the surface. Canyon Mine’s owners announced a “business decision” to close it, “temporarily,” less than a year after the Forest Service erroneously decreed its economic viability. Under current market conditions, the mine’s owners now estimate they will begin trucking ore to the mill in 2016 – 40 years after the Forest Service permit was issued. Even more difficult to believe, the Canyon Mine is being allowed to operate under the authority of the initial, unchanged, and now-obsolete 1986 environmental review and mine permit.

Uranium Mining is Uneconomic

Four decades of experience have shown that uranium mining around the Grand Canyon is uneconomic.  It’s uneconomic for private companies and uneconomic for the American public, who see no benefit from royalties and are too often stuck with clean-up costs when companies go bankrupt – a pattern we have seen too often repeated at other uranium mines and mills across the Southwest.

While speculators may see their investments fall flat, those of us who actually live here face a much more dismal reality: the prospect of permanent radioactive contamination threatening Grand Canyon’s viability as the backbone of our region’s economy and as an internationally treasured landscape.

In response to such unnecessary, unsafe, and uneconomic risks, the Grand Canyon Trust and our allies are challenging agencies’ decisions in court, as well as petitioning for rule changes that would put reasonable time limits on when permits must be reviewed and revised. Periodic revisions, such as requiring precautionary practices like groundwater monitoring, will help protect public land and water from permanent harm.

Simply put, these common-sense changes make good economic sense for American taxpayers and regional residents who must ultimately bear the burden of uranium mining’s costly mess.

Help us protect the Grand Canyon from unsafe, unnecessary, and uneconomic uranium mining! Sign our petition here ›

 by Ellen Heyn, Communications Associate

Dehydration vs. Radioactive Water in the Grand Canyon

A message from your parents asking you to call them back immediately—no more information, no less—triggers something like a panic attack: Who’s in the hospital? How bad was the accident? Was it a heart attack? Oh no, who died?

The summer after I graduated from college, I was out getting pizza when I got such a message. Assuming the worst, I called my parents back right away. My dad answered the phone. 

“Dad, what’s going on? Is everything ok?” 

“Everything’s  fine,” he said, his tone serious, “except we just got a letter from the park service saying that you’re going to die on your Grand Canyon hike…”

I had gotten a similar message by email a week earlier in response to a backcountry permit request, but I’d brushed it off as a legal disclaimer, apparently also ignoring the last sentence:

"Note: In addition to this courtesy email, we will be sending you this same information by letter."

I had listed my parents’ address on my permit application (a mistake I realized the moment my dad answered the phone) because I was moving out of my apartment, packing my life into my car, and heading West on a post-grad adventure.

Apparently, from the park service’s perspective, the fact that I was a 22 year-old girl hiking solo—compounded with my planned mileage—was cause for concern:

"Experience has shown that trips such as the one you requested all too often result in off-itinerary camping, injury, and occasionally even death. This is further compounded by the fact that you are seeking to do this hike alone– something that leaves an inadequate safety margin for dealing with problems that might come up…"

After reading the letter, my parents had every reason to worry. I was the youngest kid leaving their protective nest. Then, of course, there were the threats of dehydration, heat stroke, and rough terrain, not to mention my lack of backpacking experience. Point by point, I tried to ease my parents’ concerns. 

But what the park service didn’t disclose in their list of potential dangers I’d encounter on my hike was perhaps the scariest of all—a radioactive creek whose uranium levels exceeds EPA safe drinking water standards.

Radioactive percolator

In the Grand Canyon, where a vertical mile of rock separates you from the Colorado River, springs and creeks act as lifelines for backpackers. You strategically plan your campsites, mileages, and routes based entirely on where you can refill your water bottles. 

On the Hermit–Tonto–Bright Angel backpacking loop, my planned itinerary and one of the most hiked backcountry trips in the canyon, water in two creeks—Horn Creek and Salt Creek—has been deemed unsafe for drinking. U.S. Geological Survey studies have shown those creeks to have radiation levels that exceed safety standards for human health. 

The park service warns in its trail description for the route: 

"There is water in the bed of Horn Creek about half the time, but unfortunately it is radioactive so don’t drink it unless death by thirst is the only other option."

The radiation in Horn Creek came from the former Orphan Uranium Mine located upstream, on the Grand Canyon’s south rim. In 1987, when the park service acquired the previously private inholding where the abandoned Orphan Uranium Mine is located, they also adopted the land’s toxic legacy. In 13 years of mining uranium on the South Rim, the Orphan Mine allowed radiation to leach down the Horn Creek drainage, contaminating its water with dangerous amounts of uranium. 

A lesson unlearned

The same story could unfold again on the South Rim, this time six miles southeast of Grand Canyon Village, where the Canyon uranium mine is slated to resume operations after a 20-year hiatus.

Radiological contamination of Grand Canyon’s seeps and springs is on the line, and I think I speak for most hikers, as well as the 40 million people who depend on Colorado River Basin water, when I say that I don’t want to drink radioactive water. 

My parents worry enough about me on Grand Canyon hiking trips—they don’t need to add radiation exposure at the nation’s crown-jewel national park to the list.

Protect our national treasure from toxic uranium contamination. Sign the petition ›

A storied past

Orphan Mine, located two miles northwest of Grand Canyon Village, was originally claimed as a copper mine on private property in 1893. Predating the park, it changed hands several times while struggling to find its identity. Like an angsty teenager, Orphan Mine went from copper mine, to tourist complex, and finally settled on uranium mining in the early 1950s when the nuclear arms race gained momentum and demand for uranium soared.  

But underground, the long narrow breccia pipes of uranium ore extended past the private property boundary into the park, and the mine owners felt entitled to the riches.

They blackmailed Congress, threatening that, if they weren’t allowed to follow the ore, they would build an 18-story hotel cascading down the canyon wall instead. 

Industry won, and Congress granted them permission. When mining finished in 1969, the Orphan Mine had produced 800,000 tons of ore, 60 percent of which came from inside park boundaries. 

Faced with the cost of cleaning up the mine site after closure, the company declared bankruptcy, leaving tax payers, the government, and the park service to foot the bill. Currently, the park service has spent $15 million of taxpayer money on just the first phase of a costly and lengthy clean-up.

Protect the Grand Canyon's creeks from toxic uranium contamination ›

 by Anne Mariah Tapp, Energy Director

“Evidence cited by Plaintiffs suggests only a small likelihood of harm,” Judge David Campbell stated in his May 26 decision denying our request to halt operations at the Canyon Uranium Mine, located only six miles from the Grand Canyon’s south rim. Judge Campbell relied, in part, on a Bureau of Land Management study that found uranium mining in the Grand Canyon region posed “a ‘low potential for major adverse effects’ to groundwater.” Based on this and other factors, Campbell allowed the Canyon Mine to proceed despite an obsolete plan of operations and environmental review that was last performed in 1986. 

How much risk is too much risk?

“Small likelihood” and “low potential” aside, it’s time to consider the worst-case scenario. This is uranium ore we’re talking about. It threatens the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River with radioactive contamination. In recognition of that threat and to protect the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar withdrew over one million acres surrounding Grand Canyon from new uranium mining, banning any new uranium mines in the region until 2032. But with uranium mining set to resume at the Canyon Mine in June, the time has come to ask: how much are we willing to risk? Is allowing a Canadian company to mine uranium for private profit (while paying $0 in royalties to the federal government) worth risking that worst-case scenario of permanently irradiating the Grand Canyon region? Is it worth contaminating the Grand Canyon’s seeps and springs? Is it worth the existential risk of permanently contaminating the homeland of the Havasupai people and their only source of drinking water? 

Reality check

And, making matters worse, history indicates that the risk of radioactive contamination is very real and even likely. The uranium industry has left the Colorado Plateau with a toxic legacy of contamination that we are still struggling to mitigate and contain. Look at the pattern: the mining and milling disasters across the Navajo Nation; the former Atlas Uranium Mill currently being relocated from the banks of the Colorado River in Moab, Utah at the cost of over $1 billion dollars; the former Orphan Mine site located on the south rim of Grand Canyon, which is now a superfund being cleaned up by taxpayer dollars. The evidence is clear: uranium mining poses a high risk and low rewards for the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau. 

A glimmer of hope

In the next few weeks, we will appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to prevent Energy Fuels, Inc from drilling the shaft and beginning to mine uranium at the Canyon Mine. We are also petitioning the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to change the obsolete regulations that allow uranium mines to pause operations—sometimes for years—and resume them at the drop of a hat without new environmental review and with a complete disregard for the scientific discoveries and technological improvements of intervening years. Add your voice to the petition. In close cooperation with our partners – the Havasupai Tribe, the Sierra Club, and the Center for Biological Diversity, and people like you – we are doing everything we can to protect the Grand Canyon and Colorado River from radioactive contamination. 

Sign our petition and learn more about uranium mining threats to Grand Canyon.