Uranium

 by Sarana Riggs, Grand Canyon Manager

“Coming from a humble place — Cameron, Arizona — swimming in the open-pit mines across the street and then coming here as the first Native American senator in the state legislature and having met so many folks over the years, you get an eagle-eye view of what we’re talking about.”

–Jamescita Peshlakai, Arizona State Senator, District 7

On May 30, 2018, Arizona Congressman Tom O’Halleran held a community forum on the topic of uranium in Cameron, Arizona. A panel of speakers that included local community residents, Navajo Nation agencies, and elected officials from the tribe, state, and U.S. Congress came together to discuss the problems associated with uranium ore. 

Will it get into our bodies?

Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye addressed concerns associated with cultural preservation and with our livelihood as ranchers, saying:  “Water, for example, if you have sheep that drink contaminated water, if you eat mutton, does it get into your system? What about the grass that our cattle graze on, and if it’s contaminated because of the wind and those radioactive waste[s] being carried in the air landing on the vegetation, our cattle eat them, we butcher them, we have steak, is some of that getting into our system, are we contaminating ourselves? There’re a lot of questions and studies that need to be done. We’re asking the CDC [Centers for Disease Controland prevention] to go and start studying the animals, water, plants, to see if radioactive waste or radioactive material can be transferred from plant life into animals as we eat them, consume them, will that get into the meat, and when we consume it, will it get into our bodies?”

As someone from the local area and part of the Western region of the Navajo Nation, I had my speculations as to where this conversation was headed. Too many times we as Diné have participated in meetings related to uranium, thinking there was a solution and finally a resolve to clean up our land, water, and address our many health concerns. At similar meetings I have heard people talk of loved ones who were miners, materials that were salvaged from mines and mills which were reused to build homes. People were unknowingly living with a dangerous substance. And as Senator Peshalakai mentioned, they were living, playing, and utilizing the land near these abandoned mines through grazing or recreation in the tailing ponds. In my case, it’s the story of my grandfather working at the mill near Tuba City and my family living there in housing provided by the milling company. I feel the frustration and impact uranium has caused to our nation, where we feel that nothing has been done to clean up these mines or take away the pain, hardship, and hopelessness associated with the long-term exposure to this threat. 

Could uranium change our DNA?

Many of these problems have to do with health impacts, not just from the age of mining, but through the generations. With science and research, we understand that uranium can change our DNA structure, causing different forms of cancer. A representative from Tuba City Healthcare Corporation said at the meeting, “We do not have cancer treatments for our patients on Navajo, so we have to send our patients to facilities in Flagstaff, Phoenix, even as far as Tuscon, if it’s a very specialized cancer, and we don’t have the means right now in Tuba [City] to take care of it.”

Cataloging sites of radioactive decay

One aspect of the meeting that piqued my interest was the fact that Navajo Nation EPA and the U.S. EPA are still cataloging sites of radioactive decay and mapping hotspots on the Navajo Nation. David Yogi from U.S. EPA Region 9, based in San Francisco said, “EPA is going to be flying a highly specialized plane that’s going to allow us to scan areas for radioactive material — this flies at a 500-foot elevation — and really give a full sense of the contamination. As part of that we’re going east to west in June.”

Many of the panelists who spoke at the meeting have similar stories. We share a history of our problems and concerns associated with everything from past uranium mining, which was never cleaned up, to the fallout of nuclear tests in Nevada. We are now asking Congressman O’Halleran, the agencies, and our leaders who are supposed to protect us from environmental injustices: “What is the next plan of action?”

Over 500 abandoned uranium mines

Was this just another meeting where we all expressed our deep and personal background with uranium, a substance interwoven into each of our lives through the lives of our loved ones? After the forum, Congressman O’Halleran sponsored an amendment to the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act in the house that allocates an additional one million dollars to expedite the cleanup of abandoned uranium mines. That amendment unanimously passed, but we need more. 

How do we address the transport of highly radioactive materials — which we have no jurisdiction over, because they are transported on federal highways — through our lands?

How do we clean up the over 500 abandoned uranium mines on our lands, but not also create another environmental injustice for another tribe (for example, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, near whose White Mesa reservation community the White Mesa uranium mill, a possible destination for the mine waste, is located)? How do we know our water is safe to drink? Or that our livestock are safe to consume? With all that we know of uranium contamination and its effects, why are we still allowing a mine to be open near the Grand Canyon? And why is the administration considering lifting a ban on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon watershed? Are we not concerned about the pure water that currently sustains all life around the canyon? 

These are all the questions still left on our minds. We hope and pray that some of these questions will be answered by our elected leaders and that we will learn a lesson to not open any more mines until we have addressed these issues. 

 by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director

If the uranium mining industry needed any more grease for the skids, it just got it. In May, the Department of the Interior finalized its list of 35 critical minerals to include uranium, a move that rejected “a significant number of comments” requesting that uranium be stricken from consideration, in part because it didn’t meet the government’s own definition of a critical mineral as a “non-fuel mineral or mineral material.” 

Next step: streamline permitting

Uranium first appeared on a draft list of critical minerals published in mid-February, a result of an executive order signed by President Trump in the final two weeks of 2017. That executive order aimed first to create a list of critical minerals. This list would be different from the one the U.S. Geological Survey had updated literally the day before, which didn’t include uranium or 12 other minerals now on the list.

Next, the order took aim at developing a strategy that includes “recommendations to streamline permitting and review processes,” “enhance access to,” and “increase discovery, production, and domestic refining of” the minerals on this new critical minerals list. That strategy to enhance access to uranium and other minerals is due from the Department of Commerce in the coming months.

A gift to the uranium industry

The uranium mining industry has advocated hard in this administration for the federal government to boost the value of uranium, justifying its demands with claims of the mineral’s importance to domestic energy independence, economic development, and national security, though none of these claims lines up with reality. 

So, the listing of uranium as a critical mineral was undoubtedly a savored gift to the uranium mining industry. This may foreshadow outcomes in other anticipated decisions by this administration, among them, the uranium industry’s petition for forced purchase of their products. In reference to that petition, an executive at Energy Fuels — owner of several Grand Canyon area uranium mines and claims — is quoted in a presentation to investors saying that it “could change our business overnight.” The other looming decision? Whether or not the administration will heed industry’s incessant calls to rescind the current ban on new mining claims around the Grand Canyon.

Defending the Grand Canyon mining ban

The Grand Canyon Trust and our partners are not standing down. In fact, we’re ramping up our efforts to protect the Grand Canyon region from uranium mining. Part of that effort includes shining a spotlight into the dark corners the mining industry hopes will hide its deceptive and profit-focused intentions at the expense of the public. 

The Grand Canyon and the people, wildlife, land, air, water, and sustainable economies that rely upon it are too important to be written off for the quick profit of a few. You can count on the Grand Canyon Trust to plant itself firmly between industry and the canyon. 

Can you help us keep the spotlights bright with a donation today? Make a gift ›

 by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director

Last week, members of the Congressional Western Caucus, led by Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, sent a letter to President Trump, Interior Secretary Zinke, and Agriculture Secretary Perdue asking the administration to “scrap” mining bans on federal lands across the country, claiming they are “political” and done “to appease extremist environmental groups.” The letter names the Grand Canyon mining ban specifically, which, until 2032, prevents any new, non-exempted uranium mines or claims on about a million acres of public land surrounding the national park. 

To the letter’s outrageous claims that the ban killed jobs, “decimated” economies, impedes national security, or was driven solely by environmental groups who “fabricated” arguments, we say: consider the facts.

The toxic legacy of uranium mining 

Mining boomed on the Navajo Nation during the 1950s and '60s, but what was left behind was not a thriving, uranium-based economy. Instead, what remains is a toxic legacy that is still impacting public health and taxpayer coffers and has yet to be cleaned up. 

Other uranium mines that have operated at or near the Grand Canyon, including Canyon Mine, also have a sorry record. The Orphan Mine on the south rim stopped operating in the 1960s, but is suspected of contaminating Horn Creek and is still undergoing cleanup that has cost taxpayers $15 million and counting. The U.S. Geological Survey in 2009 noted that a 1984 flash flood washed ore from the Hack Canyon mines into Kanab Creek, a major tributary of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.

And while Pinenut uranium mine, on the North Rim, sat idle for two decades, the mine shaft filled with over 2 million gallons of radioactive water. Meanwhile, radioactive dust at the Kanab North uranium mine blew from the mine site into the surrounding ecosystem. Then, in the winter of 2016-2017, the mineshaft at the Canyon Mine flooded as the company was in the process of digging it. The company employed giant sprayers to keep the on-site storage pond from overflowing with water that carried elevated levels of uranium. Water is still flowing into the mine shaft today as the perched aquifer pierced by the shaft continues to drain.

The economic drag of uranium mining

Uranium mining has been pursued on and off since the 1950s, but it has never sustained local economies or provided a tax base for operating schools. That’s because uranium is a boom-and-bust commodity subject to the global market, which has been saturated for most of the past three decades. Outside of a short spike in the mid 2000s, it’s a job market that has struggled in the latest bust since the early '90s, well before the 2012 ban was announced. And even when prices are good, breccia pipe uranium mines don’t operate long — Canyon Mine is anticipated to be mined out in 10 years — so mining jobs will never be anything but temporary. Sadly, the only lasting jobs created by uranium mining might be those in the cleanup business. 

And unlike coal, oil, or gas, uranium mines pay zero dollars in royalties to the public on the uranium they extract. The uranium mining industry is also such a small part of the Arizona economy that not even the Arizona Mining Association seems to think its economic contributions merit mention. Just look at the industry group's own economic impact reports. The “2010 Arizona Mining Association Economic Impact Study,” based on pre-ban statistics, talks entirely of copper mining. More recent reports where uranium mining is discussed show that uranium comprises less than 1 percent of the Arizona mining industry’s impact on the state economy.

Meanwhile, travel and tourism in northern Arizona alone contributes over 18,000 jobs annually, and, in 2016, it generated $160 million in state and local tax revenue. The Grand Canyon is a primary driver of tourism, with over 6 million visitors to the park last year.

A reasonable, broadly supported ban upheld by the courts

When the mining ban was established in 2012, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar based his decision on a multi-year public process that drew around 300,000 public comments and broad, bipartisan support for the ban from diverse stakeholders that included tribal and local governments, sportsmen, local businesses, recreationists, and environmental groups, among others. The ban was also supported by scientists who emphasized the vast geological and biological unknowns about the potential for uranium mining to pollute groundwater and ecosystems in the Grand Canyon. The ban flowed not from a few environmental groups, but from the broadly held, common-sense understanding that the toxic legacy of uranium mining and the sea of scientific unknowns meant that new mining would be irresponsible in a region so critical to Native American communities and the water supplies and economies of the Southwest. And despite lawsuits by the mining industry, two out of two federal court decisions have upheld the ban.

While the ban aimed to prevent new mines and claims, the mining ban has not prevented every mine from going forward. For example, the Canyon Mine on the south rim has been granted permission by the U.S. Forest Service to move ahead despite the ban because the agency believes that claim to have the “valid existing rights” required for a mine to operate under the ban. Yet even though the company finished the mine’s shaft in 2017, it has yet to begin mining. Similarly, the Interior Department estimated that several other mines might qualify to operate despite the ban, should the claim owners pursue them. But they haven’t. It’s not the ban that prevents any mining from happening, it’s the saturated global market and low price of uranium. 

In a statement released with the Western Caucus letter, Congressman Gosar wrote, "Today, we implore this Administration to take a closer look at several improper mineral withdrawals that were planned behind closed doors and executed in unprecedented haste by the last Administration. These massive mineral estate removals proved devastating to local communities, imperiling good-paying jobs and shattering investor and mining company confidence.”

Sorry, congressman, the truth speaks for itself. No one is entitled to his own facts.

 by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director

There’s a high price to pay for uranium mined on the Colorado Plateau and it has nothing to do with the dollar value. Today, a pound of uranium sells for around $21 — at least $30 dollars less than what some mining companies view as the break-even point. Since the first uranium frenzy about 70 years ago, the market has been in the tank for roughly the same number of years that it has boomed.

Historically, the only reliably high price related to uranium is the one paid by the public in the form of tax dollars and public health. 

Cleanup costs

The last uranium boom left the federal government and taxpayers on the hook for much of the necessary cleanup. On the Navajo Nation alone, the price tag for the assessment and cleanup of just a fraction of the hundreds of abandoned mine sites that still dot the landscape has reached nearly a billion dollars and it’s still growing. 

Uranium mill cleanup (not including mines) has been so expensive that, by the year 2000, the Department of Energy estimated it had spent $1.5 billion since 1978. Even then, that number had exceeded what the uranium extracted from the mines was sold for by over 50 percent. A more updated figure is hard to pin down, but we know that one mill site alone — the Atlas Mill near Moab, Utah — is expected to cost around $1 billion by itself by 2032.

Human health

Radioactive material mobilized by mining into the air, water, or soil can find its way into human bodies and, once there, the consequences are grim. Uranium that is ingested via water or food sources finds its way to bone, liver, kidneys, and soft tissues. Radioactive molecules that are inhaled lodge themselves in the lungs. Once in the body, uranium emits alpha particles, which are readily absorbed and can damage DNA and cause cancer. Scientists have established a well-known connection between uranium exposure and cancer of the lungs, stomach, bones, and blood, kidney failure, and fibrosis. 

Native American communities have been disproportionately made to pay the health price of uranium extraction. During the first uranium boom that ended around 1980, there were over one thousand uranium mines on the Navajo Nation alone, over 500 of which still remain in need of cleanup today. More than 90 percent of all uranium milling in the U.S. has occurred on or just outside the boundaries of Native American reservations. And today, the last remaining conventional uranium mill in the U.S. — the White Mesa Mill — sits just three miles north of the small White Mesa community of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in southeastern Utah. 

As researcher Anite Moore-Nall has written, “As a result of the mining activity much of the population of the Navajo Nation residing near the areas of mining or milling has had their health compromised.” One uranium mine in Shiprock, New Mexico, for example, employed 150 Navajo miners until 1970. By 1980, 133 of those miners had died of lung cancer or some form of fibrosis. And while mine-worker safety standards have since improved, the industry has yet to demonstrate that its operations won’t still cause environmental contamination, further impacting human health. What’s more, the burden of proof regarding the safety of modern mining operations has been placed on taxpayers, who are left to fund hydrogeological research and the installation of critical monitoring wells near mine sites. 

Havasupai children listen to their elders talk about uranium mining during a three-day prayer gathering. JAKE HOYUNGOWA

If the Grand Canyon region is reopened to new mining claims and mines, the long list of tribal communities whose health could be in jeopardy will grow. Among them, the Havasupai, who live beneath the canyon walls, and the Navajo, whose communities are still reeling from the uranium developments of the past.

But if market prices are low, why are we worried?

Low prices unfortunately don’t mean companies lack incentive to pursue mining on our public lands. Especially now, the low market value of uranium hasn’t stopped the mining industry from arguing that they need — even that they deserve — more liberal access to our public lands than they already have. 

The thing is, companies can punch a hole in the ground regardless of the market. They do this to prepare to start hauling ore to a processing mill the moment uranium prices swing in their favor. And that hole in the ground is no small deal. 

As the mine shaft cuts through layers of rock, and sometimes through aquifers, water from the surface or from the ground can come into contact with previously undisturbed uranium. Since uranium is incredibly soluble in water, it will travel wherever that water can take it. The mine shaft effectively becomes a potential conduit for contamination before a single pound of ore has ever left the site. 

This contamination potential is already present at Canyon Mine south of the Grand Canyon. The mine owner and operator, Energy Fuels Resources, has been experiencing water inflow to the mine shaft at least since the winter of 2016-2017. And to date, the necessary steps have not been taken to ensure water isn’t seeping out of the mine shaft. 

For many, common sense dictates that when the cost of something is higher than the benefit it delivers, that something isn’t worth it. But maybe for the executives of private companies who stand to make money from mineral exploitation, the health and financial price of the legacy left behind is easier to ignore since they’re unlikely to be the ones to pay it. As Americans, we are the guarantors of private mining companies’ risk-taking and we have to draw the line. 

Help protect the Grand Canyon for future generations ›

  by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director

Three months ago, we shared the victorious news that the courts had upheld the 20-year ban on new uranium-mining claims on one million acres of public land around the Grand Canyon for the second time since 2014. But last Friday, two mining industry trade groups, the American Exploration and Mining Association (AEMA) and the National Mining Association (NMA), petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the December court decision that upheld the ban.

Friday’s petitions to the Supreme Court argue that the court should strike down the Secretary of Interior’s power under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act to prevent hardrock mining in areas larger than 5,000 acres. This is an argument that the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit and U.S. District Court have already rejected.

What happens now? 

The Supreme Court declines to hear nearly all the petitions it receives, so there’s a good chance the court won’t take this appeal.

If the Supreme Court does take the case, the Grand Canyon Trust will defend the mining ban alongside our allies and the Department of the Interior, the defendant in the case. This should be industry’s last chance to get the ban overturned in the courts.

Industry is trying other avenues

Taking the Interior Department to court over the ban isn’t the mining industry’s only option to reopen the region to their exploits. They also hope to push the Trump administration to lift the ban administratively. Here’s a recap of what industry has tried so far: 

Asking for the ban to be terminated

According to Bureau of Land Management data, there are at least 831 active mining claims around the Grand Canyon. Just four companies, which are subsidiaries of foreign companies based outside of the United States, hold 93 percent of the existing claims in the area of the ban. 

Metamin Enterprises holds 71 percent of the active claims around the Grand Canyon and is a party in the lawsuit that AEMA and NMA are trying to bring before the Supreme Court. And Vane Minerals, a subsidiary of a UK-based corporation that holds roughly 7 percent of the claims around the Grand Canyon, wrote a letter to Interior Secretary Zinke asking him to “terminate” the temporary ban on new uranium claims around the Grand Canyon.  

 Get your copy of the map ›

Artificially increasing demand

The Guardian has reported that “[t]he global uranium market is currently flooded, meaning that mining in the U.S. is not profitable.”

So in an attempt to create a need for their product, Energy Fuels, which holds 12 percent of existing claims in the area of the mining ban, and another uranium company, Ur-Energy, are petitioning the Trump administration for “buy American” requirements under the same section of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 that yielded the recent Department of Commerce recommendations on quotas and tariffs for steel and aluminum.

And just this month, the Department of the Interior included uranium on a draft list of critical minerals, which could pave the way for streamlining an already relatively permissive permitting and review process for uranium mines (especially if this bill ever makes it through Congress). Uranium shouldn’t be on that list because it’s a fuel mineral, and critical minerals aren’t supposed to include “fuel minerals” by definition.

Touting domestic energy development and economic growth

In November, the Forest Service recommended the Grand Canyon uranium ban for review as part of the agency’s response to a 2017 executive order signed by President Trump and aimed at promoting domestic energy independence and economic growth. 

More scrutiny should be given to whether that goal would be promoted by opening up the Grand Canyon to uranium mining, given that nearly all the mining claims around the canyon are currently held by foreign-controlled companies. In any case, we know that uranium mining is not a major economic driver in the region, and it’s hard to imagine the industry ever having the ability to serve that role. For instance, though Energy Fuels has permission to operate Canyon Mine despite the withdrawal, the company has yet to begin hauling ore and has laid off most of its workforce. The company estimates it will temporarily employ just 60 people if and when the mine reaches peak operation, and the uranium reserves at Canyon Mine are estimated to reach depletion after just 10 years of mine operation.

Starving the science budget

Finally, if there’s no research, there can be no evidence, right? That’s the next move in the mining industry’s playbook. When former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar initiated the pause on new uranium claims around the Grand Canyon, it was to allow scientists time to study the risks and impacts that come with mining uranium near this natural wonder. But President Trump’s 2019 budget proposes to eliminate all funding for the U.S. Geological Survey’s studies on the topic, handicapping the ability of researchers to study the issue and better understand how uranium mining could affect groundwater.

Help protect the Grand Canyon for future generations ›

The Grand Canyon is too precious to mine.

The Grand Canyon is a World Heritage Site, it’s sacred to numerous Native American tribes and draws millions of people to northern Arizona each year. Why on Earth should we allow mining companies to profit from putting it at risk? The Grand Canyon is simply too precious to mine.

Keep the ban. Defend the Grand Canyon from new uranium mines ›

 by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director

Update: On May 2, 2018, members of Congress sent a letter urging President Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and others to "scrap" the Grand Canyon mining ban. Read the letter ›

In February, companies hoping to mine uranium near the Grand Canyon and elsewhere across the Colorado Plateau took another step closer to that goal. Uranium was included on a draft list of 35 minerals the Department of Interior now considers to be “critical.” As long as uranium is considered a critical mineral, it will be the policy of the federal government to identify new sources of domestic uranium, increase activity at all levels of the supply chain, “including exploration [and] mining,” and streamline leasing and permitting processes to expedite exploration, production, processing, reprocessing, recycling, and domestic refining of uranium.

The list was prepared in accordance with President Trump’s December 20, 2017 Executive Order 13817 aimed at identifying critical minerals and reducing U.S. imports of those minerals. To be sure, critical mineral lists are nothing new. In fact, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has prepared them for years. It even published an updated list the day before President Trump signed this executive order, but that list didn’t include uranium.

What is a critical mineral?

A critical mineral, as defined in the executive order, is: “(i) a non-fuel mineral or mineral material essential to the economic and national security of the United States, (ii) the supply chain of which is vulnerable to disruption, and (iii) that serves an essential function in the manufacturing of a product, the absence of which would have significant consequences for the U.S. economy or national security.”


This particular list was made essentially to identify the non-fuel minerals or mineral materials that the federal government thinks should be made more accessible for mining on U.S. soil.

Why does this matter?

Ultimately, labeling uranium as a critical mineral provides more leverage for those seeking to overturn the Grand Canyon mining ban. Opponents of the ban have already tried to make the case to the Trump administration that the ban harms domestic energy development and economic growth. Now they’ll add that the ban burdens development of a critical mineral.

Already, the inclusion of uranium on Interior’s list of critical minerals is being used as a tool to promote enhancing access and streamlining permitting for uranium operations. The public has until March 18 to submit comments on the makeup of the Interior Department’s critical minerals list. Now is the time to voice your concerns about listing uranium as a “critical mineral” and what that will mean for uranium mining on public lands that surround the Grand Canyon.

Urge the Department of the Interior to remove uranium from the draft critical minerals list › 

I want to send comments. What are some key points to include?

1. Uranium is not a “non-fuel mineral or mineral material.”

Given the administration’s definition of a critical mineral as a “non-fuel mineral or mineral material,” it’s odd that uranium is on the list. That’s because, historically, uranium has been treated as a “fuel mineral.” The background document prepared by USGS to support the draft list even describes the value of uranium as lying in energy production. It’s not even on the U.S. Geological Survey’s current list of non-fuel minerals. “Mineral materials,” by definition, are things like sand, gravel, and rock and also don’t include uranium.

2. Access to uranium resources hardly needs “streamlining.”

The administration intends “to streamline permitting and review processes related to developing leases; enhancing access to critical mineral resources; and increasing discovery, production, and domestic refining of critical minerals.”

But the Mining Law of 1872, which governs uranium extraction, is perhaps one of the least restrictive regulations on the books. It was implemented 146 years ago, under President Ulysses S. Grant, in order to promote development of the American West. The law allows private mining companies, with questionable environmental oversight, to take billions of dollars of locatable minerals (including uranium) from public lands without paying a single cent in royalties to taxpayers. Federal agencies see the mining law as so permissive that, without the mining ban around the Grand Canyon (which withdrew the area from claims location under the Mining Law of 1872), regulators are likely — despite the known risks — to approve mining activities in the region.

And if we want to know what happens if the environmental regulations available today are stripped away, we need look no further than the Navajo Nation, where over 500 toxic, abandoned uranium mines still remain, impacting families and the environment. These mines are remnants of the 1950s Atomic Era — the last time the U.S. government propped up uranium mining, and for which the U.S. government is so far on the hook for nearly a billion dollars in liability.

Had enough? Urge the Department of the Interior to take uranium off the draft critical minerals list › 

Prefer snail mail? Send your comments to: Critical Minerals List, MS-1530, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20240 before the March 18 deadline.

Help protect the Grand Canyon for future generations ›

 by Tim Peterson, Utah Wildlands Director

When Donald Trump attempted to drastically shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments late last year, he didn’t just gut the boundaries of the popular monuments. He set a date after which lands cut from the monuments (absent other restrictions) are open to new mining and fossil fuel drilling.

That date was February 2, 2018, and Bears Ears and Grand Staircase are now open for business — the extraction business. There are some restrictions in limited areas that prohibit mining and drilling, like wilderness study areas and the Valley of the Gods Area of Critical Environmental Concern in the areas cut from the original Bears Ears National Monument, but this doesn’t mean the entirety of the monuments are safe from destructive energy extraction.

Now, anyone seeking to file a uranium claim, to lease coal or geothermal energy, or to nominate parcels to be leased for oil and gas drilling is welcome to do so, but it won’t be a land rush. February 2 came and went without a fleet of bulldozers tearing in to either monument. The reason? Global commodities markets. Coal is plentiful under the lands cut from Grand Staircase, as is uranium under the original Bears Ears, and oil and gas could be present under both monuments, but global prices for these resources are too low to trigger a boom now. But what about the future?

Uranium

Though low prices and large stockpiles of uranium on hand means imminent mining of the lands cut from Bears Ears isn’t likely, future uranium development could become a major concern. Bears Ears is right beside the White Mesa uranium mill, the only operating conventional uranium mill in the United States. If some optimistic market projections are correct and uranium prices rebound as new reactors come online in China, Bears Ears could become ground zero for new uranium mining as close proximity to the mill means low transportation costs.

Oil and gas

In October 2017, an oil industry trade publication relished the prospect of new lands being opened for development, mentioning Bears Ears and Grand Staircase under the headline “U.S. Resources Set For Record Breaking Resurgence.” 

“Big openings are also coming in the state of Utah,” the publication predicted, “Where local senator Orrin Hatch said Friday that the federal government will be making more land available — by reducing the size of two national monuments created under the Obama administration.” 

Oil and gas lease parcels must be nominated by the industry, and it will be some months before we know whether the industry is interested in drilling at either monument. Just north of the original Bears Ears boundaries, Kirkwood Oil and Gas Company is drilling a new oil well now and has plans for two more. While acknowledging current low oil prices, a Kirkwood spokesman explained: “Everything is economic. If the price of oil rises a little more, it makes all oil and gas fields more economic.” Thus, if global prices rise, the monuments could see more exploratory drilling in the future thanks to Trump’s action. 

Gold fever and the best of intentions

Some wild ideas circulating out there serve as a reminder not to believe everything you read. Oilpice.com claimed that shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase "should make prime acreage available for gold exploration and mining, which has recently pushed into Utah from prolific plays in next-door Nevada.”

No gold, silver, or any other precious metal has ever been found in marketable quantities at either monument. The geology may be fascinating, but it’s just not right for precious metals. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are also no known mineable concentrations of rare earth metals anywhere on the Colorado Plateau. 

We’ve also heard that some well-meaning Bears Ears supporters are staking new uranium claims in order to prevent mining. Please don’t do this. It’s expensive (it costs $212 to file a single claim), and if you can’t “show a reasonable prospect of making a profit from the sale of minerals from a claim,” you’ll lose the claim and your money. If you stake a claim and report that you don’t intend to actually mine it, you’re also setting yourself up for accusations of fraud. 

Speculating on speculation

For now, the threat is not imminent development, but speculation on future fossil fuel drilling and coal and uranium mining. Speculators often nominate, buy, and bundle oil and gas leases and mining claims and hold them to re-sell when prices rise. This kind of shady hustle was prevented by Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, but now they are officially open for business.  

We need your help to defend Bears Ears and Grand Staircase in court, but also to keep defending the truth in the national monument debate. 

 by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director

For the latest update on the fight to safeguard the Grand Canyon region from new uranium mines, it’s useful to explore an interesting phenomenon at the confluence of economics and politics.

The economics

If you own a mining company, to make a profit by mining a certain commodity, you need the value of that commodity to be higher than your cost of operation, right? Anyone who took economics 101 knows that for any given product to have a high dollar value, there has to be sufficiently high demand for a sufficiently low supply.

The politics

A company already invested in mining a commodity — uranium, for instance — is probably not going to be excited about waiting for an unfavorable market to improve. So to make things move along more quickly, they might try to lobby decision-makers and government leaders for shortcuts that artificially increase the value of their product so that it suddenly becomes profitable to mine. How? Well that’s where things get interesting.

What is going on?

On December 20, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to develop a list of “critical minerals” by mid-February 2018. It directs the Department of Commerce to subsequently develop a strategy that will, among other things, “support private sector mineral exploration of critical minerals” and provide “recommendations to streamline permitting and review processes” for critical mineral development.

Last month, on January 16, uranium operators Energy Fuels and Ur-Energy filed a joint petition with the Department of Commerce claiming that uranium is essential, not just for nuclear energy, but to national security, and that the U.S. government needs to take steps “to foster a healthy domestic uranium mining industry.” If it doesn’t, they claim, “the defense stockpiles currently held by the DOE will be depleted, and it is unlikely that domestic producers will have sufficient capabilities to meet our defense needs in the future.”

Whoa, back up. What are critical minerals?

Critical minerals are defined in President Trump’s December 20 executive order as “a mineral identified by the Secretary of the Interior…to be (i) a non-fuel mineral or mineral material essential to the economic and national security of the United States, (ii) the supply chain of which is vulnerable to disruption, and (iii) that serves an essential function in the manufacturing of a product, the absence of which would have significant consequences for our economy or our national security.”

The United States Geological Survey recently updated its own list of critical minerals, which doesn’t include uranium, but includes vanadium — a mineral that is often co-extracted with uranium from sandstones on the Colorado Plateau and used in the strengthening of steel. For example, the La Sal Complex, an Energy Fuels-owned group of uranium mines near Moab, Utah, also has vanadium deposits. Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill — the only operating conventional uranium mill in the United States — is also licensed to process vanadium.

What does this mean?

The Trump administration may very well name uranium and/or vanadium as a critical mineral for which a strategy will be created to foster and streamline private development. What’s more, other minerals present in the Grand Canyon region could also be listed. That means that even if uranium isn’t included, political pressure would still rise to lift a 2012 ban on new mines around Grand Canyon National Park, which would reopen the area to new uranium claims and extraction anyway.

Despite poor prices, it’s clear that some private uranium companies, like Energy Fuels — owner of the Canyon Mine, near the Grand Canyon’s south rim, the White Mesa Mill in southeastern Utah, and many more claims around the Grand Canyon — are working the system hard to benefit their own pocket books. That means that you and I have a serious job to do if we want to keep private profit from taking precedence over the environment and public health.

Defend the Grand Canyon from new uranium mines. Sign the petition ›

In addition to closely tracking the critical minerals aspect of this issue, the Grand Canyon Trust is also hard at work in the courts. In December, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a challenge brought by the Grand Canyon Trust and our partners to a Forest Service determination that Canyon Mine could operate despite the 2012 mining ban in the area. In late January, we filed a petition for rehearing en banc asking the court as a whole to reconsider its decision. As of this writing, the main shaft at Canyon Mine has been finished, but the company has yet to begin hauling ore, in large part because uranium prices are low.

 by Roger Clark, Grand Canyon Director

One year ago, those of us opposed to Grand Canyon uranium mining hunkered down as the new administration took office. Who knew what events would unfold?

A year later, we have a clearer sense of what’s in store. From new contamination concerns to efforts by the uranium industry to increase private profits at public expense, here’s a look at what to expect in 2018:

New risks to groundwater

Who knew, at the start of 2017, that groundwater would soon flood the freshly drilled shaft of Canyon uranium mine, thus increasing the risk of contaminating the primary source for hundreds of life-giving Grand Canyon seeps and springs?

Neither the state-issued aquifer protection permits nor the federal operating permits, issued in the 1980s, anticipated the need for emergency procedures to dispose of large volumes of contaminated water from the deeply drilled mining shafts or to prevent it from draining into and permanently contaminating lower-lying aquifers.  

Imprudently, the federal land management agencies and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality have failed to adopt commonsense practices in permitting Grand Canyon uranium mines, such as requiring all mines to install monitoring wells to detect when groundwater becomes contaminated. 

Groundwater monitoring is a standard requirement for most types of mining. Uranium mines located within Grand Canyon’s watersheds are an exception. As operations at Canyon Mine move ahead in 2018, so do new risks to groundwater. 

New pressure to mine uranium around the Grand Canyon

After a long legal battle, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled against the National Mining Association in a lawsuit to overturn a 20-year mineral withdrawal that temporarily bans new uranium mining claims on more than a million acres of public land adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park. 

Responding to their December 12, 2017 court loss, the association said, “It is now time for the Congress and the administration, working with the impacted states, to re-evaluate whether the withdrawal was justified based on the scientific, technical and socio-economic facts." 

An example of such "facts" was previously provided by a top executive with Energy Fuels, the Canadian subsidiary that owns Canyon and Pinenut uranium mines.

In a 2016 appearance before Congress, Energy Fuels Executive Vice President of Conventional Operations Harold Roberts testified that uranium mines in northern Arizona “…are generally dry, and the time span from development through full reclamation is less than six to eight years.” 

In fact, Energy Fuels owns three active uranium mines in Grand Canyon watersheds that were first opened in the 1980s. Two out of three of these mines have, at some point, filled with radioactive wastewater. None of the three has been fully reclaimed, making the time span that these privately owned eyesores have occupied our public lands more than 35 years — and counting. 

When introducing the session in which the Energy Fuels’ executive made these false claims, Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar’s presentation slides stated, "FACT: NO Evidence that uranium mining in northern Arizona in the 80’s and 90’s negatively impacted water, air or wildlife in any way.”  

In reality, the U.S. Geological Survey has documented extensive contamination as a result of uranium mining in northern Arizona during this time period. For example, water samples collected in the sump at the bottom of in the Hermit Mine had concentrations ranging “from 3,310 to 36,600 µg/L [micrograms per liter] (the highest reported value of any sample type in this study) in 1989−90.”  The U.S. safe drinking water standard is 30 micrograms per liter.

Tilting the playing field?

One year ago, we also failed to foresee that the uranium industry would feign threats to our national security as rationales for rolling back environmental rules and to make uranium mining once again profitable (and less prone to bankruptcy). 

Uranium Producers of America is clamoring to block rules, introduced by the Obama administration, to stiffen groundwater protections at uranium mines, claiming that “the proposed regulations would have had a devastating impact on our industry.” Its spokesman added: “Countries like Kazakhstan, they’re not under the same environmental standards. We want a level playing field.”

And who knew, when we were surveying this year’s “playing field,” that Energy Fuels would ring in 2018 by petitioning the Trump administration to impose import quotas on foreign-mined uranium and require U.S. utilities to buy uranium mined in America, claiming government subsidies by Russia and other countries “threaten to impair the national security”? 

A big score for the uranium industry in this fantasy game of profit-and-loss could harm the Havasupai Tribe, whose source of drinking water is the Grand Canyon's primary aquifer, located just a few hundred feet below Canyon Mine's shaft, which filled with contaminated water in early 2017.

Looking ahead in 2018

Aided and abetted by alternative facts, petitions to quell “unfair” competition, compliant politicians, and pollution-permitting agencies, industry heavyweights who would profit from public lands are poised for the next uranium boom.

Protecting U.S. uranium mining in the name of national security could become a well-orchestrated excuse to unleash another flood of uranium risks into Grand Canyon’s waters. We must double-down on our determination to protect our nation’s treasure. We must keep a watchful eye downriver on tomorrow.

Defend the Grand Canyon against new uranium mines. Sign the petition › 

 by Lisa Winters, Research and Stewardship Volunteer Coordinator

Each month, the Grand Canyon Trust visits Ms. Wertz’s science class at Sinagua Middle School as part of the “Scientists in the Classroom” program. Our goal is to teach students about environmental issues on the Colorado Plateau, and today’s lesson is on uranium mining’s toxic legacy around the Grand Canyon region. 

After showing them “Too Precious to Mine,” a film about uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, I ask the 6^th grade students about how it makes them feel. Hands fly up.

“sad” 
“anxious” 
“scared”

They are not alone with these feelings.

The conversation around uranium mining has ramped up in recent months, as the Trump administration threatens to remove a temporary ban on new uranium mines on over a million acres of public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon. 

Following the lesson, the students write letters to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke urging him to protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. Here’s what they have to say:

This is important to me because the contaminated water can kill animals and make people sick. Also the Colorado River and Grand Canyon are beautiful. I wouldn’t like to see them get ruined by mining. — Tristan

The ban on uranium is keeping water clean and helping other people in the Grand Canyon. — Jessica

It is important to me that you keep this ban because I live in the Grand Canyon area and I know that the Colorado River is important to many things and with the uranium mines it will ruin them. Please try and compromise with me and save the river. —Megan 

There’s no age limit on who can speak up for our public lands. I think the next generation is in good hands with these young conservationists.

Have you written to Secretary Zinke yet? Sign our petition asking him and the Trump administration to keep the ban ›