New Senate Bill Would Protect Grand Canyon from Mining

 by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director

Today, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ, announced legislation in the Senate that would permanently protect the Grand Canyon from new mining claims. The bill, S-3127 “The Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act,” permanently bans new mining claims on about 1 million acres of national forest and other public lands surrounding Grand Canyon National Park.

Read Senator Sinema's announcement of S-3127 ›

Visit the legislation's homepage for information and updates ›

The landmark legislation would make permanent the current temporary ban on new mining claims around the Grand Canyon put in place by then Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in 2012 after a jump in uranium prices in 2006 and 2007 led to thousands of new mining claims springing up on public lands around the Grand Canyon. At present, 831 mining claims remain active in the temporary mining ban footprint, patiently biding their time.

The temporary ban continues to garner massive public support from Grand Canyon region tribes, local governments, and business owners, and remains widely popular with among Arizona voters across party lines.

Permanently protecting the Grand Canyon from uranium mining

The bill is a major step forward toward permanently protecting the Grand Canyon from the threat of uranium mining, which has a long history of contaminating land and water in northern Arizona, including inside Grand Canyon National Park. The Orphan Mine, an abandoned uranium mine inside the park not far from the popular South Rim village, has already cost taxpayers at least $15 million in cleanup expenses and counting.

Sen. Sinema’s legislation comes less than two months after similar legislation passed the House with bipartisan support. And it comes at a crucial time, as the uranium industry has pushed the Trump administration hard, seeking to artificially inflate demand and prices for domestically mined uranium as a way to prop up its bottom line in the face of low uranium prices.

Uranium industry pushing to lift mining bans

In November, the Nuclear Fuel Working Group created by the president to study ways to help prop up U.S. uranium mining sent its recommendations to the White House, but so far those recommendations have not been made public and no official decisions have been announced.

The nuclear power industry opposed “buy American” requirements requested by uranium companies under the mantle of “national security” saying they would drive up prices and force power plants to close. But the industry has voiced support for subsidies to U.S. uranium mining companies or to nuclear power producers who buy uranium mined in the U.S. (even though higher-quality uranium can be bought cheaper from friendly countries like Canada and Australia) and even urged the lifting of mining bans, like the current temporary ban protecting lands around the Grand Canyon. 

Grand Canyon uranium isn’t a national security issue

Sen. Sinema’s legislation, while substantively similar to Congressman Grijalva’s bill in the House, isn’t a perfect mirror image. Like Grijalva’s bill, Sinema’s bill in the Senate would immediately make the temporary mining ban permanent. But Sinema also chose to acknowledge questions about national security by calling for a non-partisan assessment of nationwide uranium stockpiles. By combining the two, the message is clear: national security is and should be a priority, but that question has no relevance for the Grand Canyon — a region where, no matter what the need for uranium may be, the risks to human life and economies posed by mining are too high and, less than 1 percent of known, mineable uranium reserves in the U.S. even exist there.

Additionally, uranium ore located around the Grand Canyon is relatively low-grade and, because it’s found deep underground in formations known as “breccia pipes,” it’s more expensive to mine than deposits found elsewhere that may be mined using other, more cost-effective methods.

National security is about protecting American lives and American values. As Sen. Sinema’s new Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act shows, those values include protecting the Grand Canyon and the fragile public lands and waters around it from being desecrated by uranium-mining contamination, not just now, but permanently and forever.