Obama Fulfills Promise to Protect Grand Canyon from Mining

Today the Obama administration will make it official and enact a 20-year ban on new uranium mining claims in northern Arizona. The ban area comprises 1 million acres in and around the Grand Canyon, with many potential mine sites on tributaries of the Colorado River. The ban is an effort to limit damage to water resources; past uranium mines from the 1950s and 1960s are still said to leech into the canyon’s riparian system, according to studies by the USGS and watchdog groups, and neighboring Native American tribes report still suffering from poisoned wells because mine tailings were dumped on reservation lands more than 50 years ago.

The move doesn’t restrict active uranium mines in the area (there are several in operation) or other extant industry like ranching, and there are several more “buts” to go with the act backed by the departments of the Interior, NPS, and USGS. And while the rule was hailed by environmentalists and panned by most of Arizona’s largely Republican congressional delegation, the decision is by no means purely an environmental one — the Grand Canyon is undeniably the chief jobs engine in the region, responsible for $700 million dollars injected into the local economy each year, money that mostly comes from national and international tourists who visit to the tune of four million annual visitors.

Not that this has stopped Arizona’s congressional delegation from arguing that both mining and tourism can thrive together.

Arizona’s Republican caucus have used the jobs argument as part of their logic to propose a law that would bypass the Interior’s action. This is important because the 20-year ban isn’t permanent. It’s not a law, but an act, and it can be overturned by congressional lawmaking.

Such an action might look like the Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act of 2011, H.R. 3155. It was put into committee in October and backed by congressional representative Paul Gosar, whose district includes part of the Grand Canyon, as well as Rep. Jeff Flake, both of whom have argued that mining jobs pay more than tourism jobs. Which may be true on an individual basis, but according to a Northern Arizona University study the Grand Canyon drives more than 12,000 full-time jobs, while a mining industry-backed study submitted to Interior suggests that roughly 75 full-time jobs are created for a mine’s projected seven year life.

And even if the law were overturned and the predicted 725 exploration projects were all turned into active mines, that math still doesn’t add up to 12,000 permanent full-time jobs that don’t threaten the environment.

Another aspect to this story that hasn’t been well-reported but has been unearthed by the Pew Environment Working Group is that since 2005 the number of mining claims in and around the Grand Canyon has increased by 2,000 percent — and a huge number of the claims are controlled by foreign-owned companies, some with national backing, like Russia’s state atomic energy corporation and South Korea’s state-owned utility, a fact that doesn’t make its way into the language of H.R. 3155.

The real elephant in the room is water, however. The Colorado River and other tributaries that flow through the Grand Canyon reach 26 million mouths as drinking water, and millions more around the country eat crops irrigated by it. Imagining that water poisoned is an environmental catastrophe so huge it makes even what happened at Fukushima seem positively minuscule.

This last bit of information simply cannot be overlooked. Even the right-leaning Arizona Republic, whose editorials backed the election of Bush in 2000 and 2004 and John McCain in 2008, as well as lambasting the Obama White House over its immigration policy in 2010, has now scolded Arizona’s congressional Republicans for opposing the act.

Because like we said, this is about more than tourism, mining, even jobs. In the end it’s about H2O, the one thing nobody can live without — left, right, or center.

Environmental coverage made possible in part by support from Patagonia. For information on Patagonia and its environmental efforts, visit www.patagonia.com.