Dept of Interior begins analysis of new Grand Canyon uranium protections

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 26, 2009 at 1:25 pm
From the Center for Biological Diversity, this press release:

“The Department of the Interior today published a Federal Register notice announcing its preparation of an environmental impact statement evaluating a proposed 20-year “mineral withdrawal” that would prohibit new mining claims and the exploration or mining of existing claims without valid existing rights across nearly 1 million acres of public lands surrounding Grand Canyon National Park.


The purpose of the mineral withdrawal would be to protect Grand Canyon’s watersheds from the adverse effects of new uranium exploration and mining. If approved, the withdrawal would extend and strengthen protections set forth in the two-year land segregation announced by the Interior Department on July 20, 2009.

“Allowing the uranium industry to mine within Grand Canyon’s watersheds would entail contamination risks that aren’t worth taking,” said Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigns director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “A 20-year mineral withdrawal would go a long way toward securing the Grand Canyon’s future.”

Spikes in uranium prices have caused thousands of new uranium claims, dozens of proposed exploration drilling projects, and proposals to reopen old uranium mines adjacent to Grand Canyon. Renewed uranium development threatens to degrade wildlife habitat and industrialize now-wild and iconic landscapes bordering the park; it also threatens to contaminate aquifers that discharge into Grand Canyon National Park and the Colorado River. The Park Service warns against drinking from several creeks in the Canyon exhibiting elevated uranium levels in the wake of past uranium mining.

“Uranium mining has already done irreparable harm to our region’s people, water, and land,” said Grand Canyon Trust spokesman Roger Clark. “We should not repeat the mistakes of the past on our public watersheds surrounding the Grand Canyon.” …”

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