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Potential Impacts of Uranium Development on the Grand Canyon. 

With the jump in prices for Uranium ore from $7 per pound in 2005 to a current price of $90 per pound, a new boom has been triggered in Uranium exploration and development throughout the Colorado Plateau.  This boom is being driven by perceptions of greatly increased demands for Uranium as the dozens of new nuclear power plants that have been scheduled for construction come on line over the next decade.  Thousands of new Uranium mining claims have been filed on the Colorado Plateau over the course of the last five years.  Many if not most of these claims are being filed in environmentally sensitive areas, including areas in close proximity to most of the plateau’s wilderness areas and National Parks.  Once again, the potential for Uranium development and mining poses a threat to the Grand Canyon National Park.

This uranium development is poised to adversely affect the Grand Canyon National Park in two ways:

1.      The development in the Tusayan Ranger District will occur along the borders of the most heavily visited area in the Park.  If only 5% of the current claims are developed into mines, more than 100 mines will be concentrated in the small chunk of National Forest that is the main entrance to the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.  More than 4 million visitors may first experience the Park by driving through what may essentially become an industrial site.

2.      The current Uranium claims are clustered in watersheds and on the aquifers that feed the tributaries, springs and seeps in the National Park.  Contamination in these areas will inevitably wind up in the Park, adversely affecting the unique biodiversity that the tributaries, springs and seeps create in the Grand Canyon.  We have a classic example of this in Horn Creek in the Grand Canyon National Park, which is contaminated by radioactive waste from the Orphan mine.  In addition, the Uranium and heavy metals that wash into the Colorado River in this area will wind up affecting Lake Mead and other reservoirs down river – potentially posing health problems for Colorado River water users in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson, and Southern California.

The Environmental Working Group reports that since 2003, 1,100 new mining claims have been filed within five miles of the boundary of Grand Canyon National Park.   Of these, at least 629 are recorded as Uranium claims.  During the same time period, 2251 claims have been staked within 10 miles of the Grand Canyon.  The Kaibab National Forest reported on January 18 that they had more than 2,000 claims filed in the Tusayan Ranger district alone. Thousands more claims have been staked on BLM lands on the Arizona Strip between the Grand Canyon and the Utah Border – many of them in the Kanab Creek watershed.

On January 8, the Kaibab National Forest approved a proposal by Vane Minerals to conduct an exploration project in the Tusayan Ranger District on 12 sections of land on which they have Uranium claims.  One of these claims that will be drilled is less than two miles from the Tusayan Ruins interpretive center in the Grand Canyon National Park.  Such active exploration and drilling lays the foundation for the further development and active mining. We estimate that this gives us a timeframe of 12 to 18 months before the first mining activity begins and the political efforts then become clouded by potential problems with buyouts, takings, etc. – and achieving any results at all becomes substantially less likely.    

The Grand Canyon Trust believes that ultimately, the only way to prevent this all from happening and to protect the watersheds of the Grand Canyon National Park is to withdraw the Tusayan Ranger District and the BLM Lands in the Kanab Creek Drainage and House Rock Valley from mineral entry.