Advocates demand halt to #uranium #mine near the #GrandCanyon

#EnergyFuels says #nuclear power is necessary to fight #ClimateChange, but #Indigenous tribes fear losing their homes

By Matthew Rozsa
January 31, 2024

"The Grand Canyon truly lives up to its name, being the largest canyon on Earth and one of the most popular national parks in America. But due to #UraniumMining in the area, some advocates are warning it could become the site of a future #EnvironmentalDisaster, which threatens to make one Indigenous village 'extinct.'

"More than 80 groups signed onto a statement on Monday — representing Indigenous communities, scientists and environmental nonprofits such as the #SierraClub and the #CenterForBiologicalDiversity — directed at President #JoeBiden and #Arizona Gov. #KatieHobbs, demanding they close the #PinyonPlain uranium mine, which is located near the Grand Canyon.

"'We have a choice in front of us. Allowing the Pinyon Plain mine to proceed is subjecting this landscape and its interconnected waters to a legacy of devastation and disregarding the rights of the #IndigenousPeoples on the land,' Sanober Mirza, Arizona program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said in the statement. 'Or we can choose a different path — one that holds a promise of protecting the Grand Canyon’s cultural sanctity, its people and natural resources.'

"To understand why the mine's opponents feel so strongly, one can turn to #AmberReimondo, who work as energy director at a conservationist non-profit called the #GrandCanyonTrust. Reimondo explained to Salon by email that, on the one hand, #Biden permanently banned mining operations on nearly 1 million acres of federal managed lands by creating the #BaajNwaavjo I'tah Kukveni - Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in August 2023. Yet the Pinyon Plain mine was #exempt from this prohibition, and Reimondo argues that the impact on the region has been 'several fold.'

"'What they've created here is a long-term, slow motion #EnvironmentalDisaster."

"'The Grand Canyon region as a whole and especially the location of the mine, is deeply significant to Indigenous cultures and is a place where tribal members have conducted #ceremonies, collected medicine, hunted, and more, for centuries,' Reimondo said. 'The mine also overlies critical and complex [and] not well understood groundwater systems. One #aquifer in particular — the #RedWallMuavAquifer — is the sole source of water for the remote #HavasupaiVillage of #Supai inside the Grand Canyon. The mine poses a #contamination threat to these #groundwater resources not just today, but importantly, after the mine's mere 28-month operational lifespan has concluded and the mining operator 'cleans up' and moves on.'

"Supai is so remote, it's only accessible only by helicopter or an 8-mile mule ride or hike, Reimondo explained, noting that if the newly-oxygenated groundwater comes into contact with nearby rocks, minerals like #arsenic and #uranium will be dissolved by the groundwater and enter aquifers used by the local community and essential to local ecology, including #HavasuFalls. Taylor McKinnon, Southwest Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, expressed similar concerns.

"'Ultimately, this mine is going to require political leadership,' McKinnon told Salon in an interview, referring to both the Biden and #Hobbs administrations. 'Those administration's agencies have the authority to fix this problem if they so choose, and that's what they should do.'

"We have detailed strenuously for years that neither regulators nor industry can ensure against the permanent and irretrievable damage to Grand Canyon's aquifers and springs," McKinnon added. "This mine was approved originally in 1986, under a record of decision from the US Forest Service under a presumption that it was highly unlikely that the mine would encounter groundwater, and further unlikely that if it did, it had the potential to contaminate deeper aquifers in the springs that they feed. Subsequent state permitting from the #ArizonaDepartment OfEnvironmentalQuality has basically parroted those same assumptions.'

"Yet McKinnon alleges that in 2016 the mine punctured a perched aquifer, causing roughly 10 million gallons of water per year to drain into the mine workings. From there he asserts that a surface pond formed with water that has concentrations of uranium and arsenic far in excess of the Environmental Protection Agency (#EPA)'s water quality standards. Not only does this threaten the local endangered and endemic species, but it also impacts the nearby Havasupai tribe.

"Havasupai means 'people of the blue-green water,' McKinnon said. "It's their longstanding cultural identity, and it is the water they drink, they farm with and that provides for all of their tourism economy because it is this just a beautiful series of massive verdant waterfalls that flow through the village and down into a series of waterfalls and pools where people camp and they derive tourism dollars.'

"In a 2022 letter of opposition, the Havasupai Tribal Council, laid out what is at stake in the uranium mining controversy.

"'Our identity as a people is intrinsically intertwined with the health of #HavasuCreek and the environment to which it gives life,' the tribe’s letter explained. 'We use this water for drinking, #gardening and irrigating, municipal uses, and #cultural and #religious uses. If the water source becomes contaminated like we have seen in other areas of Arizona due to uranium mining, we will no longer be able to live in our homes and Supai Village will become extinct.'

"These fears are based on precedent. The nearby #NavajoNation is scattered with old uranium mines — over 500, in fact — awaiting cleanup, exposing locals to risk of '#LungCancer from inhalation of #radioactive particles, as well as #BoneCancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to #radionuclides in drinking water,' according to the EPA. Likewise, members of the #UteMountain #Ute tribe in #WhiteMesa, Utah have protested against uranium mines they say have contaminated local groundwater, air and even wildlife."

https://www.salon.com/2024/01/31/advocates-demand-halt-to-uranium-mine-near-the-grand-canyon/

Sacred #Apache land 'on death row' in standoff with foreign #mining titans

Tribal members in #Arizona are fighting to protect a piece of land they consider their "#MountSinai."

March 3, 2021
By Christine Romo, Cynthia McFadden, Kit Ramgopal and Rich Schapiro

SUPERIOR, Ariz. – "The rugged patch of land known as #OakFlat sits in the #TontoNationalForest. To the #SanCarlosApache Tribe, the 740-acre swath of oak groves and sheer cliffs is sacred ground, a place where they have gone for centuries to hold religious #ceremonies and communicate with the Creator.

"'No different than Mount Sinai,' said Wendsler Nosie Sr., former chairman of the San Carlos Apache.

"But Oak Flat is on a path to destruction.

"The land is scheduled to be transferred to #ResolutionCopper, a company controlled by two foreign mining giants, and turned into one of the largest copper mines in the country. The transfer was set in motion by an eleventh-hour provision slipped into a 2014 defense bill by Arizona's two Republican senators at the time.

"The poverty-stricken San Carlos Apache Tribe is fighting back in court, alleging the land belongs to the tribe and holds special religious significance. But even they worry the path to victory is slim. Resolution Copper has poured $2 billion into the project and has had the U.S. government on its side.

"The dispute has turned into a David-vs.-Goliath-style standoff, drawing in environmental groups and reviving centuries-old questions over land rights involving American Indians.

"'We're still trying to defend who we are,' said Nosie, who has been camped out at Oak Flat for more than a year as part of his mission to stop the mine.

"He sees the conflict as the latest skirmish in his tribe's long fight to maintain its ancient way of life.

"The San Carlos Apache reservation, about 130 miles east of Phoenix, is among the poorest in the country. Four of every 5 families with children live below the federal poverty line, and the unemployment rate is 30 percent, according to a University of Arizona study.

"The reservation is on the outskirts of Tonto National Forest, which is named for the Tonto band of Apaches who lived in the area until the U.S. Army cavalry forcibly removed them in the 1870s.

"Many Apaches became prisoners of war. An untold number refused to surrender and instead jumped to their deaths at a ridge now known as Apache Leap.

"The Oak Flat area has been considered a holy place for thousands of years, the home of spiritual beings known as Ga'an. Apaches go there to pray, to seek personal cleansing and to hold ceremonies that connect them to their ancestors. It is also a popular campground and hiking destination.

"But Oak Flat has long been prized by mining companies. Beneath its surface lies a fortune — one of the largest #copper deposits in the world.

"Oak Flat has been protected under federal law since 1955, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower decreed the area off-limits to mining. President Richard Nixon's Interior Department renewed the ban in 1971, but it added a loophole that allowed for the area to be mined if it was traded to private interests.

"A bill proposing to trade away the land had repeatedly failed to pass both houses of Congress since it was first introduced in 2005.

"But in December 2014, Sens. #JohnMcCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona slipped a last-minute rider into a must-pass defense spending bill. The move amounted to a bonanza for Resolution Copper, which is jointly owned by two mining titans — the #RioTinto Group of the U.K. and #BHPBillitonLtd. of #Australia.

"The bill transferred 2,400 acres of national forestland, including Oak Flat, to Resolution in exchange for 5,300 acres of private land owned by the mining company.

"Flake declined an interview request. McCain, who died in 2018, touted the project in a 2014 op-ed in The Arizona Republic, saying that the mine would generate jobs and boost the local economy and that the land would remain open to tribal members and others until the company breaks ground.

"The legislation stunned and saddened #NaelynPike, a San Carlos Apache tribal member who first testified before Congress in opposition to the arrangement when she was 13.

"'Our cultural identity is being stripped away from us,' said Pike, 21, who is Nosie's granddaughter.

"'No tree can live without its roots,' she said. 'And we're that tree.'"

Read more:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sacred-apache-land-death-row-standoff-foreign-mining-titans-n1259331