The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Past uranium contamination has contributed to underlying health conditions, especially on the Navajo Nation, that make some Arizonans more susceptible to severe illness. Our local businesses have worked hard to adapt, but this month, under the guise of national security, a uranium-mining company with a uranium mine and over a hundred active mining claims near the Grand Canyon asked Congress for a $1.5 billion bailout for the industry. As mom and pop shops struggle to keep their heads above water, the uranium industry wants $150 million in taxpayer dollars annually to pay private mining companies artificially inflated prices for uranium the world doesn’t need.
Especially now, as our tourism and outdoor recreation-based economy is reeling from a pandemic-induced recession amidst a still-unresolved legacy of uranium contamination, government-supported uranium mining would be bad news for the Grand Canyon state.
The last time the federal government boosted uranium mining as an exhibition of patriotism, the end result wasn’t long-lasting economic prosperity. When subsidies stopped, prices nose-dived, mines shut down, and jobs and local economies blew away like the radioactive dust the mines left behind. What remains is well over $1 billion in cleanup and extensive public-health problems— including cancer, groundwater pollution, and hundreds of abandoned mines that still contaminate land, water, and human bodies today.
The thing is, U.S. uranium deposits — including those found around the Grand Canyon — aren’t nearly the high grade found in Canada and Australia, so from a purely economic perspective, the U.S. is not the logical place to mine uranium. But industry leaders see an opportunity in the current administration. Under the mantle of “national security,” mining companies hope Congress and the administration will forget the past and line their pockets by setting off another shortsighted scramble for uranium.
Mining uranium on public lands doesn’t help our national security, though it can harm our local economies. In 2019, 6 million visitors spent $891 million in communities around Grand Canyon National Park. That spending supported 11,800 jobs, with cumulative economic benefits totaling $1.1 billion. When it comes to the Grand Canyon, it’s tourism — not uranium mining — that fuels Arizona’s economy.
We have enough mined uranium to meet defense needs through at least 2060. And while uranium-mine cleanups can last decades or more and contamination can be forever, uranium mines themselves, particularly the breccia-pipe mines around the Grand Canyon, are short-lived operations. Canyon Mine, near the South Rim, will be mined out after just 10 years and employ only 60 workers during peak production. Right now, it employs two.
Arizonans across the political spectrum already know this. A 2018 bipartisan poll shows that across the political spectrum, nearly three-quarters of Arizona voters say that outdoor recreation and public lands are more important to the future of the Arizona economy than mining. Three in five believe the current ban on new mines around the Grand Canyon should remain, and a majority say that more needs to be done to protect the air, land, and water around the Grand Canyon.
And Congress is listening. In late 2019, the Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act, which would make the temporary ban on new uranium mines on 1 million acres of public land around the Grand Canyon permanent, passed the House with bipartisan support and was introduced in the Senate. And in July, the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act passed, carrying the Grand Canyon Mining Ban as an amendment.
It makes sense that mining companies are after their own profits, but when it comes to the Grand Canyon, especially now, as our communities are battling a pandemic and an economic recession, they’re barking up the wrong tree.
