Statement: HECHO Urges the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to Support the Grand Canyon Protection Act - S. 387

HECHO is proud to support the Grand Canyon Protection Act. Concerns about uranium mining near the Grand Canyon are rooted in the poor precedent set by the mining industry regarding extraction and reclamation efforts. Past uranium-mining activities have had a serious toll across the Colorado Plateau, especially on Native American lands. Since the 1950s, the plateau has been home to at least 22 uranium mills, encompassing the majority of all uranium mining conducted in the U.S. Estimates suggest that there have been over 1,000 mines and four uranium mills on the Navajo Nation lands alone. 

Today, more than 500 of those mines have been abandoned by the mining companies that operated them and remain in need of cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency has provided more than $1.7 billion in enforcement agreements and settlements to clean up less than half of the remaining sites. In 2008, several U.S. and tribal government agencies identified 29 water sources with uranium levels that exceeded safe drinking water standards in the Navajo Nation.  

Tribes in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon are among the most at risk in the development of new uranium mining efforts. 

Passing the Grand Canyon Protection Act would indefinitely extend the mining ban on the 1,006,545 acres of Federal land around the Grand Canyon that were safeguarded against mining in 2012 by the Department of the Interior. HECHO urges the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to pass the Grand Canyon Protection Act out of committee to indefinitely extend the mining ban.