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Echoing pleas from the Havasupai Tribe, Navajo Nation, and other Tribes, scientists and Indigenous, faith, recreation, and conservation organizations called on Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs to close the Pinyon Plain uranium mine, which is located in the country’s newest national monument near Grand Canyon.
Closing the mine will safeguard Tribal cultural heritage and prevent permanent damage to Grand Canyon’s aquifers and springs.
The groups called on Gov. Hobbs to use her authority to rescind permits issued by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and instead issue new permits for closing and cleaning up the mine, also known as Canyon mine.
“This dangerous uranium mine should never have been approved, and we need Gov. Hobbs to fix this terrible mistake,” said Taylor McKinnon, Southwest Director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “The mining industry and regulators can’t ensure that uranium mining won’t permanently damage Grand Canyon’s aquifers and springs. The governor needs to intervene before more irretrievable damage is done.”
“The Pinyon Plain uranium mine threatens the waters that feed Grand Canyon, one of the seven natural wonders of the world,” said Sandy Bahr, director for Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon (Arizona) Chapter. “Once the mine contaminates the groundwater, there is no way to clean it up, so the best way to protect Grand Canyon and the people who depend on its waters is to move forward with closure of this mine, a mine that should have never been permitted.”
The mine sits beneath Red Butte, or Wii’i Gdwiisa in Havasupai, a sacred site for the Havasupai and other Tribes who have opposed mining in the area for generations. Although President Biden’s National monument designation permanently bans new mining claims and development inside the monument, it exempts preexisting claims with valid existing rights like the Pinyon Plain uranium mine.
Uranium mining threatens to further deplete and pollute aquifers that communities depend on and that feed Grand Canyon’s biologically critical springs and creeks. The Pinyon Plain mine also operates under an outdated Forest Service record of decision from 1986 that the agency has refused to update. As early as 1986, some state officials warned that mining could pierce and drain shallow aquifers into the mine and contaminate the regional groundwater that feeds seeps and springs in Grand Canyon.
“ADEQ issued permits to Pinyon Plain mine relying on analyses that employed faulty scientific representations already refuted when the mine pierced a shallow aquifer,” said Kelly Burke, executive director of Wild Arizona. “Gov. Hobbs has the purpose and the authority to act now before extraction of ore unleashes a forever expanding environmental, economic, and health disaster for the people, wildlife, and waters of the Grand Canyon.” Uranium mining has a long history of contaminating land and water, and sickening people in the region, including on the nearby Navajo Nation, where hundreds of abandoned uranium mines still await cleanup.