Arizona's Grand Canyon Next For Mining!

Arizona's Grand Canyon needs your help!
Foreign mining companies are looking to take advantage of a uranium-rich piece of land just outside of the majestic national park. Increasing metal prices worldwide have prompted a rush to claim mining sites and begin extracting immediately.
If these companies move forward with their mining plans, countless plant and animal species will be in grave danger — not to mention the indigenous Native American tribes whose reservations are located near the area.
Uranium mining inevitably contaminates air and precious groundwater. The Colorado River, which runs through the Grand Canyon, supplies drinking water for people living as far away as Los Angeles.

To sign the care2 peition go here.

To sign the GreaterGood Petition go here. 

Contact Ken Salazar and ask him to keep the Grand Canyon Protected, you can contact him here.

Below is an article that goes into more detail about the issues of the Grand Canyon.
Link to article here. 

Radioactive residues have been accumulating in and around Grand Canyon for more than five decades.

Permanently polluted land and water are a direct result of federal programs that encouraged uranium prospecting on public lands beginning in the 1950s. That mining and milling boom in the Four Corners area lasted for about three decades before going bust. When the bottom dropped out of the uranium market, the industry went belly-up, leaving behind thousands of poisonous surface sites and deadly groundwater plumes.

Impacts of nearby uranium exploration

In 1979, an earthen dam breached, releasing 1,100 tons of radioactive mill wastes and 90 million gallons of contaminated water into a tributary of the Little Colorado River. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledges that many additional toxic tailings have been washed into our region’s waterways. Collectively, these events correlate with documented risks and harm to people’s health.
The first wave of uranium development resulted in dozens of claims and mines to be located in and around the Grand Canyon. In 1984, a flash flood washed tons of high-grade uranium ore from Hack Canyon Mine into Kanab Creek, which drains into Grand Canyon. Located within the Park’s south rim, the Orphan Mine continues to contaminate creeks, prompting the National Park Service to warn backpackers along the Tonto Trail not to use water from two drainages.

Current status

Beginning in 2006, the price for uranium began to rise. Thousands of new claims have been filed within watersheds that drain directly into Grand Canyon National Park and the Colorado River.  A Canadian-owned company reopened the White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah, and began processing uranium for powering nuclear reactors in South Korea and France. Without requiring any revisions to outdated environmental assessments, the Bureau of Land Management automatically allowed the same company to begin opening mines that were abandoned by its previous owners in the 1980s.

Coleen Kaska with “No Mines” sticker

Havasupai and other native nations, municipal water interests, the National Park Service (NPS), wildlife agencies and advocates, county supervisors and city councils, Navajo and Hopi governments, and national conservation organizations are also working with us to support a 20-year moratorium on mining as well as to enact a more permanent prohibition under the Grand Canyon Watersheds Protection Act.
Today, the NPS advises against “drinking and bathing” in the Little Colorado River, Kanab Creek, and other Grand Canyon waters where “excessive radionuclides” have been found. Although it is difficult to attribute this contamination to any specific activity, there can be little doubt that the cumulative effects of mining, milling, and transporting radioactive materials are causing long-term, adverse effects on people, water and other resource values in the Grand Canyon region.