Joe Biden designated the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument Tuesday in Arizona, preventing mining on almost one million acres of uranium-rich land.
Although the Department of Interior told stakeholders it had no official proposal as of July 28, 2023 to declare a monument in the area, Biden said that, “from day one, I’ve taken historic steps to conserve our natural treasures for all ages.”
“My first week as president, I signed an executive order establishing our country’s most ambitious conservation goal ever: I made a commitment that we will protect 30 percent of all our nation’s lands and waters, conserve 30 percent of all our nation’s lands and waters, by 2030,” Biden said Tuesday. “And we’re on our way. We’re delivering.”
Tuesday’s announcement marks the administration’s fifth national monument designation, a move which energy stakeholders say thwarts Biden’s focus on climate-friendly energy by preventing domestic uranium production. Energy companies told National Review that Biden’s goals of conservation and clean energy are at odds: Uranium is used for clean nuclear energy, which provides 20 percent of U.S. electricity and 50 percent of carbon-free electricity.
“The uranium deposits of Northern Arizona are geologically unique. They are very high-grade, close to the surface, and require very little land area to mine. As a result, they are among the lowest-cost and lowest-impact sources of uranium in the United States, making them national clean energy assets,” Energy Fuels Resources, the operator of the region’s sole active uranium mine, said in a statement.
Interior secretary Deb Haaland called the monument historic.
“It will help protect lands that many tribes referred to as their eternal home, a place of healing and a source of spiritual sustenance,” she said. “It will help ensure that indigenous peoples can continue to use these areas for religious ceremonies, hunting and gathering of plants, medicines and other materials, including some found nowhere else on earth. It will protect objects of historic and scientific importance for the benefit of tribes, the public and for future generations.”
Biden used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate the land, a law that limits monuments to “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” Challenges against presidential abuse of the act will likely reach the Supreme Court soon, which, unless the next administration nullifies the national monument, could be the only way to reauthorize mining efforts in the area.
“The proposed designation of an additional 1.1 million acres of federal land as a national monument outside the current 1.2 million acres protective boundary of the existing Grand Canyon National Park does not meet these statutory requirements,” Energy Fuels Resources noted. “Congress did not intend for the president to have the unilateral power to create expansive national monuments consisting of hundreds of thousands or millions of acres (as in the present case) of federal land unconnected to any actual landmark, object, or structure, in order to achieve other unstated goals, such as stopping critical mineral resource development.”
Native American tribes have since 1986 tried and failed to shut down the company’s Pinyon Plain Mine. Over one million acres of federal land already protect the Grand Canyon, and although Biden says the new monument will further safeguard the landmark, little evidence supports claims that uranium mining pollutes groundwater or the surrounding environment. Unsafe mining practices were common during the Cold War, before regulatory measures were implemented in the 1960s, but recent studies show that the practice has improved.
Arizona Geological Survey’s 2022 study proved that even a “worst-case” mining scenario — if 30 tons of uranium were dumped into the Colorado River — would not produce a noticeable effect on the environment. The United States Geological Survey has monitored groundwater since 2017, and has yet to detect negative effects of uranium mining. In 2012, Barack Obama issued a 20-year mining withdrawal in the area, to study the environment. The latest report from Obama’s project, issued in 2021, couldn’t detect negative effects on groundwater samples.
Uranium mining has been studied extensively and is overseen by a host of federal and state agencies: The U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the Arizona Department of Water Resources, and more. Energy Fuels Resources said these agencies should “take a great deal of pride in how their expertise and oversight has helped create a framework that should be a model for the rest of the world.”
Biden has in the past expressed strong support for domestic uranium production, as the U.S. is reliant, and spends $1 billion annually, on Russian uranium.
“Cutting off access to the best uranium deposits in the United States through a national monument proclamation is not wise, particularly when those deposits will be mined using modern techniques and protections in a manner that will have no significant impacts to public health, safety or the environment, and threatens national security and the country’s foreign policy positions, as it would promote the United States’ dangerous dependence on Russian uranium and nuclear fuel and potentially help fund Russia’s war efforts,” Energy Fuels Resources said.