News from the Grand Canyon Trust

Great News! On January 9, 2012, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar ordered a twenty-year moratorium on thousands of new mining claims that threaten to industrialize watersheds that drain directly into Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. The ban was achieved through an unprecedented and formidable coalition of tribal, business, and civic leaders; hunting, fishing, ranching, and conservation groups; water resource managers, wildlife proponents, city, county state, and federal elected officials; and nearly 300,000 individuals who commented favorably on the proposed moratorium.

The decision culminates a successful, four-year campaign that the Trust initiated in response to a surge in new mining activity as uranium prices began to soar in 2006. Please see our chronicle that summarizes many of the actions, events, and articles that are shaping the future of uranium mining on public land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park.

As Coconino County Supervisor Carl Taylor summarized, “Uranium mining benefits only the corporations that promote it. It does not assure energy independence. It poses a very high probability of negatively impacting safe tourism in the area. It generates practically no revenue benefit to local economies while saddling local governments with uncompensated health and safety services to the mines.” Please see his entire op-ed and Grand Canyon Trust program director Roger Clark’s op-ed, published in the Arizona Republic.

Our success in securing the twenty-year ban on new claims is significant, but we must help defend legal appeals to Secretary Salazar’s decision and prevent it from being reversed by legislation or new administrations. We are appealing the lower-court decision on our claim against the Department of the Interior for allowing the Arizona 1 mine to reopen without updating its twenty-year-old Environmental Assessment. We are anticipating the need to take new actions as owners of existing uranium mines prepare to reopen them and to challenge the validity of mining claims that were made prior to the administrative withdrawal.

The Trust deeply appreciates our dedicated members and donors. The landmark decision on January 9 was made possible by your unwavering support. We also applaud and thank all of our allies, Arizona Congressmen Grijalva and Pastor, as well as the Secretary of the Interior and this administration for their foresight and leadership.

Uranium mine photo by Michael Collier

Colorado River in Grand Canyon

The Trust has begun development of a Socioeconomic Program for all resources on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon. This is being done in partnership with other stakeholders within the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (AMP); it is an effort aimed at developing studies that further our understanding of the socioeconomics of adaptive management decisions.

For years economic values related to hydropower production at Glen Canyon Dam have been developed. However, economic values related to other resources such as recreation, ecosystem health, and cultural sites have received little attention. That is about to change. The Trust has helped form the AMP Socioeconomics Committee, a group enterprise that will provide a programmatic basis for market, non-market, and non-use studies of all resources of concern in Grand Canyon.

The Committee’s initial work has resulted in a large expansion of socioeconomic information needs—things that are important to know that we do not yet know. Areas of importance include ecosystem, recreation, cultural, water, and power resources. We need to better understand these areas and evaluate them using both market and non-market evaluations.

Currently, both market and non-market values of the Colorado River ecosystem impacted by alternative dam operations are not being accounted for in AMP evaluations. This is vitally important information. For example, it is important to know what the economic consequences of the current fluctuating flow regime are—not just for hydropower, but for the river ecosystem, recreation, and cultural sites. It is also important to know what the economic consequences would be if flows were changed at the dam. A flow regime called Seasonally-Adjusted Steady Flows is thought to be beneficial for beaches, cultural sites, and native fish habitat. What might that improvement be worth?

To get at that question, non-use values must be included and studied. Non-use values hold the key to understanding the broad economic importance of places like Grand Canyon. In his report on economic values in national parks, Dr. John Duffield described non-use values as:

“…demonstrating the national significance of park resources. The conservation of river-related resources in park units and their values relates to non-use values, which are not associated with direct on-site resource use. Rather, those values obtain from the knowledge that resources exist in a viable state, or will be preserved in a given state for future generations (i.e., the motives of existence and bequest). For example, many individuals may want future generations to also be able to enjoy the rich heritage of our national parks.”

As an example of the kinds of values at play here, a national study was done in 1995 to estimate non-use values for Grand Canyon National Park under different flows from Glen Canyon Dam. The study concluded that the American public was willing to pay a huge amount—$3.2 billion —to have Seasonally-Adjusted Steady Flows be implemented. This is the kind of economic information that needs to be put on the table when decisions are made about which flows should be released from Glen Canyon Dam.