by Roger Clark, Grand Canyon Director
Public lands, such as national parks and national forests, are increasingly essential to our national economy. More and more visitors each year are spending billions at restaurants, hotels, and gear shops, and funneling money into local services and tour guides.
Our nation’s growing interest in hiking, camping, sightseeing, and other outdoor activities marks a shift in the economics of our public lands. Gone are the days when mining, logging, and other extractive uses reigned supreme. Today, it’s outdoor recreation rather than mining that’s feeding the national economy.
Earlier this year, the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey published a peer-reviewed report on national parks analyzing the economic effects of visitor spending in local communities, states, and the nation. It highlights how states with national parks are enriched by their presence.
13.8 million people visited National Park Service lands in Arizona in 2017, spending an estimated $1.1 billion in local gateway towns during their trips. That $1.1 billion supported a total of 17,200 jobs, $593 million in labor income (includes wages, salaries, and benefits), $1 billion in value added (think profit margin), and $1.7 billion in economic output (total value of goods and services) for the Arizona economy.
In Grand Canyon National Park alone, 6.3 million visitors spent $667 million for motels and other services in nearby communities. That spending supported 9,420 jobs in the local area, with cumulative benefits to the local economy totaling $938 million. The analysis defined the “local area” as counties within a 60-mile radius of the park.
Within that same local area of Grand Canyon National Park are adjacent public lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Mining, logging, and cattle businesses once thrived on these lands, but their economic contributions to local, regional, and national economies now pale in comparison to recreational uses of the national park and surrounding public lands.
Canyon uranium mine, for example, sits in the middle of a ponderosa pine forest, popular for camping and hunting and sacred to the Grand Canyon’s indigenous people. It is the only active uranium mine remaining in the Grand Canyon region and is located within miles of the national park’s busiest entrance. According to the Kaibab National Forest, where the mine is located, there were only two employees on-site in late August 2018. The Forest Service said that, although the mine is on standby until the price of uranium rises enough to make it economical to mine, the mine's owner, Energy Fuels, is required to keep pumping contaminated groundwater from the mine shaft to the evaporative pond on the surface.
In 1990, a crew of a few dozen laborers clear-cut 17 acres of the national forest, built a multi-storied steel headframe, and drilled the mine shaft 50 feet into the ground. This industrial intrusion fragmented prime elk habitat and desecrated the spiritual homeland of the Havasupai people.
When the price of uranium fell in 1991, the mine’s owners halted its development indefinitely, laid off the crew, locked the gate, and cut off the mine's electricity.
During the intervening decades, Canyon Mine generated no revenues and paid a pittance for its occupancy of public land. With an uptick in uranium prices in 2007, miners returned to drill Canyon Mine’s shaft down 1,400 feet, but, before completing its access tunnels to begin removing ore, the price of uranium fell — and the miners moved on.
Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon region has contributed no lasting value to the economies of local communities, and it has left a costly legacy of contaminated land and water in its wake.
Results of a recently released poll show that Arizona voters strongly support protecting the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. The statewide survey found:
Meanwhile, to jack up uranium prices under the alibi of national security, two uranium mining companies are currently petitioning the U.S. Department of Commerce to require U.S. nuclear power plants to purchase at least 25 percent of their fuel supply from domestically mined uranium. This would effectively increase the demand (and the price) for uranium mined from around the Grand Canyon. Apparently, nearly free access to public lands is an insufficient subsidy to make uranium mining profitable, so industry is seeking yet another way to bolster its bottom line.
For Hopi Chairman Timothy Nuvangyaoma, the Grand Canyon region is home to many cultural and religious sites that are still very much alive today.
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Attorney general raises concerns about groundwater contamination at Grand Canyon uranium mine.
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