It is becoming about as predictable as sunrise, death and taxes to have a proposed environmental regulation met with arguments about how the rule will wreak havoc on real or potential jobs, solidifying the dire economic conditions that a particular community or the country as a whole faces. It is no surprise, then, that the moratorium on hardrock mining on 1 million acres of land surrounding the Grand Canyon drew cries of economic foul play. Those arguments have some merit in some instances, but do not hold water in this case.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the 20-year ban on uranium and other mining on Monday, citing a list of benefits with which few could argue. Perhaps primary among them is protecting the watershed that provides drinking and irrigation water for 25 million people.
With water in the West growing increasingly scarce as well as increasingly burdened by pollutants from a range of activities putting the brakes on new potential pollution sources is not only environmentally wise, it is essential to ensuring current and future residents have adequate, clean and healthy supplies of such a vital resource. That argument alone is sufficient to justify the mining moratorium, given the potential implications that industry can have on ground and surface water.
The Grand Canyons role as a global icon of stunning natural beauty is also reason enough to think carefully about allowing the features surroundings to become an industrial mining zone. And that is what the Interior Department did: The ban came after a two-year study found that a buffer zone around it is crucial to protecting the canyon and the significant resources it contains.
Because the Grand Canyon draws more than 4 million visitors who contribute $3.5 billion to the U.S. economy each year, safeguarding the recreational and tourism opportunities the region offers is of real economic interest. These are not the hypothetical dollars for which the mining industry and opponents of the moratorium argue for carte blanche development of any and all natural resources, regardless of the impacts that activity will have. Mining could put at risk the real, quantifiable dollars and real, existing jobs in tourism and tourism-related businesses all across the Southwest. From motels and restaurants to local shops and business based on tourist attractions, all benefit from the traffic generated, at least in part, by the Grand Canyon.
If ever there was a place to be circumspect about initiating mining particularly that of uranium, which carries a range of significant implications all its own it is at the Grand Canyon. Using the anti-government sentiment that many Americans have expressed in recent years as a lever to play off economic uncertainty is becoming rote in virtually all discussions that require a trade off between environmental concerns and any industrys plans that might be limited in some way because of those concerns. In many cases, there is room for compromise; in some there is absolute clarity. The Grand Canyon is among the latter.
Salazar made the right move in withdrawing 1 million acres surrounding the Grand Canyon from hardrock mining claims for the next 20 years, and he did so with the appropriate level of study and consideration. Opponents of the ban do not have to like the arguments that support it, but in their opposition, it would be refreshing to hear more than the hollow beat of the too-familiar refrain.
