Trump to reconsider Grand Canyon uranium mining ban

The Trump administration is targeting for review a uranium mining ban that former President Barack Obama instituted in the watershed of the Grand Canyon. The Forest Service, which owns some of the more than 1 million acres of land subject to the uranium ban in Arizona, put the withdrawal on a list of policies released Wednesday that it says inhibit the production and use of domestic energy. The Obama administration instituted the ban in 2012 amid fears by American Indian tribes and environmentalists that uranium mining would pollute the Colorado River and the nearby Grand Canyon. Uranium mining is regulated as hard-rock mining, so the federal government does not get any royalties for it, unlike some other minerals such as coal or oil. The ban has been highly controversial since it was put in place, and Republicans, industry groups and some local leaders say it unnecessarily prevents responsible economic activity. “Uranium mining would have brought in nearly $29 billion to our local economy over a 42-year period,” the board of supervisors of Arizona’s Mohave County wrote in June to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose Bureau of Land Management owns some of the land. “This ban took away much needed growth and jobs from our area.” Obama was pressured to turn the protected land into a national monument, which would have indefinitely blocked mining and other development, but he did not act on the proposal while in office...more