In 1967, my father took me and eight of my brothers and sisters on a whitewater trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. We camped on its massive sandbars, swam in its silty waters and explored the ancient geology of this iconic American landscape. He wanted us to experience the river and to understand the benefits that stem from our nation’s commitment to protecting its inspiring natural treasures.



I had these ideas in mind when I took my own daughter, Kick, down the Grand Canyon 40 years later, in 2007. We joined my old friend, the great anthropologist Wade Davis, and his daughter Tara. Davis was working on a book, and the four of us were guests of Imax cinematographer Greg MacGillivray, who released his film about our journey, Grand Canyon Adventure: River At Risk, in 2008.

The trip, book and film focused on the myopic water management policies that led to the construction of the two giant dams that bookend the Grand Canyon – Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam – and the environmental devastation they’ve wrought.

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We weren’t aware, at that time, of another insidious threat facing the Canyon’s fragile ecosystems and the people who depend on them: uranium mining. As rock climbing phenom Alex Honnold pointed out here in the Guardian last May in a bold call to protect our public lands, the Grand Canyon is at once grappling with contamination from past mining and threatened by proposed new mining.

Uranium’s boom-and-bust history has left hundreds of abandoned mines leaching toxic contaminants into this desert region’s vital water sources. In 2010, the US Geological Survey found that 15 springs and five wells within the Grand Canyon’s watershed had dangerous levels of uranium “related to mining processes”.

The National Park Service warns hikers passing Horn Creek, within Grand Canyon National Park, not to drink the radioactive water, still poisoned by a mine that closed in 1969. Desert animals find life-sustaining moisture in collecting ponds where uranium concentrations can be 80 times greater than safe drinking water standards.

On nearby Navajo lands, abandoned uranium mines have left a lethal legacy of cancer and disease among Navajo former mine workers and their families. New Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research shows uranium in the bodies of newborn Navajo babies.

Tens of millions of Americans downstream depend on the Colorado River for drinking water and crop irrigation, yet government regulators in the thrall of powerful mining companies allow uranium extraction to continue at sites near the Grand Canyon. The Canyon Mine, six miles from the South Rim, sits above an aquifer that provides the only source of water to the 700-member Havasupai Tribe.

Recent surges in uranium prices prompted a rapid rise in mining claims, from about 1,000 a year in 2005 to more than 8,000 in 2009. Concerned about the impacts of a new uranium boom on this priceless American landscape, President Obama, in 2012, imposed a 20-year moratorium on new mining activity on more than one million acres of public land adjoining Grand Canyon National Park.

The National Mining Association (NMA), whose membership includes many foreign companies, responded by suing to overturn the ban. Four states are supporting NMA’s suit, despite the real national security peril; this misguided litigation could allow potentially hostile foreign nations to mine nuclear material from lands owned by the American public.

It is time to make President Obama’s temporary ban permanent. Last fall, Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva and southwestern tribal leaders collaborated on a bill that would do just that. The Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument Act would establish a new national monument on 1.7m acres of public land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park. On 20 September this year, in a show of growing political will, US Representative Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona joined Grijalva as the bill’s cosponsor.

Monument status would end future uranium mining, protect grazing and recreational access, defend old-growth ponderosa pine forests and critical wildlife corridors, safeguard the human rights and cultural heritage of tribal peoples and augment the staggering economic contributions made by the nearly 6 million visitors who come to marvel at Grand Canyon National Park and its astonishing surroundings every year.

The sensible piece of legislation has virtually no chance of consideration in our polarized Congress, but a poll released on 20 September shows broad support among likely American voters: 82% back monument establishment and 93% feel that the Grand Canyon is a national treasure for all Americans, not just people who live nearby. As labor and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta has pointed out, more than half a million people have submitted comments in support of Grand Canyon protection, and many organizations have endorsed the proposed monument.

President Obama, who has made conservation and climate change mitigation cornerstones of his presidency, should honor that public will by employing the Antiquities Act to establish the monument.

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Threats to the Grand Canyon abound. Those sandbars I camped on with my family in 1967? They are gone. Three of the Grand Canyon’s eight native fish species are extinct. Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams have ended the Colorado River’s natural flush of sediment, which has backfilled and drastically reduced the storage capacity of Lakes Powell and Mead, a situation exacerbated by climate change. At the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers, as well as at the South Rim town of Tusayan, greedy commercial developers continue to push destructive projects.

My father taught my siblings and me that these majestic landscapes, and the shared values of our constitutional democracy, were the common ground where Americans of diverse races, colors, cultures and religions became molded into a single nation. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner pointed out that our values and landscapes were intertwined; American democracy, he observed, emerged from the wilderness experience.

President Obama remains in office until 19 January, 2017. He should be commended for already protecting more than 4m acres of land. For all of our daughters and sons, we must now prevail upon him to protect the Grand Canyon before we lose this historic chance.

Robert F Kennedy, Jr is president of Waterkeeper Alliance and the supervising attorney for Pace University School of Law’s Environmental Litigation Clinic