Celebration of the ruling by environmentalist has been tempered by expectations that the Trump administration will side with mining interests to end the ban

A powerful court ruled on Tuesday that an Obama-era ban on new uranium mines around the Grand Canyon should stay in place, though celebration on the environment side was tempered by expectations the government itself will now side with mining interests to end the ban. A separate, but linked, ruling on an older mine was a defeat for a Native American tribe.



The mining industry and a coalition of Republicans in Arizona and Utah had hoped for court support to tear down an order from the Obama administration in 2012 that protected a million acres of land around the Grand Canyon from mining development for 20 years. But they lost in the ninth circuit court of appeals in San Francisco on Tuesday.



The court ruling effectively confirmed that the ban is lawful and the government has the power to impose it. But the government is now represented by Donald Trump and, in the case of mining, interior secretary Ryan Zinke, who are mining enthusiasts.

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The National Mining Association, which had fought for the ban to be struck down as illegal by the courts, declared itself disappointed with the decision. But it added, in a statement: “It is now time for the Congress and the administration, working with the impacted states, to re-evaluate whether the withdrawal [from uranium mining claims – ie the ban] was justified based on the scientific, technical and socio-economic facts.”

Ryan Zinke was the unlikely defendant in the case, sued by the National Mining Association – because he inherited the agency that made the decision under then-interior secretary Ken Salazar in 2012.

Roger Clark, program director at the Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental advocacy group in Arizona, said it was “fortunate” that the judge ruled there was “sufficient evidence of risks to water, wildlife and people to justify a 20-year ban on new uranium mines”.

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The court upheld what it called the order’s “risk-averse approach” to protecting the Grand Canyon.

When Salazar announced the ban he said it was “the right approach for this priceless American landscape”.

In June, 2017, a coalition of conservative leaders in the region wrote to Zinke urging that the ban be overturned, which the Guardian revealed at the launch of a series about increased environmental threats to America’s public lands.

“If the court had upheld the appeal from the mining interests then the ban would no longer be in effect, so Trump would not have to end it and we would have nothing left to defend,” said Clark.

Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich said the Grand Canyon national park safeguarded a wide area.

“There is protected acreage surrounding the scenic wonder in order to ensure the prized elements of the canyon and the water quality of the Colorado River are not impaired,” he said.

The plaintiffs in the case against the mining ban were the National Mining Association and the Arizona Utah Local Economic Coalition. Defendants were Zinke, other federal agencies, environmental advocacy groups and the Havasupai tribe.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Three generations of Havasupai tribe members demonstrate against uranium extraction outside the Canyon Mine site in 2016. Photograph: Courtesy of the Grand Canyon Trust.

A second decision issued by the ninth circuit on Tuesday, in a related case, was a direct defeat for the Havasupai Native Americans, who have been fighting for many years against a part-finished uranium mine they say is a safety threat and a violation of sacred ancestral land.

The court rejected the tribe’s appeal against Canyon Mine, belonging to the mining company Energy Fuels Resources, which is being sunk on National Forest land five miles south of the rim of the Grand Canyon. The mine avoids the Salazar ban because it’s based on a historic claim and is a revival of a dormant site.

The mine sits above groundwater that ultimately flows into a side canyon just west of Grand Canyon national park and becomes the sole water source for the Havasupai’s traditional homeland deep in the gorge, which is famous for its turquoise waterfalls.

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The Havasupai have as few as 775 members, one of the smallest tribes left in North America. They claim that if radioactivity leaks from the uranium mine into their only water source it will poison their village, posing an existential threat to such a small ethnic community, as well as contaminating the Colorado river into which that flows.

The Grand Canyon Trust, which was also a plaintiff, had argued that the mine was forging ahead based on outdated permit information and old environmental studies and should, at the least, be reevaluated.

“We are disappointed that the judges rules against common sense,” the trust said in a statement, and will continue to battle at Congressional and state level.

Havasupai elder Dianna Sue White Dove Uqualla told the Guardian on Tuesday: “I’m very, very disappointed, but we will have to go on fighting for our survival, as our grandfathers and grandmothers fought and theirs before them.”

Tribal council member Carletta Tilousi spoke from Washington as she was about to attend committee hearings on Capitol Hill on “America’s growing dependence on foreign minerals”, at which she defended the moratorium on uranium mining development around the Grand Canyon.

“Our way of life is threatened. Uranium contamination will not only poison my family, my tribe, and myself, but also millions of people living downstream,” she told the House subcommittee on energy and mineral resources.