Lawmakers push to lift northern Arizona uranium-mining ban

Arizona and Utah lawmakers touted a Senate bill Wednesday that would open additional than 1 million acres in the northern part of Arizona to new uranium mining the Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act would avoid the Department of the Interior from banning new uranium mines on the land, saying mining can bring hundreds of millions of dollars per year into local economies with minimal environmental risk.

The bill is a response to a provisional ban on new mines in the so-called Arizona Strip federal lands next to Grand Canyon National Park a ban that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said he would like to extend for 20 years the department is at present studying the possibility John McCain, R-Ariz., said the ban sets a precedent that the Interior Department can modify land-use agreements without congressional consent he said the Interior Department breached an agreement it complete with Congress through the Arizona Wilderness Act of 1984, which specifies uses of the Arizona Strip.

“I don’t know if any of my colleagues were consult before this decision was made, but I sure as hell wasn’t,” said McCain, the major sponsor of the bill he was joined Wednesday by Republican lawmakers from the two states the Republicans’ measure is the conflicting of a House bill introduced this spring by Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson his bill, the Grand Canyon Watersheds Protection Act, would block additional uranium mining operations in the Arizona Strip.