Obama Admin. Halts Uranium Mining In Grand Canyon

[Political Tiger]

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will announce Monday that his department is temporarily barring the filing of new uranium mining claims on about 1 million acres near the Grand Canyon, an Obama administration official said.

The land is being "segregated" for two years so that the department can study whether it should be permanently withdrawn from mining activity, said the official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The announcement comes ahead of Tuesday's congressional hearing on a bill to set aside more than 1 million acres of federal lands north and south of the canyon. The bill's sponsor, Democratic U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and environmental groups had been looking to Salazar for temporary protections at the Grand Canyon while the legislation is pending.

The Interior Department under President George W. Bush was unresponsive to efforts to ban new uranium mining claims. The House Natural Resources Committee invoked a little-used rule to stop any new claims for up to three years, but Interior officials refused to recognize the action and continued to authorize additional mining claims.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/20/grand-canyon-uranium-mini_n_240807.html

[villager]

1. Good! And while it's Grijalva who should be Interior Sect'y, this is a good step from Salazar

more of this, and no need to look for "balance" by opening some other area to uranium mining, to "please everyone." And let's hope they have the intestinal fortitude to make this permanent, instead of temporary.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

8. AND NOW GETOUT OF THE TSONGAS

[Robb]

9. NO, YOU GET OUT OF ME

[Robb]

17. For you young folks

...that's the late Sen. Paul Tsongas. ;)

[Zomby Woof]

18. LOL!

Paul Tsongas was the first thing I thought of when I saw that post! :rofl:

[villager]

11. exactly

n/t

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Good!

Now, this is the sort of action I look to Obama to do. This is the sort of thing I expected from him.

K&R

[liberal N proud]

3. GOOD!

[LiberalAndProud]

4. Excellent! and Good!

[ensho]

5. good

nt

[City Lights]

6. Good news.

Recommended.

[Kdillard]

7. Good let's hope it becomes permanent..

[scheming daemons]

10. But..but.. but.... they're allowing 360 acres out of 21 million to be used by loggers!

This is just a cynical ploy to get the tree-huggers off their backs.

:sarcasm:

[villager]

12. and, numbskull, building roads into "roadless" areas

n/t

[scheming daemons]

13. Yeah... imagine that. Roads where there used to be none.....

...kinda like the Interstate Highway System...


...or...


...every freaking road in the country (which is at a spot that was at one time roadless).



Are you seriously going to argue that there should never be any new roads built anywhere ever?



:crazy:

[villager]

14. numbskullery, redux: it was *designated* "roadless" as wilderness protection

Not that any of that matters to someone willfully and deliberately snarking and misunderstanding the situation...

[Bodhi BloodWave]

15. unless my reading was wrong

wasn't about 1 mile of the road already under construction, and most of the remaining road already existed but had not been used since the designation(so its mostly fixing/upgrading the old road section)

[Robb]

16. Not quite

About a mile has already been constructed, since the parcel was first offered decades ago. There are several miles of old road they will rehab, but there's still six miles of new road to be created here.

It is still problematic that there were many miles of existing road in the area from as far back as the 50s, in that when it was first suggested for "roadless" protection, opponents pointed at the roads already there and began mocking the effort. :(

[Bodhi BloodWave]

19. thanks for the clearification n/t

[RememberWellstone]

20. Good

K&R for the good work.

[Cha]

21. Brilliant!

Yay!:bounce: