Stuart Chavez News Today

Five weeks before President Joe Biden announced a historic new ban on new uranium mining around the Grand Canyon, Sarana Riggs approached the barbed-wire fence surrounding an inactive mine in an Arizona national forest, a Geiger counter in her hand.  The Geiger counter didn’t detect any dangerous radiation that day…

The Grand Canyon and the plateaus above it have given life to Native peoples since time immemorial.

Over 200 packed the meeting in Flagstaff Tuesday to voice support or opposition to the tribal-led effort which would designate 1.1 million acres around Grand Canyon in new monument.

Leaders came from as far as Yuma and southern Utah to make their voices heard.

Last week, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee took up a bill to ban uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, which an Arizona tribe has been watching the bill closely.The Havasupai live in the western Grand Canyon and have opposed the Pinyon Plain uranium mine on the South Rim for years, without much success.The Grand Canyon Protection Act won’t stop existing

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources heard testimony on the Grand Canyon Protection Act on Tuesday.The panel received written testimony from an Arizona tribe that lives within the Canyon, the Havasupai, which has been fighting against a uranium mine located on its ancestral lands. Conservationists say that the bill, which would ban uranium mining on lands

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality recently granted an aquifer protection permit for a uranium mine located less than 10 miles from a tribal community in the Grand Canyon, but the Havasupai Tribe still has concerns about the quality of its water.The Havasupai Tribal Council sent a letter of opposition to ADEQ Friday.It reiterated its opposition to Pinyon Plain

The growing global debate over an energy source with a deadly past is playing out amidst the sweet sage and pine trees of the forest right by the Grand Canyon. Uranium prices are climbing again and Arizona has cleared the way for a once-stagnant mine to resume operations.

If imports end because of the war, American companies may look to increase domestic mining, which has a toxic history on Indigenous lands.

When President Biden ran for office, he pledged support for tribal communities. Now one Arizona tribe is calling on Biden to fulfill that pledge.The Havasupai Tribe has written a letter to the secretary of Energy asking her to exempt Pinyon Plain Mine, located near the Grand Canyon, from a uranium subsidy program. The tribe, which lives inside the Canyon, fears that the