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Bush admin. to strip land protection power from Congress

In a regulatory jujitsu move, the Bush administration is seeking to abolish a rule used earlier this year by the Democrat-controlled House natural resources committee to withdraw more than a million acres near the Grand Canyon from uranium exploration.

The Interior Department calls the rule — which allows the both the Senate and House committees to issue “emergency declarations” to protect threatened wilderness — redundant.

But the timing is more than a bit suspicious, coming as it does only a few weeks after environmental groups sued the Secretary of the Interior Dick Kempthorne over Interior’s failure to stop granting exploration permits to uranium mining companies near the Canyon.

Taylor McKinnon, public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, who I spoke with last Friday, calls the move a fairly transparent response to a string of victories by environmentalists.

“I don’t hesitate to say that this is a response to the emergency withdrawal at Grand Canyon, and our lawsuit against Secretary Kempthorne challenging his defiance of that,” he tells me.

(For more background about uranium mining near Grand Canyon, check out this post from a few weeks ago)

Interior — and the Bureau of Land Management, which they oversee — argue that places like the Grand Canyon are already protected by federal laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and others. The AP has a response from BLM here.

Not so, says McKinnon.

“If that were true, all the uranium development of the 1980s would have happened without incident,” he says.

He points to a mine accident in 1984 that led to four tons of uranium ore washing through various tributaries and into Grand Canyon and the Colorado River.

It was incidents like that which led to the rules allowing Congress to withdraw lands unilaterally.

“We would be foolish to trust them again,” he says.

An interesting side note to this circus is the fact that the last-minute rule change is in direct contradiction to a memo issued by White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton earlier this year.

The memo says that last-minute regulatory changes are not going to be tolerated.

“Except in extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in this Administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and final regulations should be issued no later than November 1, 2008,” it reads.

What happened?

“They lied,” says McKinnon.

What else is new?

John Collins Rudolf (photo credit: Me)

Uranium exploration near Grand Canyon sparks battle with Bush administration

In the fight to protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining and exploration, one battle is over, but another has just begun.

Last week, three environmental groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust – announced they had reached a settlement with VANE Minerals, a U.K.-based minerals exploration firm that had previously received approval from the Forest Service to drill 39 exploratory holes in search of uranium deposits in the Kaibab National Forest, which borders both the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon.

Essentially, VANE is back at square one. If they still want to drill some holes, they will have to go through much more rigorous environmental review than they had previously faced.

Thanks to an injunction by a federal judge back in April, “the writing was on the wall that they were going to lose the case,” says Taylor McKinnon, public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

With the settlement, VANE essentially folded a losing hand.

It’s a big victory, but the issue is far from settled.

“This has been our flagship battle for a much, much larger war,” McKinnon says.

That’s because if mining companies like VANE are willing to go to the time and expense, they very well may be able to gain approval for exploratory drilling in the future.

While exploratory drilling causes relatively little damage in comparison to, say, a large heap-leach uranium strip mine, environmental groups like the CBD are determined to stop any exploration near the Canyon.

That’s because under the 1872 Mining Law, the bedrock of federal mining legislation, once a recoverable mineral deposit has been found, it gains a whole host of new legal rights and protections and becomes very difficult – and expensive – to stop.

So, until Congress gets around to reforming the 1872 Mining Act – hell, it’s only been 136 years – stopping exploration is the only way to really nip a mining project in the bud.

A few members of Congress have now gotten into the act, seeking to withdraw a huge section of land near the Grand Canyon from mineral exploration – using an emergency declaration that last three years and that federal law says the Department of the Interior is compelled to respect.

The declaration was passed on June 25, 2008, but has been ignored by Interior, prompting a new lawsuit by environmentalists – filed Monday – seeking to compel Secretary Dick Kempthorne to stop approving exploration projects within the withdrawal area.

TZR founder Adam Klawonn has the skinny here.

To Taylor McKinnon, it’s a classic power struggle between the executive and the legislative.

“I think that the Bush Administration objects to the power afforded Congress over the executive branch in this case,” he says.

The Bush Administration in a power grab? That’s shocking. Just shocking.

John Collins Rudolf