Mining to begin in downsized National Monument
Late last year, President Trump announced a massive scaling back of the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), part of an even larger reduction of National Monuments in Utah, including nearby Bears Ears. Now a Canadian firm has announced plans to reopen a closed mine1 within the former boundaries of the old Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument but just barely outside of the new boundaries. This appears to contradict President Trump’s declaration that this land was being returned “to the people, the people of all of the states, the people of the United States.” It also seems at odds with his recent bitterness toward Canada and his new trade war with our northern neighbor. What’s going on here?
In this image, we can see that the new Monument boundary is just 240 meters from the Colt Mesa mining claim with existing unpaved access roads only 150 meters away. The roads are marked in blue and criss-cross a dry riverbed. We expect these roads to be widened significantly and the area around the roads to be negatively impacted due to trucks and machinery. Given this proximity, the now much smaller National Monument will almost certainly be affected by heavy vehicular traffic day and night, and the attendant noise, dust, and diesel pollution.
The change in boundary illustrated by interactive slider, click here to view this in fullscreen mode.
This claim occupies 200 acres of previously protected land and, if this mining claim is developed as the company expects, we are expecting to see major changes to the area as they use increasingly destructive techniques to access the minerals beneath and dispose of the resulting “wasterock” and mine tailings.
The drastic downsizing of National Monument is being challenged in court by many organizations while the White House continues to insist this was about handing the power of conservation back to the state, and not about mining. The lawsuits are currently pending, so it remains to be seen if any land will be disturbed before these legal actions are resolved by the courts. In the meantime, we will be monitoring the area for signs of disturbance using Planet and other satellite imagery.
1 – The Colt Mesa mine was originally developed in the early 1970s to produce copper, silver, molybdenum, cobalt and uranium. It ceased production in 1974. It is a small mine by global standards, but these minerals are currently in high demand for use in electronics.