FLAGSTAFF — The reclassification of nearly 1 million acres around the Grand Canyon to prevent new mining claims comes with a fundamental change in how the U.S. Forest Service does business with mining companies.
Companies that file to do exploratory drilling and other projects on more than 560 square miles of the Kaibab National Forest now must prove they have valid existing rights to their claims. That could include providing evidence the mineral has been discovered at the surface with sufficient quality and quantity.
That wasn't the case before Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last month blocked any new mining claims on land his agency controls for a two-year period. He took the action to slow a flurry of new uranium-mining operations planned in the Grand Canyon area while the Interior Department studies whether the land should be permanently withdrawn from mining activity.
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The Forest Service is part of the Agriculture Department and does not answer to Salazar.
Conservationists are worried that new mining will harm the environment around the Canyon. Mining companies say they'll do a much better job preventing problems today than in decades past, when uranium mines led to widespread contamination.
Salazar reclassified 990 square miles under the control of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Unlike the Forest Service, the BLM has discretion in either taking the company's word that its claims are valid or conducting a review, said Jeff Garrett, a BLM geologist in Phoenix.
The change affects as many as 10,000 existing mining claims on federal lands for all types of hard-rock exploration around the Grand Canyon and 1,100 uranium-mining claims within five miles of the Canyon.
"Now because of the terms, it might affect companies that were exploring or had a plan or operation and were in the process of determining the economic viability of their mineral deposits but haven't done so yet," said Luke Popovich, vice president of the National Mining Association. "Certainly that could cast a cloud over future investment."
British mining company Vane Minerals Group will be one of the first to have to prove claims on 24 sites in the Kaibab's Tusayan Ranger District that have been proposed for exploratory drilling. If the claims don't meet the discovery test, the project won't be approved, said Tom Mutz, lands and minerals officer for the Kaibab.
The last of four public meetings on the proposal is scheduled for Monday in the Havasupai tribal village of Supai, and comments are being accepted until Sept. 2.
Vane is seeking commercial quantities of uranium at a time when prices for it have soared to around $55 a pound. The majority of uranium is found deep below the Earth's surface. One way to find out whether a claim might be valuable is to do exploratory drilling.
Kris Hefton, chief operating officer for the company's U.S. operations, said the claims are "obviously favorable enough (that) we want to continue."
"We're operating under the assumption that it will be business as usual under existing claims," he said.
Environmentalists, who successfully sued the Forest Service to do an environmental analysis of the Vane project, contend it shouldn't continue if the company has not proven its claims.
"This proposal is to explore, drill for uranium," said Stacey Hamburg, conservation program manager for the Sierra Club. "That tells you they don't have this information, because if they don't know there is uranium, they don't have a valid existing right."
But Kaibab officials say the process was well under way before the lands were temporarily withdrawn and that no exploratory drilling would occur until after a team of mineral examiners reviews Vane's claims and determines their validity. The team is expected to start its review in the fall, and there's no timeline for completion.
Roger Clark, air and energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, praised the Forest Service for offering a chance for the public to voice its concerns on the drilling proposal. But he said he's skeptical that the information provided by Vane on its claims will be accurate.
"If Vane has ore samples that come from the 1980s, how do we know that ore came from that claim?" he said. "There's no chain of evidence here like in a crime."
