GOP's Grand Canyon mining push destructive to AZ

The Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA.

STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX — Rep. Daniel Patterson, D-Tucson (District 29), said he opposes Arizona’s Republican Congressmen’s plan to endanger public safety and health by introducing a bill to allow dangerous uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.

In a press release issued today by Sen. John McCain, Congressman Jeff Flake claimed: “... Arizona’s federal, state, and local officials oppose a moratorium on such mining.”

But Patterson and other Democratic state officials oppose the dangerous mining of uranium, a nonrenewable resource, in Arizona’s wilderness and support tourism jobs and revenue instead.

“Uranium mining has a disastrous history from deadly abandoned sites to dams breached and radioactive waste seeping into aquifers and contaminating water,” Patterson said. “We already know uranium mining isn’t a good idea. It’s a threat to public health and safety as well as to the tourism business in Arizona. Along with other fellow House Democrats, for years I asked the federal government to make sure that our state’s natural wonder, wildlife and beautiful lands that draw millions here from all over the world are protected from those who threaten to destroy it.”

Representative Patterson is an ecologist and the Ranking Member on the Arizona House Energy and Natural Resources Committee.