Some good news on the Save Oak Flats Front today.
http://www.lakepowelllife.com/...
Oak Flats has been named as one of 11 endangered sites by the National Trust for Historical preservation. Why is this good news? because of the more than 250 sites the Trust has listed to date, nearly all of them have been preserved, only a handful have been lost. The Trust does the list of 11 every year to draw attention to the sites in question that are at risk. More before the the orange life preserver
the Oak Flats land is part of a 2400 acre swap squeezed into the defense appropriation bill last December by Senator McCain (R-AZ). McCain had tried for years to pass the swap, but Congress overwhelmingly rejected the swap when it was put to a vote. only by putting it into the defense bill did it finally pass. there are two options for overturning the swap:
1. Congress passes a bill voiding the swamp. Raul Grijalva , D-AZ, has brought a bill to the floor of the house to do just that. Given both Houses are controlled by Republicans, however, passage of Grijalva's bill looks unlikely, which leaves us the second option
2 Obama declares Oak Flats a national monument. the Antiquities act allows the president to create national monuments ' at his discretion'. the Supreme Court in 1920 ruled that large monuments were permitted under the act, and over the past 100 years, every monument that has been challenged in court has been upheld by the courts, even controversial ones like Jackson Hole in Wyoming, the 17 monuments Carter created in Alaska, or more recently, Grand Staircase in Utah, which was upheld in 2003 by the Supreme court. a monument must meet 3 requirements in order to be created:
a) the land must be federally owned and controlled. Even though Congress passed the land swap last year, the company has not taken control of it yet due to the Apaches squatting on the land. Therefore the land remains federal.
b) the land must contain objects of significant historic or scientific importance. Oak Flats is sacred to the Apache, and been the site of coming of age ceremonies for girls for many generations. Thus it is of great historic importance to the Apache, and qualifies under the historic importance requirement
c) the area protected must be the smallest necessary to conserve the objects being preserved. Conserving Oak Flats will not require a large area, at most 3000 acres. this is a small area, compared to recent monuments Obama has created, like Basin and Range or Berryessa, but it is protecting an area that the Act was passed in the first place to conserve - Indian antiquities- and the size of it (about 4.7 sq miles) is not something most people will raise a big fuss about.
the mining company will raise a stink if Obama acts, but it is a virtual certainty that any court challenge will result in the monument being upheld, since monuments are the presidents call, and courts can only review them to see if the monuments meets the requirements in the Act. Since Oak Flats does meet those requirements, it would be upheld.