Horseshoe Bend, Page, Arizona
A new report from
American Rivers says that the Colorado River is topping a list of environmentally compromised waterways in the United States.
The Grand Canyon Escalade is a proposal to build a two-million square foot, industrial-scale construction project on the east rim of the canyon that includes a tram to the bottom of the Grand Canyon at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. The Escalade project would forever damage the canyon’s remote, wild character. If the Escalade project moves forward, 10,000 people per day could crowd a pair of walkways along the edge of the river in the canyon. An additional construction project near river level would include a restaurant, gift shop, and restrooms that would irrevocably scar this national treasure. There are serious concerns about noise, pollution, and human waste.
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In addition to the urgent threat of the Escalade project, there are other attacks on the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon’s health and wild nature. Active and inactive uranium mines on the north and south rims of the canyon threaten clean water. Current proposals exist to revive some of the inactive mines, and expand the exploration of currently active mines. The current moratorium on uranium mining around the Grand Canyon only applies to new mining claims. Nearly two decades of monitoring has documented radioactive contamination of a key Grand Canyon creek by an abandoned mine that ceased operations in 1969.
The third environmental threat is that a foreign investment groups plans to
expand Tusayan.
A group of Italian developers is planning three million square feet of retail construction, plus 2,200 homes, in Tusayan, a newly incorporated village with a population of just 587 at the entrance to the park, posing what park officials describe as a major threat to the water supply for the Colorado River. A skywalk finished in 2007 over the western rim of the Grand Canyon, on land owned by the Hualapai tribe, has become an overwhelming success, drawing thousands of visitors a year, most from Las Vegas. Some then take a helicopter ride to the bottom of the canyon, to the distress of conservationists.
The
Grand Canyon Escalade project is controversial,
for more than just its environmental ramifications:
“This is where the tram would go,” she said. “This is the heart of our Mother Earth. This is a sacred area. It is going to be true destruction.”
Ms. Yellowhorse was referring to the proposed $1 billion Grand Canyon Escalade development, a complex of restaurants, boutique hotels, stores and a trailer park clustered around a gondola that would whisk visitors down to a restaurant, an Indian cultural center and an elevated river walk on a part of the canyon floor that is Navajo land, just outside the park boundary. The proposed development, on 420 acres of rabbitbrush and grass with stunning views of the canyon, is the latest — and perhaps the most ambitious — in a long and contentious history of attempts by developers to build near a national landmark that draws 4.5 million people a year.
Unfortunately, indigenous people's rights have never meant much to the American government and
tourism dollars are an attractive incentive to ruin a national treasure.
Project organizers said there would be around 1,350 tourists on the river walkway at any given time and would generate between $350-450 million each year for the local economy.