Grand Canyon Exploration Dispute: Is a Mine a Terrible Thing to Waste?

This story is an ongoing complicated melodrama involving the Bush administrations actions at the height of the escalation of oil prices to encourage additional sources of nuclear energy which resulted in controversial leases of land for exploration relatively near Grand Canyon. The lease auction was "hacked" by a rogue activist Tim DeChristopher who, without personal resources, alledgedly placed bids and won rights to 22,OOO acres of BLM land as an act of civil disobedience. The lease process was eventually suspended or frozen by the Obama administration (Ken Salazaar, Dept of Interior Secretary) but apparently certain aspects of the process continue underway at the BLM:

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/05/06/06greenwire-blm-authorizes-grand-canyon-uranium-exploratio-10572.html?pagewanted=print
BLM authorizes Grand Canyon uranium exploration
By ERIC BONTRAGER, Greenwire
The Bureau of Land Management has authorized several new uranium exploration permits near the Grand Canyon despite a congressional resolution last year barring new claims near the national park.
According to documents (pdf) released yesterday by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Grand Canyon Trust, BLM on April 27 authorized Quaterra Alaska Inc. to conduct eight uranium mine exploration operations at five separate projects north of Grand Canyon National Park and west of the Kaibab Plateau.
"Our understanding is that exploration can begin immediately," said Taylor McKinnon, director of CBD's public lands program.
Quaterra Alaska is a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Quaterra Resources Inc.
All of the projects are within the 1 million acres of BLM and Forest Service land that the House Natural Resources Committee ordered to be withdrawn from new uranium mining claims in June 2008, according to the groups.
The committee employed its rarely used emergency declaration authority to withdraw the lands, but then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne rejected the panel's request, saying the committee did not have a quorum on the vote, which was taken after Republicans walked out in protest, arguing that there was no emergency to prompt the move (E&E Daily, June 26, 2008).
The department also disputed the committee's authority under the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act to issue emergency withdrawals and later issued a new rule that limited its ability to carry out such orders..........
Additional commentary:
Complicated interagency dispute modified by by Congressional action:
http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/blm_defies_congress_authorizes_grand_canyon_uranium_exploration/C530/L37/
Rogue actions of bidder (Activist Tim DeChristopher):
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article177101.ece
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/3/utah_student_who_prevented_bush_admin

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan