Grand Canyon Development Plans Put River on Endangered List
- 2015-07-08
- National Geographic
Environmental group says the Colorado faces a trio of potential threats: a mine, a big development, and a growing town.
The stretch of the Colorado River that winds through the Grand Canyon tops a new list of the nation’s most endangered rivers, a reflection of controversial plans to reopen a uranium mine in the area and build a tramway that would take visitors to a new restaurant and river walkways on the canyon floor.
The Colorado was among ten rivers that the environmental group American Rivers identified as facing imminent threats, in a list released on Tuesday. The rivers on the list aren’t necessarily the most imperiled or polluted, says Sinjin Eberle, the group’s associate director of communications for the Colorado River Basin. Rather, they are the ones that the advocacy group is urging the public to ask government agencies to protect in the coming months.
Image Credit: Julia Caesar