August, 25 2015, 02:30pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Rex Tilousi, Havasupai Tribe, (928) 255-8819
Sherry Counts, Hualapai Tribe, (928) 769-2216, scounts@hualapai-nsn.gov
Art Babbott, Coconino County Supervisor, (928) 607-1688. ababbott@coconino.az.gov
Art Goodtimes, San Miguel County Commissioner, 970-728-3844, commish3@sanmiguelcounty.org
Anne Mariah Tapp, Grand Canyon Trust, (512) 565 9906, atapp@grandcanyontrust.org
Katie Davis, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 560-2414, kdavis@biologicaldiversity.org Â
Bonnie Gestring, Earthworks, (406) 549-7361 bgestring@earthworksaction.org
Matthew Sanders, Stanford Law Clinic, (650) 725-4217 msanders@law.stanford.edu
Disastrous Animas River Mine Spill Prompts Call for Regulatory Reform
Tribes, Counties, Environmental Groups Unite to Prevent Future Mining Contamination
FLAGSTAFF, Arizona
In the wake of the toxic spill in the Animas River earlier this month, tribes, local governments and environmental groups today petitioned the Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture to reform outdated mining rules on the federal lands they manage. The 74-page petition requests four key changes to federal mining regulations to help protect western water resources from future environmental disasters like the recent Gold King Mine spill in Colorado, and ensure that mine owners cannot simply walk away from existing and inactive mines.
"The Hualapai Tribe supports the petition to make long overdue changes to the mining regulations," said Councilwoman Sherry Counts of the Hualapai Nation. "Indian tribes have always viewed themselves as stewards with an obligation to take care of the Earth that has provided for them. The Animas disaster only accentuates the urgency for federal agencies and the mining industry to do a much better job of protecting our precious land, air, and water."
The petition, submitted under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, requests that the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service reform existing mining rules by: limiting the lifetime of a mine permit, imposing enforceable reclamation deadlines and groundwater monitoring requirements on mines, requiring regular monitoring and inspections, and limiting the number of years that a mine can remain inactive.
"As a county with hundreds of abandoned mines affecting two headwaters rivers of the Colorado Basin, we really place a high importance on sustainable uses of our public lands and protecting water," said Art Goodtimes, a commissioner in San Miguel County, Colo. "The proposed rules will help ensure that existing and inactive mines are reclaimed in a timely manner and the environment will be better protected than what happened with our San Juan County neighbors."
"The Animas River disaster must mark the end of the days where irresponsible mining threatens our region's livable future," said Anne Mariah Tapp, energy program director for the Grand Canyon Trust. "Our coalition's petition provides the federal agencies with a reasonable path forward that will benefit western communities, taxpayers, water resources, and our most treasured landscapes."
The threat that uranium mining poses to the Grand Canyon prompted the support of many regional governments for regulatory reform. Uranium mines in the Grand Canyon region are operating under environmental reviews and permits from the 1980s, with no requirements for groundwater monitoring once mining is complete.
"The Havasupai Tribe supports this petition that will better protect our aboriginal homelands and the waters that flow into our canyon home," said Rex Tilousi, Havasupai tribal chairman. "This petition is an important part of our decades-long fight to protect our tribal members, homeland, and sacred mountain Red Butte from toxic uranium mining contamination."
Along with the threats posed by existing mines, there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines in the United States that pollute an estimated 40 percent of streams in the headwaters of western watersheds. Most of these toxic mines, including the Gold King Mine, exist because the 1872 Mining Law, still the law of the land, didn't require cleanup.
"If we are serious about the protection of the Grand Canyon and Colorado River water resources, we need to call for change," said Art Babbott, a county supervisor in Coconino County, Ariz. "Common sense reforms to the federal agencies' mining regulations and the 1872 Mining Law serve the interests of healthy watersheds, strong regional economies, and having science -- as opposed to politics -- guide our decision-making for mining on public lands."
"For too long, the federal government has allowed our public lands to become toxic dumping grounds for mining corporations," said Katie Davis, public lands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Federal agencies have the ability to start addressing the problems unfolding at existing mines now, without waiting for congressional action, to ensure better protection of public lands, water supplies and wildlife habitat."
"We must act to prevent future disasters like the one that turned the Animas River orange," said Earthworks' Bonnie Gestring. "Our petition for stronger mining rules would help reform dangerous industry practices while we push to reform the 1872 Mining Law, which would fund the cleanup of the hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines that litter the West."
Background
Today's petition, submitted under the federal Administrative Procedures Act, requests four changes to existing federal mining regulations: (1) limit the duration of approved plans of operations to 20 years, with the option to apply for 20-year renewals; (2) require supplemental review under the National Environmental Policy Act and National Historic Preservation Act, as well as a new approval for any mining operation that has been inoperative for 10 or more consecutive years; (3) require the BLM and Forest Service to regularly inspect mining operations, and mining operators to regularly gather and disclose information regarding the status and conditions of those operations, during non-operational periods; and (4) impose deadlines for commencing and completing reclamation activities once a mining operation ceases, and impose long-term monitoring requirements for surface water and groundwater quality.
The petition was prepared by the Stanford Law Clinic and is supported by the Havasupai Tribe (Arizona), the Hualapai Tribe (Arizona), the Zuni Tribe (New Mexico), Coconino County (Arizona), and San Miguel County (Colorado), as well as more than a dozen national and regional environmental organizations including the Grand Canyon Trust, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, the Sierra Club, the Information Network For Responsible Mining, Uranium Watch and others, representing millions of people who treasure our public lands and waters.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
(520) 623-5252LATEST NEWS
Bernie Sanders Says US Must 'Fundamentally Rethink' Its Foreign Policy
"In this pivotal moment in human history, the United States must lead a new global movement based on human solidarity and the needs of struggling people."
Mar 18, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday called for a "revolution in American foreign policy" that replaces "greed, militarism, and hypocrisy" with "solidarity, diplomacy, and human rights."
In a lengthy piece published in Foreign Affairs, Sanders (I-Vt.) asserted that "it is long past time to fundamentally reorient American foreign policy," a shift that starts with "acknowledging the failures of the post–World War II bipartisan consensus and charting a new vision that centers human rights, multilateralism, and global solidarity."
"If the goal of foreign policy is to help create a peaceful and prosperous world, the foreign policy establishment needs to fundamentally rethink its assumptions," the democratic socialist senator wrote. "Spending trillions of dollars on endless wars and defense contracts is not going to address the existential threat of climate change or the likelihood of future pandemics. It is not going to feed hungry children, reduce hatred, educate the illiterate, or cure diseases. It is not going to help create a shared global community and diminish the likelihood of war."
"In this pivotal moment in human history, the United States must lead a new global movement based on human solidarity and the needs of struggling people," Sanders argued. "This movement must have the courage to take on the greed of the international oligarchy, in which a few thousand billionaires exercise enormous economic and political power."
Sanders' article examines U.S. foreign policy since World War II, underscoring commonalities between the many wars and acts of aggression perpetrated by Washington over the decades.
"Dating back to the Cold War, politicians in both major parties have used fear and outright lies to entangle the United States in disastrous and unwinnable foreign military conflicts," the senator wrote, noting the U.S.-led war in Southeast Asia in which as many as 3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians and more than 58,000 American troops were killed.
Sanders also highlighted the U.S. record of perpetrating or backing coups in Iran, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, and other countries, "often in support of authoritarian regimes that brutally repressed their own people and exacerbated corruption, violence, and poverty."
"Washington is still dealing with the fallout from such meddling today, confronting deep suspicion and hostility in many of these countries, which complicates U.S. foreign policy and undermines American interests," he wrote.
Sanders then moved on to the 21st century, when the George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attacks by committing "nearly 2 million U.S. troops and over $8 trillion to a 'Global War on Terror' and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq"—the latter "built on an outright lie."
The senator continued:
The Iraq War was not an aberration. In the name of the Global War on Terror, the United States carried out torture, illegal detention, and "extraordinary renditions," snatching suspects around the world and holding them for long periods at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba and CIA "black sites" around the world. The U.S. government implemented the Patriot Act, which resulted in mass surveillance domestically and internationally. The two decades of fighting in Afghanistan left thousands of U.S. troops dead or wounded and caused many hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. Today, despite all that suffering and expenditure, the Taliban is back in power.
"I wish I could say that the foreign policy establishment in Washington learned its lesson after the failures of the Cold War and the Global War on Terror," Sanders wrote. "But, with a few notable exceptions, it has not."
"In the past decade alone, the United States has been involved in military operations in Afghanistan, Cameroon, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen," he noted. "The U.S. military maintains around 750 military bases in 80 countries and is increasing its presence abroad as Washington ramps up tensions with Beijing. Meanwhile, the United States is supplying [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's Israel with billions of dollars in military funding while he annihilates Gaza."
"U.S. policy on China is another illustration of failed foreign policy groupthink, which frames the U.S.-Chinese relationship as a zero-sum struggle," Sanders said. "For many in Washington, China is the new foreign policy bogeyman—an existential threat that justifies higher and higher Pentagon budgets."
Revisiting a major theme from his two Democratic presidential runs, Sanders contended that "economic policy is foreign policy."
"As long as wealthy corporations and billionaires have a stranglehold on our economic and political systems, foreign policy decisions will be guided by their material interests, not those of the vast majority of the world’s population," he said. "That is why the United States must address the moral and economic outrage of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, in which the richest 1% of the planet owns more wealth than the bottom 99%—an inequality that allows some people to own dozens of homes, private airplanes, and even entire islands, while millions of children go hungry or die of easily prevented diseases."
"The benefits of making this shift in foreign policy would far outweigh the costs," Sanders wrote. "The United States must recognize that our greatest strength as a nation comes not from our wealth or our military might but from our values of freedom and democracy."
"The biggest challenges of our times, from climate change to global pandemics, will require cooperation, solidarity, and collective action," he added, "not militarism."
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'We Want to Be Heard': Chattanooga Volkswagen Workers File for Vote to Join UAW
"A reckoning is coming," said a strategist for UAW president Shawn Fain. "Workers are standing up—and they are going to win."
Mar 18, 2024
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee filed a petition Monday with National Labor Relations Board formally requesting an election to join the United Auto Workers, which is campaigning aggressively to organize nonunion plants in the U.S. South and across the country.
The UAW tried and narrowly failed to organize Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant in 2014 and 2019, but the union's historic strike and contract victories at the Big Three automakers last year emboldened its unionization efforts.
"We want to be heard," Crystal Jenkins, a logistics worker at the Chattanooga plant, says in a video released by the UAW on Monday. "The reason I'm voting yes for the union is to have a voice."
Volkswagen is one of more than a dozen nonunion automakers that the UAW is targeting as part of what's been described as "the largest organizing drive in modern American history."
"A reckoning is coming," Chris Brooks, a strategist for UAW president Shawn Fain, wrote on social media. "Workers are standing up—and they are going to win.
The UAW said Monday that "a supermajority" of the more than 1,000 workers at the Chattanooga plant—Volkswagen's only assembly facility in the U.S.—signed union cards in just 100 days, a sign of broad support for the organizing effort.
"I come from a UAW family, so I've seen how having our union enables us to make life better on the job and off," said Yolanda Peoples, a production team member in assembly. "We are a positive force in the plant. When we win our union, we'll be able to bargain for a safer workplace, so people can stay on the job and the company can benefit from our experience. When my father retired as a UAW member, he had something to fall back on. VW workers deserve the same."
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Congressional Progressives to Fed: Cut Rates to 'End This Squeeze' on Workers
Lawmakers warned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that keeping interest rates high "needlessly worsens housing market imbalances" and "could threaten" workers' jobs and wages.
Mar 18, 2024
Progressive lawmakers in the House and Senate urged the Federal Reserve on Monday to begin slashing interest rates in the near future, warning that the increasingly tight monetary conditions the central bank has imposed over the past two years risk imperiling strong post-pandemic job and
wage growth.
In a
letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined 19 House Democrats in calling for a "prompt timeline for future rate reductions," noting that the central bank has hiked rates 11 times since March 2022 and that inflation has nearly fallen "into line with the Federal Reserve's target."
"Today's excessively contractionary monetary policy needlessly worsens housing market imbalances and the unaffordability of home ownership, creates risks for banking stability, and could threaten the achievements of strong employment and wage growth and its attendant reductions in economic and racial inequalities," reads the letter, which was sent a day ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) March 19-20 meeting.
If the Fed waits too long to begin cutting rates, the lawmakers cautioned, overly restrictive monetary policy could "reduce employment and real wage growth."
"We worry that higher unemployment and a harmful economic slowdown could result from a lagged effect of the prior 11 interest rate hikes since March 2022," the lawmakers added. "We believe it is critical for the FOMC to present the public with a clear and rapid timetable for reducing interest rates, ideally beginning at the May FOMC meeting in order to ensure a strong labor market and full employment for working Americans."
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates 11 times in the last 2 years, keeping working people from being able to get a raise, a mortgage, or car.
Today, @SenSanders, @SenWarren, and House progressives call on the Fed to finally lower interest rates.https://t.co/VvFNPwZ8lS
— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) March 18, 2024
Since the Fed started raising interest rates for the first time since 2018 just over two years ago, progressive lawmakers, advocates, and economists have been arguing that jacking up borrowing was not the solution to inflation fueled in large part by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and corporate price gouging. According to one recent study by the Groundwork Collaborative, corporate profiteering drove more than half of inflation between April and September 2023.
Last month, following a strong jobs report, Groundwork's Bilal Baydoun called for rate cuts, arguing that "the data is very clear that we never had to sacrifice jobs for lower prices."
"High interest rates will only slow our clean energy transition and put families in more debt," said Baydoun. "Chair Powell must change his tune and cut rates in March."
But the Fed is not expected to announce rate cuts following the two-day FOMC meeting that begins on Tuesday. The Associated Pressreported Monday that "Powell and his fellow Fed officials are expected to play it safe when they meet his week, keeping their rate unchanged for a fifth straight time and signaling that they still need further evidence that inflation is returning sustainably to their 2% target."
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released last week showed that overall inflation was 3.2% year-over-year—a slight uptick from January's reading but far below the 9.1% peak in 2022.
Hiring, meanwhile, has remained strong even as Powell has explicitly targeted the jobs market and workers' wages. Employers added 275,000 jobs last month, according to the U.S. Labor Department, and unemployment stayed low at 3.9%.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement Monday that "the American economy recovered from Covid because congressional Democrats and President Biden partnered to invest in workers over corporations and created paths to economic security for people who had been locked out before."
"Unnecessarily high rates put all that at risk," Jayapal added. "They will only punish everyday Americans: exacerbating the housing crisis, hindering the deployment of clean energy, and throwing the future of the Biden recovery into uncertainty, while threatening the wages and jobs that our communities depend on. It's past time for the Fed to end this squeeze on working- and middle-class families."
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