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SALT LAKE CITY — No one has pulled mining permits at two southeastern Utah national monuments after President Donald Trump shrank them. However, environmentalists are still leery.
Members of the Utah Sierra Club are glad no one is mining yet.
“But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of potential for that,” said Ashely Soltysiak, the Utah club's director.
“Not necessarily for oil and gas mining, but with coal and uranium” near the former Grand Staircase Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, respectively, she said.
The Utah Sierra Club is part of a lawsuit to restore the national monuments the sizes they were before December.
By executive order, Trump sliced the total amount of land in the two monuments from more than 3.2 million acres to about 1.2 million acres in December.
Officials with the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining say they don't think the former monument areas will attract much mining.
“The idea that there are a lot of minerals in there, and that people are just going to go in there and tear it up and destroy things is a misperception,” said Dana Dean, associate director of the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.
Dean said the uranium is too cheap (valued now at about $20 per pound), and the coal is too expensive to mine and haul from the area.
