When I was 14, my family and I embarked upon a two-week-long rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Five days into the trip, we stopped at a revered confluence between the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers. It was there, where the turquoise blue waters of the Little Colorado spilled over travertine outcroppings, mixing into the Colorado as red canyon walls towered above, that I was more in awe than I’d ever been in life. It was unaltered nature that I was witnessing and its beauty astonished me.
In the years since that profound moment, I’ve ventured back to the Grand Canyon time and time again, driven always by a strong desire to sit in awe once again, taking in the wonders of a priceless place. There’s something very unique about that sort of view that I’ve only discovered within the Canyon’s mighty walls. It humbles you and makes you evaluate the things in life you hold dear versus the things in life you should hold dear. Yet, last month, on Aug. 30, a plan was announced to take away that view.
The Grand Canyon Escalade is a 1.5-mile-long tram that, if built, would transport up to 10,000 people a day into the sacred confluence in the Grand Canyon where the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers intersect. At the canyon’s bottom, a food pavilion, amphitheater and elevated walkway are proposed while, at the tram’s starting point on the canyon’s rim, numerous restaurants, hotels and a cultural center are planned. While built entirely on Navajo tribal land, the project would come within a stone’s throw of the national park boundary and would lead to the deterioration of, perhaps, our country’s greatest natural treasure.
It wasn’t too long ago when, during a 20-year period from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation seriously considered two separate dams, which if had been built, would have sunk much of the Grand Canyon as we know it today underwater. The plans even got so close to fruition that the ground on the northern dam was broken, but, thankfully, the detrimental plans failed. Today, it’s seems ludicrous that our country even ever considered damming the Grand Canyon.
Yet, the proposed dams aren’t that far away from the currently proposed Grand Canyon Escalade. Both would have brought irreversible damage to a cherished and priceless canyon and both place short-term greed over long-term protection of land that is all Americans’ birthright.
To make matters worse, the Grand Canyon Escalade proposes to transport millions down to a confluence that is sacred to the Hopi, Paiute, Zuni and Navajo tribes. Transporting 10,000 people a day to a precious site where no firm plan is in place to deal with the sewage, litter and overall waste the customers and their on-site food court will create is a terrible idea. A site that’s revered by thousands of Native Americans is no place for ballpark franks and porta-potties.
Proponents of the project argue that it will bring much-needed economic stimulation to the Navajo nation, but, while it is true the Navajo nation is in need of serious economic aid, the nation will only receive between 8 and 18 percent of the tram’s revenue. Further, there is no guarantee that the estimated 6,500 short-term construction jobs the project will produce will be given to members of the Navajo nation.
Additionally, it’s argued that the tram will provide people who would never be able to visit the confluence the ability to. However, with mule services, guided rafting trips and aerial tours already present, such a detrimental cost isn’t worth this benefit. When just peering over the rim of the Grand Canyon, as 5 million people do each year, can produce the same awe I felt as a 14-year-old, such a tram is not needed.
In two weeks, a public hearing will be held to discuss the proposed project, while, in the weeks that follow the hearing, the Navajo nation tribal government will vote — deciding whether the tram will become a reality. A push against the site is needed from Americans across the country today to voice to the Navajo government that the Grand Canyon Escalade would be an unwanted scar on such an unparalleled place. While our North Carolinian voices in this debate may seem unnecessary and pointless, the project plans to deface a national park, public lands established for the entire nation’s good. No voice is unwanted. No voice is unimportant.
I’m fortunate enough to be returning to the confluence this coming summer and I can only hope that I’ll view the same confluence I saw six years ago, not one poisoned by construction and development. It’s the simplicity of nature that makes this place so awe-inspiring and the proposed tram can only mar this. Don’t let such an astonishing place become irreversibly scarred.
