A poll earlier this year found 80 percent of Arizonans support this measure to protect one of Arizona’s and the nation’s greatest natural treasures.

We have a moral obligation to protect our land and water for future generations.

Yet we’ve continued to risk these resources by allowing uranium mining in the watershed — numerous springs and wells have already been contaminated. Do we wish to jeopardize the Colorado River, which provides drinking water for more than 40 million people and supplies over four million acres of farmland, when we don’t have to?

The lands within the monument proposal are public lands – they belong to all of us. And if 80 percent or more of the public wants to protect these lands, we should honor that.

Our elected officials need to set special interests aside and embrace the will of the people they are elected to represent.

— Pastor Burke Montoya, Phoenix