Giffords Expresses Environmental Concerns Over Mine Proposal

Saturday, February 24, 2007

By Tim Hull

Green Valley News & Sun

Canadian firm Augusta Resource Corp.’s proposed open-pit copper mine east of Green Valley was the ostensible subject of a congressional hearing in Tucson Saturday, but the well-recognized elephant in the room was the federal 1872 Mining Law.
Six witnesses, only one of which, a representative of Augusta, voiced support for continued large-scale copper mining in Pima County, testified before a joint field hearing of the Subcommittees on Energy and Mineral Resources and National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) participated in the hearing as well. Giffords’ 8th Congressional District includes Green Valley and the Santa Rita Mountains, where Augusta hopes to work a copper mine on about 20,000 acres of private and public lands.

“The Mining Act allows claimants to mine on public lands without paying any royalties to the American taxpayer,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, (D-Ariz.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

“Anyone can stake a claim on public lands, pay a nominal fee each year, and conduct mining operations.”

Those operations, he explained, produce millions of dollars every year in private revenue, none of which goes to the taxpayers, whose public land the mines often despoil.

Grijalva said he hopes to introduce legislation to reform the law, but could not give a timetable for action, adding that such reform would likely be a long process.

Though Augusta has yet to release a complete plan for the proposed mine, saying it will do so in 60 to 90 days, the Pima County Board of Supervisors has already passed a resolution opposing the mine and asking Congress to consider legislation that would remove public lands in the Nogales Ranger District from mining consideration. That includes the approximately 17,000 acres of public lease land on which the Rosemont Mine would operate.

The firm owns outright only about 3,000 acres of the land on which the mine would be operated, said Jamie Sturgess, Augusta’s vice president for projects.

Late last week, the Santa Cruz County Board Of Supervisors passed a similar resolution requesting environmentally sensitive public lands in that county be removed from mining consideration.

“The potential environmental impacts of this mine are profound,” Giffords said in an opening statement. “Residents have some very legitimate reasons for concern.”

The U.S. Forest Service has yet to rule on whether to allow the firm to use federal land. Augusta’s initial proposal “lacked sufficient detail to initiate. . .analysis” and was voluntary retracted by the firm, said Harv Forsgren, the U.S. Forest Service’s Southwestern Regional Forester.

Forsgren said that Augusta resubmitted its drilling Plan of Operations last week and it is being studied and considered by the Forest Service.

Subcommittee members heard from property owners near the proposed mine, representatives of the advocacy group Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, and hard-rock mining expert Roger Featherstone, the Southwest Circuit Rider for nonprofit environmental group Earthworks.

Featherstone, along with the many other speakers, echoed Grijalva when he called for a complete reform of the 1872 Mining Act.

“One-hundred and thirty-five years is too long,” Featherstone said. “It is time to reform the 1872 Mining Law, a relic of a bygone era, when mining was a pick and shovel affair, when the frontier was still open and ‘Manifest Destiny’ was the country’s creed. A product of its time, the mining law was written to encourage the development of the mining industry and settlement of the West.”

Times have changed, and there’s now a bi-partisan effort to discourage the development of the mining industry in Southern Arizona, a truth evidenced by the testimony of Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.

“The costs and adverse impacts placed on the local residents and taxpayers of Pima County far outweigh the few local tax benefits received from these mining projects,” he said.

Click here to read the article in the Green Valley News & Sun