The morning daily catches up with the Rosemont Mine story broken by Dan Shearer of the Green Valley News yesterday:
Arizona’s legislative chiefs frustrated a majority of Tucson-area legislators by writing the U.S. Forest Service a letter friendly to the proposed Rosemont Mine without consulting them – yet saying they were writing “on behalf of the Arizona Senate and the House of Representatives.”
Tuesday’s letter from Senate President Bob Burns and House Speaker Kirk Adams praised Rosemont as a “tremendous economic opportunity for the State of Arizona,” cited Arizona’s rich mining history, and encouraged the Forest Service to “allow Arizona to continue to move forward responsibly to utilize our rich and vital copper resources.”
But late Thursday, Burns backed off, under criticism led by Jonathan Paton, a Tucson-area state senator and mine opponent of his party who is running for Congress against another mine opponent.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2010.
It sometimes seems that the people most in charge of a situation are most often the least informed or effected. Maybe when the water table is too far down to reach ,and the runoff from the pit is streaming down around the mountain to Tucson, we can open up a new source of copper….. tearing out the plumbing/wiring from the houses that have been abandoned by the laid off miners and the people who had to leave their homes because of no water. Another sign of forthought…. a couple of weeks ago Rosemount performed an act of conservation! They sent a crew out to the old townsite in Helvetia and had them put up a very nice 3′ fence around the ruins. Humm…. sounds great. They are preserving a bit of history,giving work to our community,saving a historical site. well not really. First, the ruins are already distroyed. The ever increasing traffic as a result of the drilling etc on the east side of the Sant Ritas has lead to the reduction of the townsite to a pile of adobes about 18″ tall. Second the work provided was to a crew from Idaho. Not exactly local labor force. And last the saving of the “historical site”. The fence may provide the “local wokers” a place to sit on when they are tearing up the area to install the 20″ plus water line that is going to be run just feet from the “presearved townsite”. You know, the water line that will pump 5000 gallons a minute out of the Sahuarita water supply. 24/7. No fear. They are going to recharge that water. DOWNSTREAM in Marana.I guess if they can get all of that water to go over the mountain they can get the recharge to go upstream to Sahuarita.Problem is if they dont…. that sulphur under the existing mines to the west of I19 will be drawn over into Green Valley and Sahuarita water wells. Hope you all have clothes pins to put on your noses to stop the sulphur smell when you take a shower.( if you have water to take that shower) Yes that is a great natural resourse,but we dont have the way to get to it without useing up the most valuable and needed requirment for life. WATER. Besides ,that resource is OURS. I pesonally think it is a slap in the face to Americans to have a Canadian company take our resource and sell it to China/Japan while paying us the labor charges and leaving us with a multi generation scar and biohazard. ROSEMONT presearving that which is already distroyed,while distroying that which should be presearved.