This has been a scorching year for the Coronado National Forest. First, some of its premier Southern Arizona highlands were ravaged by summer infernos.
Now the Forest Service’s long-awaited draft environmental report on a proposed copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains is drawing fire left and right.
But critics say the Coronado’s own bumbling ignited the latest fury. Not that such bumbling is uncharacteristic when it involves the hopes of Canadian-based Augusta Resource Corporation to dig an open-pit mine in the lovely Rosemont Valley south of Tucson.
Consider that the Forest Service haplessly used public-relations flacks from Augusta’s subsidiary, Rosemont Copper, to organize public hearings on the draft report.
Or that it also managed to infuriate Tohono O’odham tribal leaders by failing to tell them that two such meetings were to be held at the tribe’s Desert Diamond Casino. This might not have caused such a ruckus were the tribe not vehemently opposed to Augusta’s project, fearing its impact on sacred sites in the Santa Ritas. The tribe is actually a cooperating agency in the project-evaluation process, and thus demands an official place at the table.
Tribal Chairman Ned Norris Jr. was not amused.
“We support the Forest Service’s stated efforts to ensure meaningful public comments about this project,” he wrote to Coronado supervisor Jim Upchurch. “We look forward to providing input in this process as the proposed Rosemont Mine will have dramatic negative impacts on the Tohono O’odham Nation. … It is further troubling that Rosemont Copper and its PR firm arranged these public meetings, not the Forest Service.”
According to Norris, that close cooperation “raises serious questions about the objectivity of this entire process.”
Upchurch responded to Norris in a letter thick with mea culpas and promises to include the tribe in future decisions. But Upchurch also defended the role of Augusta’s propaganda machine. “As is customary with most large projects proposed on National Forest … lands,” he wrote, “the proponent (Augusta) is contributing funds to offset the costs for the meeting locations as well as funding deposits for the facilities.”
All final decisions about where and when to hold those meetings were made by Upchurch, says Coronado spokeswoman Heidi Schewel. She adds that Augusta’s P.R. people, at Strongpoint Public Relations, simply helped a short-staffed Forest Service quickly pull the roster together. “We checked out the facilities first, and they were just checking on the availability,” she says. “It wasn’t anything that carried any decision-making power or influence. It was just logistics—just helping us with the workload.”
Still, this isn’t the first time Coronado officials have been accused of sharing a relationship with Augusta that’s too cozy. Earlier this year, mine opponents filed a lawsuit over the presence of company officials at 13 meetings in 2009 and 2010 with Coronado officials and representatives from other government agencies. Other interested parties—including mine opponents—were not invited.
In June, Senior U.S. District Judge Frank Zapata quashed the lawsuit and refused to grant an injunction to delay release of the draft environmental impact statement. However, he did chide the Forest Service for being “less than prudent” and fostering “an appearance of impropriety” by allowing Rosemont’s representatives into those otherwise closed meetings.
Roger Featherstone is director of the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition, a group opposed to Augusta’s project. He says Coronado officials apparently haven’t learned much from that earlier fracas, “when they were screwing up left and right, letting Augusta and Augusta’s contractors (get) too much involved.
“When we went to court over it, we didn’t get our injunction, but the judge was pretty strong about the appearance of impropriety on the part of the Forest Service. And then the Forest Service turns right around this time and does the same damn thing: They allow Augusta’s P.R. people to set up their meetings for them.”
Featherstone suggests that these repeated missteps may be symptoms of a bigger problem. “Is it ingrained in the Forest Service culture that they automatically are going to the proponents of a project for help?” he asks. “At some point, you have to think that this goes deeper than just goofing up three or four times in a row.”
Nor did the stumbles end there. While scheduling the impact-statement meetings, forest officials not only angered the Tohono O’odham tribe, but also drew the ire of U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva. In an Oct. 25 letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (the USDA includes the Forest Service), Grijalva criticized Strongpoint’s role and chastised the Coronado for failing to observe a required 15-day window between the release of the draft statement and the first public meeting to discuss it.
Grijalva also noted that those meetings had originally been slated for the same dates as popular local events, and questioned whether such scheduling conflicts were pure coincidence.
“The fact that Rosemont’s representatives are directly involved with the planning of these public meetings raises obvious questions as to how much influence Rosemont has had in the overall timing, location and structure of these meetings—all important factors in determining a successful public-involvement process,” Grijalva wrote. “Rosemont’s involvement could at least in part explain why these public hearings were being expedited” in violation of federal regulations.
Notice of the Rosemont DEIS was published in the Federal Register on Oct. 19.The first public meeting to discuss the nearly 900-page draft was originally scheduled for Oct. 22 at the casino.
Schewel says the meetings were scheduled so quickly because the public comment period lasts a mere 90 days. Nonetheless, she says, the Forest Service is predictably catching hell from both sides: Rosemont officials complain of a dragging process, while mine opponents carp about being rushed. But according to Schewel, the Coronado is trying to drive down the middle. “There is a lot of opposition, and there are people who are for (the mine),” she says. “And professionally, we are neutral.”
Although the Coronado has since pushed those meetings back, the initial schedule left Featherstone with one impression: The Coronado had an agenda.
“And that was to bow to (Augusta’s) wishes and just kind of ram this stuff through,” he says. “It makes no sense from the Forest Service’s standpoint to have the first meeting just a couple of days after the official notice in the Federal Register. … Common sense dictates that when you have a document that’s 3 or 4 inches thick, and you have a 90-day comment period, it just doesn’t make sense to rush the first meetings.”
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2011.
What’s the rush? Over the last five years, every minute detail concerning this proposed mining project has been studied by experts, who have found that Rosemont Copper will not violate any our nation’s environmental laws.
The very small minority, who oppose this project are simply stalling for time. All of their other efforts to halt this project have failed. The only thing they can do is delay the inevitable, which is being done at the expense of many Americans who would benefit from this project.
Why should it take longer to permit a mine, than it took to send a man to the moon and return him safely to the earth?
What’s the Rush? Should the question be:
“Why are the opponents of the Rosemont Copper project trying to delay the permiting process?”
i can’t understand the permanent destruction of that beautiful environment and the sucking up of our most precious commodity, ground water, in the area just south of us for some possible temporary local jobs. the resources and wealth won’t stay here, either; it all goes to some private company in Canada. what are people thinking? its insane. more sellout of the USA: tar sands XL pipeline, Rosement, BP in the Gulf, etc., and all of it is going outside of the US while we get trashed.
also, it would be helpful if the author would have included info on where people can send their public comments, especially since the article is about lack of notice and accessibility to the so-called public meetings.
Rosemont mine has tried to buy off Tucson sense it’s very idea. The u of a has shamelessly promoted it through it channel 6 and considering it is always first to protect it’s dark sky’s for it’s observatories but yet has been strangely quiet about it knowing the mines lights will brighten the night sky’s tells me Rosemont has pumped millions into the school.
Rosemont will drain our precious CAP water, pollute Tucson with it’s dust then after selling all it’s copper to China, close up a shop and leave a big hole.
I would also like to know how much Rosemont want to be copper has contributed to the Forest Service’s holiday party.
If there is anything Rosemont want to be copper represents is that there needs to be some major changes in our federal mining laws.
In the interest of disclosure the poster above who uses the moniker “Chris J. Horquilla ” has been shilling for the Rosemont mine on the Star’s internet comments for several years now.
As someone who is mostly unconnected to this situation aside from having looked at it as a curious professional, I find it odd that people think there’s no benefit to having the mine in state. For instance: “all of it is going outside of the US while we get trashed”? You do realize that for the US to gain from this copper, it does in fact need to get sold elsewhere in the world?
The US is in serious economic trouble right now because it has been a massive importer of just about everything for the last 40 years–and we’ve racked up boatloads of debt to cover for this current account deficit. To counteract that, you have to export goods, materials, services, whatever. While a Canadian company might own the rights to this mine now (along with some Asian interests) the mining is going to be done by people in the area who can staff the project. Each of those people will get paid good hard cash by the company–it’s not like they can import Canadians to staff the mine–and if they could, guess what, those Canadians would be buying up houses and groceries and paying taxes on Arizona land–revenues for the state, juice for your economy.
And when the copper gets mined out of the ground–guess what, Arizona and the US get a slice of those profits via taxation as well.
I understand the “not in my back yard” mentality, and I get why people might be ticked off about this situation. But to deny that there’s any benefit to AZ and the US to getting this mine up and running, and spout of silly nothings like “the wealth all goes to a private company in Canada”, or comparing it to BP in the Gulf (there’s just about no comparison here…) make you look like a lunatic.
All I do is ask a simple question and I’m labeled a shill.
Now, who do you think has won this debate?
Well, “Chris”…I see you didn’t deny what I wrote. I’ll ask a question now. Hypothetically, don’t you think a person with some sort of vested interest in the mine’s development should disclose that fact instead of being deceptive and trying to come off as “Joe Citizen” expressing his opinion?
I certainly don’t know where you got that idea. I have no vested interest in the mine’s development.
I make comments in these forums, because I believe the public has a right to hear both sides of this issue.
It is time to approve the Operation & Mining Plan for Rosemont Copper. This debate has been going on since the late 1970’s with multiple EA’s & EIS’s completed for Rosemont Canyon. The NIMBY’s (not in my back yard), are as most indicate, just stalling for time, thus spending more of our tax dollars to help the Forest Service fend off the many delays and appeals. The conservation groups will make a killing with appeals adding more money to their war chest when the federal land management agencies can’t reply in a timely manner to their demands.
It seems to me the NIMBYs have put the environment first ahead of jobs and a chance to reduce our dependency on foreign coutries. It is funny that the environmentalists can put the envrironment first and yet a new unborn fetus second in their protests.
That would be because the earth needs to be cleaned up and spraying babies across the landscape does nothing to help our planet’s condition. It’s funny that fundamentalists worry more about the unborn than about the planet they insist the fetuses be brought into. Or it would be if it wasn’t so sad.
Mr. Horquilla is not just a shill, he’s a bald-faced liar. Not only have Pima County’s air quality experts looked at the evidence and decided that Rosemont will NOT be in compliance with air quality regulations, they have gone so far as to deny a key permit Rosemont needs to destroy the north end of the Santa Ritas with their stupid mine.
Moreover, it is absolute nonsense to say that experts or anyone else have been examining the evidence for five years. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement has been out for a grand total of LESS THAN THREE WEEKS. Not only has that 1,000-page document not yet been thoroughly analyzed by independent experts and found to be sterling, but even the Forest Service agrees with Pima County that Rosemont is currently not able to show that they can comply with relevant laws and regulations, despite the fact that much of the data and analysis in that document was actually produced by the mining company and its contractors and taken at face value by the Forest Service.
It is up to the citizens of southern Arizona, the vast majority of whom oppose this mine, to hold the agency accountable and force an honest, independent review of the lies, propaganda and misinformation being promoted by the company and its supporters. If you care about clean air and water and a diversified economy that is not beholden to the toxic, boom-bust cycle of mining, you need to show up at public hearings and tell the Forest Service what you think of this dangerous and profoundly stupid proposal.
This mine will be an ecological and environmental disaster. The pollution and other negative impacts on the area will last for thousands of years. The project needs to be stopped.