Save the Scenic Santa Ritas

Fighting to protect the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains from the devastating impacts of mining.

It’s Not Over!

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A message from SSSR President Gayle Hartmann:

It’s Not Over!

We are disappointed but not surprised that the Army Corps of Engineers has granted the Clean Water Act 404 permit for the proposed Rosemont Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains.

In doing so, they rejected the recommendation from their own Los Angeles District office as well as ignoring the many serious concerns expressed by the EPA and other agencies.

As you may know, a case is working its way through Federal court in Tucson right now. The crux of the case is our contention that the Environmental Impact Statement and Coronado National Forest Service Record of Decision are based on numerous violations of federal law. We’ll keep you informed as this moves forward. If/when we win, the whole shebang goes back to the drawing board!

What you can do:

As you all know:

Water Matters More!

Clean Air Matters More!

Our Cultural Heritage Matters More!

The Economies of Local Communities Matter More!

A Scenic Highway Matters More!

Jaguars, Ocelots and Black Bears Matter More!

A Beautiful Mountain Matters More!

The World We Leave To Our Grandchildren and Great-grandchildren Matters More!

Many thanks to you all for your long-term support!

Keep the faith,

Gayle Hartmann, president

Save the Scenic Santa Ritas

Media Release: US Army Corps of Engineers Approves Water Permit for Rosemont Mine

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Opponents expected to file federal lawsuit challenging decision

(TUCSON, Ariz) The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today overturned an earlier agency recommendation to deny a Clean Water Act permit for the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine and instead approved the last remaining permit needed to construct the massive open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains on the Coronado National Forest southeast of Tucson.

Army Corps Brigadier General D. Peter Helmlinger rejected a July 2016 recommendation by the Corp’s Los Angeles district to deny the Sec. 404 Clean Water Act permit for Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc.’s $1.9 billion Rosemont mine.

The permit authorizes Hudbay to dump millions of tons of potentially toxic mine wastes on more the 2,500 acres of Coronado National Forest. The waste rock and mine tailings will obliterate desert washes and streams that provide significant recharge to the ground water supplies relied upon by residents of the Tucson metropolitan area.

“We are extremely disappointed that the Corps of Engineers apparently rejected the recommendation from their own District Engineers and years of technical analysis by the Corps, EPA, and many other agencies and entities,” said David Steele, spokesperson for Save the Scenic Santa Ritas. “Make no mistake about it – the pr spin and regulatory gymnastics that occurred to get to this decision do not change the fact that this mine is bad for southern Arizona. We are committed to continuing to fight it.”

Today’s decision represents a dramatic reversal by the U.S. Army Corps. In late 2016, General Helmlinger, wrote to Hudbay laying out that agency’s rationale for denying the permit. In the letter, he said:

In this case [the Rosemont Section 404 permit], the [Corps’ Los Angeles] District concluded that implementation of the proposed project would cause or contribute to violations of state water quality standards, and that minimization and mitigation measures, along with proposed monitoring were inadequate to ensure that degradation did not occur. The District further concluded that implementation of the proposed project would result in significant degradation of waters of the United States, as a result of a substantial reduction of functions and services and that the project would contribute to the degradation of Outstanding Arizona Waters.

The Corps’ decision also ignores serious concerns raised by Pima County, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, the Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, the Hopi Tribe, and a coalition of numerous Arizona conservation organizations. The EPA is on the record stating the mine should not be constructed as proposed. As recently as November 2017, the EPA strongly criticized Rosemont’s proposed Habitat Mitigation and Management Plan (HMMP), a key component of the mining company’s permit package. The EPA said, “[o]ur review of the HMMP affirms our position that the mitigation does not comply with EPA’s 404(b)(1) Guidelines and the requirements of the Mitigation Rule. The HMMP proposed by Rosemont fails to offset the proposed mine’s impacts to aquatic resources in the Cienega Creek watershed.”

The Corps decision is subject to challenge in federal courts. Opponents of the mine have vowed that they will pursue all legal means including litigation to stop the mine.

[Editors Note:  Click here for additional information regarding the regulatory record concerning the proposed Rosemont Mine.]

Save the Scenic Santa Ritas is a non-profit organization consisting of a coalition of business, homeowner, and conservation and recreational organizations working to protect the Santa Rita Mountains from the environmental degradation caused by mining and mineral exploration.

 

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Manuel and Elías: Rosemont mine would bring devastation to Southern Arizona

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By Edward Manuel and Richard Elías Special to the Arizona Daily Star – 

The moment of decision for the Rosemont Mine, with its mile-wide pit, toxic waste, roads, and processing facilities — and together with it, the fate of our cherished Santa Rita Mountains — is coming ever closer. Despite the destruction of the natural and cultural resources they are entrusted to protect, two of the three principal federal agencies involved in authorizing the project — the U. S. Forest Service and Arizona Department of Environmental Quality — already have approved the Rosemont Mine.

These agencies have attempted to placate us with assurances that the mine, slated to be one of the largest copper mines in the world, won’t harm the water, wildlife or the sacred character of the land on which native peoples have lived for thousands of years. They use the nice-sounding phrase “resolution of adverse effects” to imply that that the adverse impacts from the Rosemont mine can be easily “fixed” or mitigated.

This is what the U.S. Forest Service and Canadian mining company Hudbay would like us to believe — that there would be no reduction to our municipal water supply, no loss of wetlands, no degradation of surface water quality, no loss of watershed function, no impacts to our natural, cultural, and human environment, and no impacts to our community and our citizens. This could not be farther from the truth. There simply is no mitigation adequate to offset the impacts from an open pit mine that would destroy more than 5,000 acres of mostly Coronado National Forest land.

Read more…

Press Release: SSSR Requests Army Corps to Deny Rosemont Clean Water Act Permit or Conduct Required Environmental Study on the Mine’s Mitigation Plan

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(PDF version can be downloaded here)

SSSR Requests Army Corps to Deny Rosemont Clean Water Act Permit or Conduct Required Environmental Study on the Mine’s Mitigation Plan

(Tucson, Ariz.) With a permit decision looming, Save the Scenic Santa Ritas (SSSR) is requesting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deny a crucial permit needed for the proposed Rosemont Mine because of the project owners’ failure to present a mitigation plan that compensates for the project’s impacts to southern Arizona’s critical drinking water, wildlife, and other public values as required by the Clean Water Act (CWA).

“Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc. has failed to submit a mitigation plan that legally and adequately compensates for the massive destruction of wetlands, springs and seeps and other important, functioning aquatic resources that meet the CWA’s requirements under Section 404 of the law,” SSSR President Gayle Hartmann says. SSSR requested the Corps last December to conduct a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on Hudbay’s 800-page mitigation plan, but that hasn’t occurred.

“At this crucial juncture, the evidence is clear: The Corps must deny the Rosemont 404 permit,” Hartmann states in a letter to the Corps. “Short of that, the only other appropriate and legally defensible option is for the Corps to compel the initiation of a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).

SSSR released an index of detailed technical concerns included in the extensive record of federal, state, local and tribal objections against constructing the proposed open-pit copper mine.

This includes the Corps’ letter to Hudbay in December of 2016 acknowledging the Corps’ Los Angeles District office’s July 2016 recommendation to deny the permit.

The Santa Rita Mountains are one of the world’s most important biological treasures providing renewable water supplies to the Tucson metropolitan area and which are sacred to Native American tribes. The proposed mile-wide, half-mile deep open-pit copper mine would dump waste rock and mine tailings on more than 2,500 acres of Coronado National Forest, destroy habitat for a dozen threatened and endangered species and threaten water supplies that provide a significant amount of groundwater recharge in the Tucson basin.

[Editors Note: Copy of the letter to the U.S. Army Corps Engineers and corresponding attachment can be downloaded here.]

Save the Scenic Santa Ritas is a non-profit, community organization working to protect the Santa Rita Mountains from environmental degradation caused by mining and mineral exploration activities. For more information, go to ScenicSantaRitas.org, RosemontMineTruth.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

Media Release: Key elements of Rosemont water mitigation plan “commonly fail”

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Key elements of Rosemont water mitigation plan “commonly fail”

Noted expert reviews Rosemont habitat mitigation plan for essential water permit

(Tucson, Ariz.) Save the Scenic Santa Ritas (SSSR) today released a new report debunking claims by Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals, Inc. that the water resource impacts of its proposed Rosemont Mine can be mitigated.

Internationally recognized water expert Dr. Mathias Kondolf was retained by SSSR to analyze Hudbay’s proposed Sonoita Creek restoration plan that is part of Hudbay’s Final Habitat Mitigation and Monitoring Plan for the proposed open-pit copper mine planned for the Santa Rita Mountains on the Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona.

The Habitat Mitigation plan is an essential component of Hudbay’s Sec. 404 permit application for the Rosemont project. Hudbay must demonstrate that its mitigation plan will satisfactorily mitigate the extensive impacts of its proposed mine to affected regional water resources. SSSR submitted Kondolf’s report to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for its review prior to the Corps’ pending decision on whether to issue the 404 permit.

Dr. Kondolf is a Professor of Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley and is a noted expert on wetlands and river restoration. Kondolf previously reviewed Hudbay’s earlier Sonoita Creek mitigation plan and found that plan to be inadequate as well.

Hudbay subsequently modified its Sonoita Creek plan, which Kondolf analyzed for SSSR.

Kondolf’s key findings include:

  • The type of project Hudbay proposes for Sonoita Creek “commonly fail.” The plan involves a massive earth-moving project to create a new channel. Kondolf determined that consistent with “geomorphic principles and experience with similar artificial channel reconstructions elsewhere,” the new channel would very likely wash out…” during the initial moderate flows.
  • Hudbay’s proposed mitigation project would fill a portion of the existing Sonoita Creek channel, which is classified as a “Waters of the U.S.,” without corresponding mitigation. Contrary to the mining company’s assertions, Hudbay’s Sonoita Creek mitigation component is not demonstrably “ecologically superior” to this resource’s current condition.
  • The new channel Hudbay is proposing to build “would destroy existing riparian habitat, and fill material generated from the excavation would be spoiled on existing riparian habitat, also without mitigation.”

The Kondolf report is just the latest criticism leveled against the Rosemont project and its impacts on the scarce water resources in southern Arizona.

The Corps has long expressed serious concerns about the mile-wide, half-mile deep mine that would dump waste rock and tailings on more than 2,500 acres of Coronado National Forest, stating that Hudbay’s previous water mitigation plan was inadequate. The Corps’ Los Angeles district office recommended that the essential Sec. 404 permit be denied in July 2016. The Corps’ South Pacific Division, located in San Francisco, is currently reviewing Hudbay’s application.

In 2016, Pima County, where the mine is located, formally requested that the Army Corps deny the 404 permit. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has also issued letters to the Army Corps stating that the mine project should not move forward because of the lack of adequate mitigation.

The 404 permit is the last major permit Hudbay needs before it can begin construction on the mine proposed to be built in the Santa Rita Mountains on the Coronado National Forest 30 miles southeast of Tucson.

[Editors Note: Copy of the Kondolf report can be downloaded here]

Save the Scenic Santa Ritas is a non-profit, community organization working to protect the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains from environmental degradation caused by mining and mineral exploration activities. For more information, go to ScenicSantaRitas.org, RosemontMineTruth.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

 

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Litigation Update

Speaking of which (the appeal originally filed in Nov. 2017 challenging the Forest Service’s approval of the mine), we now have a schedule for that case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals – not definitive, but at least a general time frame:

 

After a lot of negotiating, the lawyers have come to an agreement on the final schedule of our cases before the 9th Circuit Appeals Court. Here is the updated schedule:

  • Feds opening brief due by 1 June 2020
  • Hudbay opening brief due by 15 June 2020
  • Then, our response by 3 September 2020
  • Feds optional reply brief by 2 November 2020
  • Hudbay optional reply brief by 9 November 2020

Click here for more updates