A message from SSSR Executive Director John Dougherty
County vows to press forward after truck ordinance withdrawn
Dear SSSR supporters:
Thank you for sending emails to the Pima County Board of Supervisors requesting passage of an ordinance that would place restrictions on the number of heavy trucks traveling across more than 200 miles of unpaved county roads.
The board received about 200 messages in a few days encouraging passage of the ordinance that would limit the number of trucks on unpaved county roads to 75 per day to reduce air pollution. (See details of all letters submitted here.)
The Arizona Trucking Association attacked the ordinance and raised the specter that it would “bankrupt” Pima County and could lead to the loss of highway construction funds.
The Arizona Mining Association and Hudbay Minerals, the Toronto-based multi-national company planning to build Copper World, also opposed the ordinance.
After meeting with its attorneys, the board voted to remove the ordinance from the Dec. 16 agenda. The action prevented the public from hearing a presentation by the Pima County Health Department on the impact of dust on human health. (The presentation was subsequently posted on the Clerk of the Board’s website.)
Hudbay celebrated the decision in a Facebook post.
To be clear, there’s nothing collaborative about Hudbay’s bullheaded determination to destroy the Santa Rita Mountains and drain our aquifers only to export the copper overseas.
“Despite Hudbay’s self-congratulations on the Board of Supervisors’ removal of the dirt road ordinance from our agenda on December 16th, I want to be clear that the ordinance is not going away,” District 5 Supervisor Jen Allen told SSSR Friday. “We are spending extra time studying other communities’ lessons on how best to protect public health, water, and lands from the impacts of dust and dirt roads.”
District 2 Supervisor Matt Heinz said, “We are taking the feedback from the hearing and conducting more research into the potential ordinance to make it stronger and ensure that it will have the greatest impact on air quality preservation.”
The fact that Pima County staff prepared the ordinance and the strong support from board members are clear signals to the community – and to Hudbay – that there continues to be, and will always be, vehement opposition to Copper World.
SSSR will continue to work closely with Pima County to seek a path forward with an ordinance that would protect public health and the environment from the onslaught of more than 110 heavy trucks a day that Hudbay plans to unleash on seven miles of the unpaved Santa Rita Road through the heart of the Santa Rita Experimental Range.
The 52,000-acre Range is one of the most important open-space climate research centers in the United States and has been operating for 123 years. Arizona law requires it be operated for “ecological and rangeland research.”
Hudbay wants to defile the research center with an industrial corridor. Hudbay intends to industrialize a rural ranch road with 40,000 diesel trucks a year, construct a high-voltage powerline, and install a water pipeline that will transport more than 3 billion gallons of groundwater a year pumped from the aquifer beneath Sahuarita and Green Valley to Copper World at the western flank of the Santa Rita Mountains.
The more Hudbay pumps, the higher the water bills for thousands of citizens living in Green Valley and Sahuarita.
It's vital to understand that Hudbay’s Copper World is not a done deal. This is the latest, and most advanced, in a series of failed mining plans dating back more than 30 years.
Hudbay wants to destroy a mountain to mine copper ore that contains .54% copper. About 99% of what will be mined will end up as waste rock or toxic mine tailings dumped on Corona de Tucson’s doorstep.
Hudbay’s board of directors has not approved this mine. And Japanese mega-corporation Mitsubishi, a potential joint venture partner, has not closed on a proposed $600 million investment that would guarantee at least one-third of the copper produced at the mine would be exported overseas.
We will not allow Hudbay to destroy our mountains, drain our aquifers, pollute our air, leave behind a pit- lake that would evaporate 120 million gallons of ground water year forever, destroy two Outstanding Arizona Waters that supply Tucson with renewable fresh water supplies, and create a dangerous public nuisance from explosive laden trucks racing through our communities.
Join us for a community meeting at 1 PM on Jan. 10 at the Sahuarita Unified School District Auditorium to learn more about Hudbay’s plans to destroy our environment to reap massive profits while shifting the costs to you and future generations.
Please make a substantial donation to SSSR as we prepare for what will be a pivotal year in our three-decade effort to Save the Santa Rita Mountains.
Thank you for your continued support.
John Dougherty
Executive Director
Save the Scenic Santa Ritas Association