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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(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.