The Rosemont Copper Mine

Colemans Coralroot

Gabriela Saucedo Mercer "is running for a seat that is targeted not just by Arizona Republicans and the state’s mining industry, but a seat targeted by Eric Cantor and House leadership as well.

"Gabriela Saucedo Mercer isn’t some random candidate that is going up against an entrenched Democrat in a district Republicans have written off.
Her opponent, Raul Grijalva, has been a thorn in the side of Republicans and business interests that want to execute mining in public lands."

-Bill Buck, CBS Denver

The Rosemont Copper Mine itself is apparently a very touchy issue for Mercer. It is certainly a complex one as this New York Times article will attest. The site sits on federal land, the Santa Rita Forest Reserve established in 1902 by President Theodore Roosevelt "and for fifty years the slopes of the Santa Rita’s were undisturbed by mining companies," according to this unidentified blogger. Non profit Save the Santa Ritas  is the area's watchdog, and you can find them on Facebook.

The region is subject to all sorts of federal protections. As a recipient of funds from the mine's operators, Mercer is beholden, in some way, to act on their behalf. As it turns out, there is some controversy over the proposed site, and primary among them are some very complicated water issues. Also the site is home to an indigenous orchid, but more importantly the techniques proposed for use at the mine are not only untested but potentially extremely toxic, according to The Center for Biological Diversity which filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to block progress at the site.

Blogger Tytalus illiustrates that "although the company claims it will conserve water by storing "dry-stack" tailings from the mine instead of a more water-intensive slurry, the obvious problem is that the mess could get rained on, washing pollutants into the soil and groundwater. The somewhat laughable counter-argument from Kathy Arnold, Rosemont’s vice president of environmental and regulatory affairs, is that somehow the rainwater all evaporates. This is kind of trivial to refute for anyone actually living in Arizona."

The mine is still lacking many permits, some of which have already been denied, but it seems Ms. Mercer has been selected to help Augusta Resource achieve its goals in bypassing all that bothersome red tape mumbo jumbo ... after she gets elected, of course. That's merely my opinion at this point ... you the reader will have to draw your own conclusions. Of course her opponent, Raul Grijalva, has a different perspective and posts a timeline of events and history here.

CD3 incumbent Raul Grijalva

Additionally "New congressional district lines put the planned Rosemont copper mine right outside the edge of Rep. Raúl Grijalva's district - but put Grijalva in the middle of the poltical fight" according to this Arizona Daily Star article. "The new Congressional District 3 includes all of Santa Cruz County, and the county's northern boundary cuts across the Santa Rita Mountains near Madera Canyon, about 10 miles southwest of the proposed mine site. Passionate supporters of the planned mine are making it a hot topic of the campaign, focusing on the jobs the project would create. Grijalva said Friday [May 25, 2012] that he is not against mining or against jobs, but he is against the Rosemont Mine plan. He is the only candidate in his race to take that stance."

Grijalva takes this stance despite healthy donations from unions, as his OpenSecrets.org page suggests.

"Congressman Grijalva needs to understand the importance of jobs" and "he needs to get out of the way" of Rosemont's plans, said Rick Grinnell, vice president of the Southern Arizona Business Coalition in this Arizona Daily Star article. "Grijalva said jobs are part of the Rosemont discussion, but so are environmental concerns including water and air quality. He said there would be a high cost to taxpayers for the cleanup of the mine when it closes. The union recognized the environmental concerns, but focused on jobs."

Residents turn out in force to oppose the Mine.

Jobs jobs jobs ... jobs jobs jobs ... where have we heard that before?

According to the article posted on Enews Park Forest on June 29, 2012, permits pending include "a Clean Water Act permit from the Army Corps of Engineers that is pending. The Coronado National Forest released a draft “environmental impact statement” for the mine in September, which has been severely criticized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as wholly inadequate and based on faulty science. In an extremely rare move, the EPA gave the impact statement the lowest possible rating and threatened to intervene if permitting for the mine proceeds. [emphasis added -Ed.] Some of the most contentious issues surrounding the mine include impacts on drinking-water supplies. Concerns include impacts on existing wells in the area; plans to fill more than 150 stream drainages on the mine site; and a plan, yet untested in dry climates, to dry-stack waste tailings, a technique that critics fear will result in toxic pollutants leaching into groundwater during heavy rain events."

Roger Featherstone, director of the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition, agrees. He said in an e-mail [to the New York Times], that trace remains of heavy metals and sulfur naturally occurring in ore-bearing rocks “are virtually impossible to remove.”

“Even if Augusta did a good job of it, the sheer mass of the tailings leave enough heavy metals to cause pollution to migrate into surface and groundwater,” he said.

Another site consideration is the "disturbance [of] more than 60 sites sacred to the Tohono O’odham American Indian nation, including some with human remains," according to the New York Times. The Arizona Daily Star says that "Prehistoric sites - dating to before 1700 A.D. - make up at least two-thirds of the archaeological and cultural resources on five alternative Rosemont mining plans ..."

Yet, Ms. Mercer finds the Rosemont Copper Mine is a perfect example of  jobs jobs jobs ...  She recently stated that she feels the mine would provide as many as 2,000 jobs.  The need for them is clear. In May, about 300 United Steel Workers protested incumbent Raul Grijalva's office to let him know they want those copper mine jobs. Despite the display, he remains steadfast against the project. "I understand they see me as an opponent," he said in this Daily Star article,  which goes on to say that "he is prepared for the mining industry lobby to make this election a referendum on the planned mine and to attack candidates who don't support it." .

Meanwhile, Augutsa Resources, the parent company for Rosemont Mine, is having it's own struggles. On July 5 2012, "Three Sonorans" posted an article echoing the Arizona Daily Star's report that Rosemont's financial difficulties "in securing the $404 million in long-term debt compounds the financial problems facing the Vancouver, B.C.- based speculative mining development company. The Arizona Daily Star reported on June 24 that Augusta had less than $20 million cash on hand and was spending at a rate where it would run out of money by the end of 2012. Augusta has repeatedly stated it was on the verge of securing the loans, but so far, that has not happened."

Augusta Resources

In that June 24 article "Augusta Facing a Financial Squeeze", The Arizona Daily Star notes that Augusta "has received no major new investments since March 2011. It recently won approval for a $10 million loan or line of credit from RK Mine Finance Fund that won't be available until the Rosemont Mine has all its permits." As noted above, many permits are not yet finalized. What that means to Augusta has yet to be determined.

Despite all this, The Arizona Corporation Commission recently voted 5-0, following hours of closed door dealings, to approve a plan for the13-mile power line to supply the site. "But it also requires Rosemont Copper to obtain four other permits and other government approvals" and will also "have to acquire right of way for the power line across the Santa Rita Experimental Range from the State Land Department, which owns the historic range." according to this AZ Capitol Times piece.

On July 25, The Tuscon Sentinel reports that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will conduct a year long review of  the  Sonoran talussnail and whether it is threatened by the mine. According to the article, "Kathy Arnold, the vice president for environmental and regulatory affairs at Rosemont Copper, said the mine will not harm the snail population, calling the [Center for Biological Diversity’s] claims a “fabrication” and “overstatements.” “The U.S. Forest Service is working through an environmental impact statement,” Arnold said. “They are the ones, along with the Fish and Wildlife Service, who will decide what kinds of impacts we will have, not the Center for Biological Diversity” which has filed a petition claiming that the snail is just one of several species of plants and animals threatened by the proposed mine southeast of Tucson.
 

I was able to find this article by Jonathan DuHamel in which he favors the mine as a benefit to the community. In the article Mr. DuHamel discloses that he is a "retired geologist who was employed by a major copper mining company, but [has] no connection to Rosemont Copper." In his article he goes on to say that "Delays such as this [with the EPA and other bureaucracies as described in his work] are unconscionable but seem to be the norm with the current administration and its policies of putting all possible impediments in the way of developing our natural resources. The bureaucracy is exacting the cost of lost opportunity upon us at a time when we could have been enjoying the economic stimulus of a new enterprise."

He makes a compelling argument. But digging a giant hole in the ground to extract copper is a lot like administering the death penalty ... once it's done, it's done. Personally I appreciate the stop gaps in the system, because they tend to reveal tiny little cracks ... This blogger, whose name I cannot locate on the page (please tell me who you are) has done an excellent job rolling this very complex issue into something digestable.

Water attorney Hugh Holob described in this detailed article that "if there is a shortage for whatever reason, the issue is NOT physical availability of water. It is how much will that water cost if the farms in Yuma need to be bought out so their water rights can be transferred to Phoenix and Tucson. There are also high priority Colorado River water supplies available for lease by the state’s Indian tribes.  Groundwater could also be pumped out of western Arizona into the CAP system to augment it, with severance damages paid to western Arizona interests.  None of these are cheap alternatives.  So it is not a supply issue, but a cost issue."

County, municipal and tribal speakers gathered in opposition.

Holub summarizes "Whether or not you think there ought to be another copper mine in the area, the water issue in Green Valley regarding Rosemont is very clear and documentable. The mining company is going way beyond any existing requirements to mitigate its impact on its neighbors. Rosemont is actually part of the solution to the water problem in Green Valley. That cannot be said for other big water users in the area who are exempt from paying to replenish their pumping right now."

Holub "represented a whole bunch of homeowners east of Green Valley where Rosemont’s proposed groundwater wells are located. [He] negotiated a well protection agreement on behalf of the homeowners. As a result of that 2 year effort, [he] learned a lot about what’s going on down that end of the Valley ... [He is] a water attorney and [has] been dealing with water issues in Southern Arizona since 1974."

The end result of all this nastiness is yet to be determined, but it has all the elements of a riveting political drama ... water rights, redrawing of district lines, donations to candidates on all sides of the issue, endangered species, angry citizens, angry environmentalists, geologists, lawyers, renegade politicians, Native burial sites, historic and scenic landscapes, and smack dab in the middle is this little red hot election for district 3. Regardless of the outcome, Gabriela Saucedo Mercer seems to have a vested interest ... she's flaoting on the outskirts of the issue, but the whirlpool is revving up speed and she's circling ever closer to the center of it.

One thing is certain; I am beginning to understand why she wanted me off her Facebook page.