Former Rosemont lobbyist set to become acting Interior Secretary

U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s pending resignation opens the door for former Rosemont Copper Company lobbyist David Bernhardt to become acting Interior secretary at a pivotal time in the permitting process for Rosemont’s proposed massive open-pit copper mine.

Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc. owns Rosemont Copper, which is seeking permits to build the third largest open-pit copper mine in the United States in the Santa Rita Mountains on the Coronado National Forest 35 miles southeast of Tucson.

Bernhardt lobbied for the mine in the 1.78-million-acre Coronado National Forest from 2011 through 2015. Later, he remained a consultant for the project until he was appointed deputy Interior Secretary in 2017. Rosemont Copper Co. paid about $1.8 million in lobbying fees from 2011 to 2016 to a Denver law firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where Bernhardt was a shareholder, DCReport.org reported in Nov. 2016.

Bernhardt has recused himself from any involvement in decisions impacting former clients including Hudbay until Aug. 3, 2019, according to a conflict of interest statement he submitted to Interior officials in August 2017.

A seasoned political operative and former oil, gas, and mining lobbyist, Bernhardt has been the driving force in transforming Interior from a steward of the nation’s public lands and endangered species to primarily an agency designed to facilitate fossil fuel production and extractive industries.

Since Bernhardt was confirmed by the Senate in July 2017 as deputy Interior Secretary — after overcoming concerns about his cozy relationship with the oil and gas industry and numerous potential conflicts of interest — he has focused on implementing a series of executive orders issued by President Trump and Zinke regarding regulations that “burden” the energy industry, The Revelator, an online news publication produced by the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity reported in April.

The primary goal is to increase energy production from more than 245 million surface acres controlled by the department’s Bureau of Land Management and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights.

Bernhardt’s pending rise to become acting Interior secretary is alarming environmentalists who are demanding a close examination of Bernhardt’s many conflicts of interests.

“David Bernhardt is the ultimate ‘DC swamp creature’ who has gone round and round through the revolving door between industry and government,” The Western Values Project states on a webpage devoted to Bernhardt’s government and lobbyist record.

Hudbay only needs a Clean Water Act permit to clear the way for constructing the mile-wide, half-mile deep open pit mine that would dump millions of tons of waste rock and mine tailings on more than 2,500 acres of the Coronado National Forest.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is under the Department of the Army, is expected to make a final decision on whether to issue the permit in the near future, according to a Dec. 9 column opposing the project published by the Arizona Daily Star. The Corps’ Los Angeles District office recommended denying the permit in July 2016.

The Interior Department, while not directly involved in issuing permits, is playing an important role by what it does – or doesn’t do – during the lengthy and complicated mine approval process.

The department’s Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Geological Survey all have played major roles in the protracted controversy over the mine. Fish and Wildlife, for instance, wrote a key biological opinion concluding that the mine won’t jeopardize the existence of endangered species or illegally damage their critical habitat.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the Fish and Wildlife Service in September 2017 challenging the agency’s “biological opinion” which led to the approval of the mine by the U.S. Forest Service in June 2017. The Forest Service is also named as a defendant in the case filed in U.S. District Court. The suit is pending.

The BLM, meanwhile, has remained largely silent in the mining controversy despite the fact that the mine would threaten water supplies that help sustain Las Cienegas National Conservation Area that is managed by the BLM.

“Cienega Creek, with its perennial flow and lush riparian corridor, forms the lifeblood of the NCA and supports a diverse plant and animal community,” the BLM states on its website.

The NCA includes the northerly flowing Cienega Creek that cuts through the middle of the 45,000-acre federal preserve. In 2013, the BLM issued a “dissenting opinion” in the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed mine.

The mine is likely to have negative impacts on Cienega Creek by lowering the groundwater table and reducing the surface flows on important tributaries, including Empire Gulch and Davidson Canyon, BLM states in its comments to the Coronado National Forest’s preliminary Final Environmental Impact Statement.

“The FEIS documents that impacts to the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area are likely to occur which are detrimental to the purposes for which the Las Cienegas NCA has been established,” David Baker, BLM’s Tucson field manager, stated in an Aug. 15, 2013 letter to then Coronado National Forest Supervisor Jim Upchurch.

“The Bureau of Land Management would like the opportunity to provide a dissenting opinion to be included in publication of the FEIS concerning the nature, scope, and intensity of these impacts on NCA resources,” Baker stated.

BLM also made it clear the agency was determined to protect its water rights for the Las Cienegas NCA.

“BLM does not relinquish existing BLM surface and groundwater rights,” the agency repeated six times in its comments on the FEIS.

But since that time, the BLM has not made public any indication that it is willing to protect its water rights by formally opposing the mine.