Harper’s turns its sharp eye on Rosemont and Resolution mines

The September issue of Harper’s Magazine reports on proposals by foreign companies to construct two massive copper mines on environmentally sensitive landscapes held sacred by Arizona Native American tribes.

Written by Tucson-based journalist Mort Rosenblum and graced with stunning photography by Samuel James, the feature article provides a comprehensive and insightful overview of the monumental scale of modern copper mining and the threats posed by the proposed Rosemont and Resolution copper projects.

“Modern copper mines devastate landscapes, typically depleting huge amounts of water and covering vast areas with piles of toxic mine waste, and virtually always discharging harmful pollutants,” writes Rosenblum.

Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc. is seeking permits to construct the $1.9 billion Rosemont open-pit copper mine on the Coronado National Forest in the Santa Rita Mountains 30 miles southeast of Tucson.

Rosenblum cites a 2012 U.S. Bureau of Land Management assessment of the environmental impacts of Rosemont on the desert washes, seeps and springs that feed into Cienega Creek which is a crucial source of drinking water for the Tucson metropolitan area:

“The impacts to groundwater, the BLM assessment continued, ‘are likely to cause the slow but eventual collapse of the aquatic ecosystem,’ a kind of collapse that is ‘irreversible, cannot be mitigated and will last for centuries.’”

The mine’s potential impact on the Tohono O’odham Nation west of Tucson is equally devastating, Rosenblum reports.

“For the Tohono O’odham tribe, whose traditional lands include the mine site, the issues go far beyond ecology. ‘The destruction is forever,’ Edward Manuel, the tribal chairman, told me. ‘Our wealth is the land. If we lose what is sacred to us, what is left for our children?'”

The Tohono O’odham, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and the Hopi Tribe sued the U.S. Forest Service in U.S. District Court last April challenging the agency’s approval of Hudbay’s plan to build the mile-wide, half-mile deep open pit mine that would dump waste rock and tailings on more than 2, 500 acres of forest land.

Last November, four conservation groups filed suit alleging the mine would violate nearly a dozen state and federal laws, threaten critical water resources and destroy Coronado National Forest land.

Two months earlier, the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s issuance of a biological report that concluded the mine would not have a significant impact on endangered species including the jaguar.

Rosenblum also examines the cultural battle between Arizona tribes and two giant multi-national mining companies planning to build the Resolution underground copper mine 60 miles east of Phoenix in the Superstition Mountains.

The mine is expected to cause massive land subsidence that will destroy Oak Flat, “a 760-acre area of great cultural and religious significance to the Apache, with petroglyphs and other evidence of native presence dating back centuries,” Harper’s reports. Environmental experts are concerned the mining could also damage Apache Leap, a cliff held sacred by Apaches.

“Owned by London-based Rio Tinto and the Australian conglomerate BHP, Resolution would dig down 7,000 feet from an area near the edge of Apache Leap, a bluff where legend holds that Apache warriors jumped to their deaths rather than be captured by the approaching US Cavalry,” the magazine reports.

The story notes how the General Mining Law of 1872 continues to provide lucrative incentives for constructing mines on Forest Service and BLM land that dominates vast areas of the West and the lack of political resolve to reform the law.

It also drives home the point that America’s nonrenewable resources are being extracted by foreign companies that harvest tens of billions of dollars of profits while leaving the staggering environmental devastation and ongoing pollution for local communities to address.