“I’ve almost no words to describe what Canadian mining giant Hudbay is doing to the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson, AZ,” said Russ McSpadden of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The first 20 seconds of the video show the Rosemont side, then the ridge line, then the west side. Hudbay plans to remove 2.5 miles of the ridge line — mountain top removal.”
- Hudbay of Canada’s controversial Rosemont open-pit copper mine in southern Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains was shut down on the east slope after a Forest Service approval was rejected in court. The “Rosemont decision” has had a widespread impact on other mine projects nationally.
- However, the company bought vast acres on the west side for its Copper World project over the last 18 months.
- Extensive grading started, but in February, all work stopped.
- The company now plans to use 13 million gallons of groundwater a day!
Listen to Jeff Herr on July 27
Find out how to stop the disastrous Rosemont Mine by attending the Tuesday, July 27 meeting of LD18. Jeff Herr of Save the Scenic Santa Ritas will talk about the status of lawsuits filed by SSSR, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, the Tohono O’odham Nation and other groups with the goal of stopping the Rosemont Mine. Click to get the Zoom link for the meeting.
Jeff Herr and three colleagues started a software company (TapClicks) in San Jose that offers digital marketing analytics. He then led digital for the Durango Herald and was publisher of a group of newspapers in Missouri before returning home. He is now the owner and publisher of Catalina Foothills Lifestyle magazine.
The mine, a project of Hudbay Minerals, Inc., was proposed to be sited in the Rosemont Valley, planned to be a mile wide, a mile-and-a-half long and more than 3,000 feet deep. Billions of tons of toxic waste excavated from the pit would be piled 600 to 800 feet high on thousands of acres of public lands surrounding the privately owned copper deposit, fouling the air and water and permanently damaging and destroying thousands of acres of habitat that supports a rich diversity of wildlife.
The Rosemont Mone does come to pass, insatiable groundwater pumping at the mine would lower the regional aquifer and possibly dry up nearby Cienega Creek, home to two endangered fish — the Gila chub and Gila topminnow — plus the Chiricahua leopard frog, southwestern willow flycatcher, Huachuca water umbel, and two species that recently earned Endangered Species protection, the northern Mexican garter snake and yellow-billed cuckoo.
The aquifer in the Rosemont Valley also supplies the Tucson basin with 20 percent of its natural groundwater recharge every year — a significant contribution to the city’s drinking-water supply that would be directly threatened by the mine’s pollution and vast groundwater pumping.
Click to get the Zoom link for the meeting — Tuesday July 27, 2023, at 6:30 pm.