OpinionTrust in mining here toppled a long time agoOur view: Augusta Resource Corp. must still prove it will not harm pristine area TUCSON WEEKLY Tucson , Arizona | Published: 01.19.2007 The felling of San Manuel's twin smelter stacks can be seen as a metaphor for the crumbling of community trust in the entire mining industry. It's a trust that Augusta Resource Corp. must re-establish if it hopes to open an 800-acre open-pit copper mine south of Tucson. Wednesday, with a boom and a cloud of smoke, the 500-foot twin stacks of the former smelter complex at San Manuel slowly listed and crashed to the ground in a plume of dust. The stacks were a highly visible part of a 50-year mining and smelting operation about 45 miles northeast of Tucson. The Star's Richard Ducote reported in Wednesday's paper that at full production San Manuel's underground copper mine, a part of the former Magma Copper complex, was the largest in North America. During the smelter's lifetime, it produced 14 billion pounds of copper, Ducote reported. Economics, not lack of copper, brought the stacks down. Ducote reported that the world's biggest mining company, Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton, bought Magma for $2.4 billion in 1996. The plant was modernized, but the BHP honchos stopped production and began dismantling the facilities in 1999, when copper prices dipped to a record-low of 66 cents a pound. By the time copper prices rebounded, the mine's infrastructure was so chopped up there was no going back into production, though it could have been a lucrative venture had it continued. "The 1998 copper output from San Manuel, if sold at last year's average spot price of $3.05 a pound, would be worth $826 million," Ducote reported. When BHP shut down its mine in a flank of the Santa Catalina Mountains, resentment and mistrust among the former workers and the community remained. The sting of lost jobs and abandoned towns is hard to forget. In mining towns, mistrust lingers for generations. The vast Lavender Pit Mine in Bisbee and the towering slag heaps and tailings that pockmark the area at Clifton and Morenci are among the permanent reminders of mining's omnipresence in Southern Arizona. On Tuesday, the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to oppose mining at Rosemont Ranch in the Santa Rita Mountains. The vote was mainly symbolic. It has no impact on the mining proposal, though it allows politicians to earn points with conservationists. Even though the mine would be on private land, the Canadian-based company must receive a permit from the U.S. Forest Service because the mine's operation would depend on the surrounding Forest Service land. Augusta has promised to use technology that minimizes the mine's impact. In a guest opinion in Tuesday's Star, Jamie Sturgess, an Augusta vice president, pledged that the company would be a good steward of the land and meet Pima County's conservation guidelines. It plans to restore the land and revegetate it soon after the mine opens. The company has proposed a $50 million endowment for additional land for open space. Augusta plans to purchase Central Arizona Project water for the mine. The supervisors also asked Arizona's congressional delegation to protect the property. U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords told the Star's Editorial Board this week that "the Rosemont mine issue is one that has been an ongoing concern to the district. When it comes to having an open-pit copper mine in one of the most scenic valleys, with an industry that requires an extraordinary amount of water, we don't have enough water to assure a safe supply for the growing population that we have." The mining plan that Augusta develops for the Forest Service will go through a public input process, and an environmental impact study will be conducted before the permit is issued. Rosemont would be a modern mine; however, the broken trust of past mining operations lingers. Augusta must offer concrete evidence that it will not harm the pristine area it hopes to occupy and establish our community's and elected officials' trust if it hopes to successfully operate here.
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