Debate flares over Santa Ritas mine It's doable, says company; no way, say enviros By Thomas Stauffer ARIZONA DAILY STAR Tucson , Arizona | Published: 11.07.2005 Results from the first three holes drilled at a site in the Santa Rita Mountains have encouraged the Canadian mining-exploration firm that bought the land in June as a potential copper mine. But an open-pit mine at Rosemont Ranch, about 25 miles south of Tucson, is an outcome that stakeholders and concerned citizens will fight tooth and nail to thwart, said a member of the Sky Island Alliance. Recent drilling results concur with earlier work done by Tucson-based Asarco LLC and other mining companies on the property, said Gil Clausen, president and CEO of Vancouver, British Columbia-based Augusta Resource Corp. "This is all part of confirming the historic work done on the property, and so far, all the holes are coming in better than the average grade," he said. "We're very pleased with the results to date." Augusta, a publicly traded company formed last year, bought 2,700 acres known as Rosemont Ranch from local developer Triangle Ventures LLC for $20.8 million in June. Pima County had considered buying the property to preserve the area, but a citizens advisory committee considered what was then an $11.5 million price tag too high, and the parcel slipped down the list of land the county will use bond money to spare from development. A preliminary feasibility study won't be finished until February, and will be followed by a full feasibility study that will require the balance of 2006, Clausen said. Even under a best-case scenario, it would be 2009 before an open-pit mine is producing copper at the site, he said. A report completed in April by retired environmental consultant Priscilla Robinson presents a contradictory picture of the deposit's prospects. Robinson characterized the ore body as a "modest-sized, inconveniently located copper deposit with slightly less than average-grade ore, no water and insufficient space for a mine." A local mining consultant said he questioned Robinson's ability to adequately assess the mineral potential of the property, but agreed that space limitations may be an obstacle. "It's a reasonable prospect that's never been developed for one reason or another," said George Leaming, owner of the Marana-based Western Economic Analysis Center. "I think what this company is doing with these drill holes is looking for an extension of the ore body that everyone has known about off to the east." An open-pit mine requires a considerable footprint, not just for the pit but for tailings piles and leach fields, Leaming said. "We just cannot imagine how they're going to put an open-pit copper mine in this scattered array of parcels they own," said Matt Skroch, executive director of Sky Island Alliance. "They just don't have the acreage without a land swap." Such a deal would involve trading company-owned property for contiguous U.S. Forest Service land, Skroch said. While Augusta might consider a land deal, the project does not depend on one, said Jamie Sturgess, Augusta's vice president of projects and environment. "What we're attempting to do in our planning process is come up with a straightforward process that will not require a land swap," he said. Sturgess said he has worked on permitting mines for more than 30 years, and that Rosemont is a good domestic ore deposit. "There are not a lot of them that have been explored to this level and haven't been either developed or initiated, and it's in this country, which I think is exciting," Sturgess said from his Denver office. "We need to have some internal sources of copper to replace the ones that are depleted." Depleted domestic sources notwithstanding, building public consensus for a copper mine in the area will be an exercise in futility, no matter how environmentally sensitive the company pledges to be, Skroch said. "The public has spoken for years as to whether there will be mining in the Santa Ritas, and the answer has been a resounding no," he said. ● Contact reporter Thomas Stauffer at 573-4197 or at [email protected].
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