News Analysis: Augusta says it’s moving forward

Jamie Sturgess, the face of the oft-vilified Canadian mining concern Augusta Resource Corp., asserted last week that his company’s commitment to building a potentially very lucrative open-pit mine in the Santa Rita Mountains has not waned, despite the inhospitality of the county supervisors, residents near and far, and the clamorous environmental community.

His tone was respectful but skeptical when considering the so far only rumored plans of Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. to attempt to remove public lands within the Nogales Ranger District from mining consideration.

“We take everything an elected official says seriously,” he said. “But we haven’t heard anything more about that.”

The Federal Mining Act of 1872, and at least two subsequent reiterations, unambiguously encourage the mining of minerals on public lands, which is the only reason that Augusta has any interest at all in mining the area. According to the company’s recently released plan of operations for the open-pit mine, the project will impact just 530 acres of private land owned by Augusta, and 3,670 acres of Coronado National Forest land owned by the public.

It’s up to the Forest Service to decide if Augusta can use the public land, and the agency will do so only after a drawn-out process provided for under the National Environmental Protection Act, which almost always includes a lengthy public comment period.

The Forest Service will be charged generally with deciding if the mine would be the best use of the public land; however, following precedent and taking into account current and historical federal policy, it’s likely that the mine will get the green light.

Likely, yes, but not inevitable.

Asarco, a much bigger and more experienced company than Augusta, couldn’t get a mining project going in the late 1980s when it owned the Rosemont property; but then again copper prices weren’t consistently hovering around historical highs back then either, a state of affairs that isn’t expected to change anytime soon.

With China and India in a near constant state of development, and with every new high-tech trinket — products integral to sustaining the worldwide consumer economy — stuffed with copper, the demand for and the price of the useful ore is going to stay high.

Augusta won’t even start mining the area until, in a best-case scenario, 2010 (it plans to begin building and hiring in 2009 if all goes according to plan), so it’s obvious it and its consultants are bullish on copper for the foreseeable future.

Still, the company has gone to great pains to show that it takes nothing for granted.

Augusta officials have made much of their allotment of Central Arizona Project water, which comes across the desert in canals from the divvied-up Colorado River. They say the allotment will be used to replace the groundwater they take out, and they are taking that groundwater not from the basin to the east, where flows the beautiful and rare Cienega Creek, but from the Tucson basin, where they have promised (though it is an unbinding promise; the company is under no legal obligation to replace groundwater) to put back in 105 percent of what they take out.

If this seems like a kind of water shell game, that’s because it is. It’s all desert water, so to speak, and water, many argue, no matter where it comes from, is the most important of many resources that we don’t have to spare.

The total water usage for the life of the mine is expected to be around 100,000 acre-feet. To put that into perspective, an acre-foot of water is commonly held to be enough to serve a family of four for a year.

So what now?

The Forest Service has 60 days or so to review Augusta’s plan of operations and request any additional information.

After that there’ll be 90 to 120 days of “scoping meetings,” then the NEPA process gets under way. That usually takes somewhat longer than 18 months,

Meantime, Augusta must also apply for and receive an Aquifer Protection Permit from the state, a lengthy process in itself. All along, at every new step, there will be opportunities for the community to learn, ask questions, and make comments for the record. Whether dissenting voices will be heard remains to be seen.

One thing is abundantly clear, however. Augusta is going forward. It doesn’t want to sell the land for a tidy profit, Sturgess said. It wants to mine the land, relieving of its copper, molybdenum, and silver once and for all.

“By no means are we looking for anybody to pay us not to do this,” Sturgess said.

Tim Hull is a freelance writer. Contact him at trhull@gmail.com.

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