Supervisor keeps fighting mine

Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll told a Green Valley audience Friday he’ll do whatever he can to prevent an Augusta Resource Corp. mine at Rosemont in the Santa Ritas, and told listeners there won’t be a bond election next November.

“As sure as I’m standing here, that bond issue is going to be delayed,” he said, adding, “We’re in a recession. It’s not going to happen.”

He told a meeting of the Community Water Action Committee that mines, the proposed on in the Santa Ritas and the Freeport McMoRan mine west of town are “incompatible with the Sonoran Desert” at this time.

Mines obliterate acres of prime desert land leaving behind mountains of waste material, and they consume too much of the desert’s water, said Carroll.

Addressing the feeling that the Augusta mine in the Santa Rita will be built, the supervisor said, “I don’t think anything is inevitable.”

And speaking of a proposed 180-house upscale development near Madera Canyon to the east, he said, “I believe the gateway to Madera Canon should be preserved.”

Owners of the property for at least the last 50 years are seeking county permission to develop their land.

Conservation groups want it left as now, a patch of the Sonoran Desert.

Carroll said the desert once lost, “is lost forever.”

“Once you lose it, you can’t get it back,” he said.

Regarding the proposed Santa Rita Mine, he said it’s time to “sunset that law,” the 1872 federal mining law that provides mining companies great leeway to mine on U.S. Forest Service land.

He spoke for more enforceable laws on using groundwater, such as through a regional water authority.

He said this area should be well represented on such an authority.

“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” he said.

The county has no authority over distribution of potable water, that’s left to Tucson and municipalities.

But the county is responsible for wastewater, the sewer system plants and piping.

In this searing, arid corner of Arizona he said that soon “effluent is going to be as valuable as groundwater.”

He also criticized Green Valley Community Water Co.’s arrangement with Augusta Resource to bring a 20-inch CAP pipeline to the area.

“CAP (Central Arizona Project) water is over-promised and undeliverable,” he said.

He was critical of mining companies use of groundwater, but said agriculture and golf courses aren’t as much a threat to groundwater, because “some of that water percolates back into the aquifer”—the underground water table.

Jlamb@gvnews.com | 547-9749