The company thatβs considering open-pit mining on the Santa Rita Mountainsβ west slope has obtained extensive private land holdings there. It says theyβre large enough to accommodate waste-rock and tailings disposal left over after copper is extracted.
Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc. says it owns about 2,400 acres of private land on the west slope, which faces Sahuarita and Green Valley. Thatβs besides the 1,250 acres it has acquired through patented mining claims and where it is now drilling for copper. It calls this area Copper World, which includes four copper deposits it is exploring through drilling.
That area is separate from the Rosemont copper deposit that Hudbay and three predecessor companies have tried without success since the 1980s to mine on the Santa Ritasβ east slope, facing the Sonoita Highway.
The patented claims, filed long ago by prior companies and individuals, allowed the private parties to obtain federal land for the purpose of mineral exploration at a low price.
Hudbay officials also say they hope to explore βin the futureβ for possible copper deposits on thousands of acres of nearby federal lands on the west slope to which it has filed mining claims but doesnβt own. Those claims are known as unpatented claims. Unlike the patented claims, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service regulate exploration and mining on them.
Hudbay officials say they wonβt have much in specifics as to how they might use any of these lands until the company completes its drilling and finishes a preliminary economic assessment of the west slope deposits in the first half of 2022.
Could reduce government oversight
Rosemontβs leading environmental opponents say theyβre surprised and very concerned at the scale of the private land holdings the company has accumulated over the years. They say mining on the west slope would destroy habitat for jaguars and other wildlife just as much as a Rosemont Mine on the east slope would, and will use large amounts of water.
Of particular concern to these groups β Save the Scenic Santa Ritas and the Center for Biological Diversity β is the possibility that the company could build a mine totally on private land. That would greatly reduce the amount of government oversight of a project there, the opponents say.
βTheyβre going to be using a huge amount of water that we donβt have and causing devastation to the mountain,β said Gayle Hartmann, president of Save the Scenic Santa Ritas.
Company officials have said they wonβt be able to discuss potential water supplies for a possible west slope mine until theyβre further along in planning for it.
How much Hudbay will be able to depend on private land alone for a west slope project isnβt yet clear.
While its west-slope holdings of about 3,650 total acres are significant, they donβt match the 5,431 acres of private, federal and state land that the Forest Service said in 2017 would be disturbed for construction of Rosemont, the disposal of mine wastes and building of various structures, roads and other facilities needed for that mining complex.
At Rosemont, about 2,450 acres are planned just for an open pit and for mine waste disposal.
If Hudbay wanted to build a west slope mine and associated facilities on the scale of Rosemont, it would also have to rely on some federal land there, increasing potential regulatory issues.
Asked about that by the Star, Hudbay replied: βWe are in the process of investigating a number of scenarios that could lead to a mine plan for Copper World.β
It is important to note that Copper Worldβs strip ratio β a measure of how much waste material must be removed to extract a specific amount of copper β is significantly less than Rosemontβs, the company said. That means less waste rock would be generated and stored than at Rosemont.
Whatβs clear is that Hudbay plans a major push to mine the Copper World deposits. The west slope mining could be an alternative to Rosemont or in addition to it, should a federal court ruling now blocking Rosemontβs construction be overturned, the company has said.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing in February on an appeal by Hudbay and the federal government of that ruling, issued in late July 2019 by a federal judge in Tucson.
βAlthough we see that thereβs some time required in order to resolve Rosemont, regardless of whether we get the decision now or not, Copper World is a very, very, very compelling alternative, if we need an alternative or a very, very compelling add-on,β Hudbay CEO Peter Kukielski told a group of mining industry analysts last month. βBut for sure, we are going to push Copper World forward very hard.β
CEO touts benefits of using private land
Hudbayβs predecessor, Augusta Resource Corp., acquired the 1,250 acres of patented mining claim lands when it bought a total of 2,760 acres in the Santa Ritas back in 2005 for $20 million as a first step toward building the Rosemont project.
That land was purchased from investor and developer Yoram Levy, whose earlier efforts to sell the land to Pima County were rejected. County officials said Levyβs asking price at the time of $11 million was excessive compared to earlier sale prices for it.
Drilling on the west-slope lands began about a year ago. Hudbay officials have since reported that the first round of drilling confirmed the presence of four copper deposits in the Copper World area. The deposits had higher grades of copper lying closer to the surface than was discovered at Rosemont, the company has said.
Since then, Hudbay has said it plans to spend $35 million total by the end of 2021 on drilling and studies of the Copper World mineral resource.
βSome of those drill results that I mentioned are pretty outstanding and the most interesting feature is that mineralization starts from surface. So clearly, itβs something that you can get into right away,β Kukielski said during the companyβs Aug. 9 conference call with analysts.
The company is also evaluating several other areas on private lands it owns outside the mining claims areas that itβs identified as βtargetsβ for possible copper discoveries through geophysical surveys, Kukielski told analysts. Geophysical surveys use ground-based sensing techniques to produce detailed images or maps of areas.
Since Augusta bought the original Rosemont site in 2005, Augusta and Hudbay have acquired at least $15 million worth of other private land on the west slope, either directly or through third-party purchases, Pima County land records show.
Hudbay through its Arizona subsidiary Rosemont Copper bought 35 acres from three landowners just this year, with a $1 million purchase of 20 acres occurring last month.
In the Aug. 9 call, CEO Kukielski stressed the benefits, from the companyβs standpoint, of doing a mine on private land versus public land, due to the lesser amount of government oversight and control.
The company would need only two major state permits, one regulating air quality and the other aimed at protecting the underlying aquifer from contamination.
A surveyor stakes sites in the Copper World exploration area on the west slope of the Santa Rita Mountains.Β
Those permits are βmuch simplerβ than the federal permits required for Rosemont, he said. βI would venture to guessβ it would take Hudbay one to two years to obtain the permits, he said.
It took 12 years for Hudbay and Augusta to obtain permits from the Forest Service and the Army Corps for Rosemont.
βThose are the two types of permits we successfully defended in the past at Rosemont,β said Cashel Meagher, Hudbayβs vice president and chief operating officer, speaking of the two state permits, Rosemontβs air quality and aquifer protection permits. The company and the state won in court when opponents challenged those permits.
Government land might also be needed
But at the same time, Meagher told analysts the exploration efforts are also trying to learn if the Copper World discoveries βextend onto government land.β
Hudbayβs west-slope properties are intermingled, checkerboard style, with Bureau of Land Management lands.
On the federal lands, Hudbay has 101 nonpatented mining claims, including eight it located this year, BLM said. Those claims also include 18 that Rosemont Copper purchased rights to this year from another private company, Sahuarita Mining 386 Ltd.
To the west and north of Hudbayβs holdings lies the massive state-owned, University of Arizona-run Santa Rita Experimental Range, a 52,000-acre parcel used for long-term experimental research on grasslands and desert scrubs and also for cattle grazing.
So far, BLM hasnβt received any inquiries from the mining company about possible exploration of the 101 claims, bureau spokeswoman June Lowery said.
Also, Hudbay said itβs not interested in exploring the state lands for copper.
If Hudbay wants to explore on more than 5 acres or conduct mining on the BLM lands, it must submit a plan of operations that, like Rosemontβs plan, would be subject to public comment, Lowery said.
That activity would also require environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act, with the level of analysis dependent on how extensive Hudbayβs operations would be.
BLMβs standard for approving mining is also, in the eyes of some observers, stricter than that of the Forest Service. The service has said it canβt legally say βnoβ to a proposed mine on its land unless it will violate environmental laws. BLM, by contrast, says it canβt approve a mining plan until determining the proposed plan wonβt cause βunnecessary or undue degradation.β
Longtime private engineering consultant Jim Kuipers told the Star that βyou have hit the nail on the headβ in asking about the importance of the company avoiding public lands.
Arizona has mining-friendly policies
When it comes to state permitting, βArizona is perhaps the most industry-friendly in the U.S.,β said Kuipers, who reviewed the Rosemont project as an Environmental Protection Agency consultant from 2009 through 2017. Heβs also worked for other government agencies, tribes, conservation groups and mining companies during a 40-year career.
Arizona gets high marks in the latest annual survey from a private group ranking attractiveness to mining companies of states, Canadian provinces and other government entities. Itβs conducted by the Fraser Institute, a nonprofit Canadian research group with a conservative-libertarian bent.
Fraserβs February 2021 survey ranked Arizona seventh among 77 government jurisdictions for mining-friendly policies. Taking into account the quality of mineral geology, along with policies, Arizona ranked second, the institute said.
It might be possible but would be challenging for Hudbay to avoid putting waste rock and tailings on public land while mining on private land in a checkerboard property ownership setting, Kuipers said.
βHowever, that has been done elsewhere,β he said, citing Asarcoβs Mission Mine complex in Sahuarita where the comapny leased land from the Tohono OβOdham Nation to avoid using public land for waste rock disposal, Kuipers said.
βVery disturbing,β mine opponent says
To environmentalist Randy Serraglio, βitβs automatically a concern when a mining company starts snapping up private land. It means theyβre looking at destroying it for profit.β
βThe Santa Ritas are a cohesive ecosystem. Just because they are (now exploring) on the west side and not the east side doesnβt mean no impact,β said Serraglio, a conservation advocate for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.
Most of Hudbayβs west-slope land was left out of the federally designated critical habitat for the endangered jaguar. But since its land is surrounded by critical habitat on three sides, Serraglio said noise, blasting activities, truck traffic and lights from a copper mine could hurt the critical habitatβs usefulness to the jaguar.
Hartmann, president of Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, found it βvery disturbingβ to learn Hudbay owns that much land on the west slope. But she said it might be hard for the company to access some of it for mining because it will have to cross BLM land to reach it.
βThis is going to be a lot of concern for people who live on the west side of the Santa Ritas,β said Hartmann.
Fortunately, in Hartmannβs view, a federal judge in Tucson has thrown out the Trump administrationβs rule that removed any federal authority over streams and washes that only carry water after rains, which exist on the west slope. That means if Hudbay needs to discharge any fill material into the washes, it will need a federal Clean Water Act permit.
βThere has to be some consideration for this, given there are springs on the west side,β she said. βTheyβve been mapped and weβve gone out there.β
Size of mine will be key
Hudbayβs ability to build a mine complete with disposal facilities on the west slope will depend on the size of the mine it wants, said Brad Ross, a University of Arizona professor of practice in mining and geological engineering.
βMines can be from 10 acres on up. The land position always dictates how large of a mine that you can have,β he said. βBut you can certainly build a mine on that much space. I think youβve got to just listen to what they are saying.β
βUntil we do (more) drilling we donβt have any idea if there will be a mine or how large it will be,β said Ross, a registered mining engineer with 40 years experience in mining. He also teaches a course in engineering and sustainable development that discusses mining.
To understand impacts of a mine like that, he said, βthatβs why you do environmental impact statements and such.
βThereβs always going to be a debate as to whether to produce that copper. But we as a society are demanding more and more copper every year. Thatβs going to have to come from someplace,β he said. βThe key is, how do you minimize the impact?β
That Hudbay is drilling in an historic underground mining district makes sense, he added. The early underground mining districts had to have almost 5% copper in the ore deposits to be economically worthwhile, he said.
βYou canβt tell at this point if itβs economically recoverable. Thereβs too little information to tell,β Ross said. βThat takes a qualified person or competent person to do that type of analysis. It takes a huge effort.β
