Opponents of the Copper World Mine are suing to overturn both a right-of-way and its state-approved financial value in order to block construction of a mine tailings pipeline for the $1.3 billion project.
Filed this month in Maricopa County Superior Court, the lawsuit directly challenges an Oct. 8 decision by the state Land Department’s Board of Appeals that ratified the previously approved value of a right-of-way for the tailings pipeline and several other Copper World pipelines.
The lawsuit also alleges the Land Department improperly approved the actual right-of-way back in early 2023.
It’s the opponents’ second lawsuit concerning state action regarding the tailings pipeline. Their first lawsuit netted a partial victory but failed to lead to their ultimate goal, an overturning of the right-of-way.
Filing the suit are Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, the leading opposition group to the mine project, and Farmers Investment Co., which owns pecan groves and claims its groundwater supply would be harmed by groundwater pumping for the mine.
“The goal of the lawsuit is to overturn the department’s 2023 action to issue a right-of-way to Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals across environmentally protected state land on the Santa Rita Experimental Range,” said Rob Peters, director of Save the Scenic Santa Ritas. “The right-of-way was improperly granted … in contravention of state law protecting the Santa Rita Experimental Range, the state Constitution and departmental regulations.”
“Hudbay wants this right-of-way so it can transport and dump hundreds of millions of tons of toxic tailings next to the community of Corona de Tucson and immediately adjacent to the Santa Rita Experimental Range,” Peters said in a written statement.
Asked for comment, Land Department Legislative Policy Administrator Lynn Cordova said, “We do not comment on pending litigation.”
In s statement, Hudbay said, “The recently filed lawsuit by long time mining opponents FICO and SSSR is without merit. The company will move to intervene to defend the right of way issued by the State. The right of way was issued with ample authority and full procedural protections under the law.”
The Board of Appeals had approved the right-of-way’s value in December 2022. It was overturned in September 2024 by a Superior Court judge following an earlier lawsuit by mine opponents.
But the Land Department and its Board of Appeals declined last month to grant a request from opponents to use that court victory as a way to declare the right-of-way itself invalid.
At the time of the vote, board chairwoman Keri Silvyn of Tucson said the board had received 300 written comments from people asking that the right-of-way be rescinded. But “that’s not in the board’s purview,” Silvyn said of the department’s decision.
The Santa Rita Mountains site where the planned Copper World project by Hudbay Mineral Inc. would take shape.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Blaney had ruled the board’s 2022 decision was “null and void” because the state had violated the Open Meetings Law, by failing to disclose that the right-of-way was for a mine tailings pipeline as well as other features. In total, the right-of-way allows for six above-ground pipelines for various purposes as well as an overhead electric transmission line and a fiber optic communication line, the lawsuit said.
The pipeline would cut through 11 acres of the 52,000-acre, state-owned Santa Rita Experimental Range in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson. The right-of-way for Hudbay was granted by the State Land Commissioner’s Office in January 2023.
At the October Board of Appeals meeting, Deputy Land Commissioner Jim Perry termed the department’s original request for a valuation approval a “routine request.”
But the new lawsuit alleges the approval of both the right-of-way and its value violate state law, the State Constitution and various other laws and rules. It claims the right-of-way approval violated:
— A 1988 state law that transferred the experimental range from the federal government to the state of Arizona, which said the range was to be used only for “ecological and rangeland research purposes.”
— A state constitutional provision making it a breach of trust for land to be disposed of “for any object” other than for what it was originally created. A mine tailings pipeline was not one of the “objects” for which the range was created, the suit says.
— A provision of the state administrative code that says a proposed use “cannot conflict with other existing rights.” The tailings pipeline would conflict with the range’s stated purpose of “ecological and research purposes, the suit says.
— Another state law because it was issued on land which the land commissioner had “no charge or control over.” That’s because another law, the 1988 state law that created the experimental range, gave control over the property to the University of Arizona, the suit says.
The tailings pipeline is an important part of the Copper World project to Hudbay because it would connect the physical mine site with Hudbay-owned private lands where tailings would be disposed of.
If fully approved and built, Copper World will contain six open pits and a host of related mine facilities, and employ 400 full-time workers. Indirectly, the company has said the mine will create jobs for another 3,100 people.
Hudbay had originally planned to transfer the tailings through U.S. Bureau of Land Management Land. It backed off that idea because of the lengthy, complex approval process that would have been involved for the pipeline under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Mine opponents have said they’re concerned about a spill of tailings into the experimental range if the pipeline were to rupture.
The earlier suit by the opponents said mine tailings are “finely ground toxic waste created during ore processing. Copper tailings in particular often contain arsenic, lead, cadmium and uranium, among other metals. Tailings pipelines sometimes rupture, leak or otherwise fail, causing environmental harm and hazards to human health.”
Hudbay has disputed the characterization of copper tailings as toxic, saying, “Tailings are not ‘toxic’ under any normal understanding of the word.
“Tailings are ground up rock after all of the recoverable metals have been separated out. They are transported through pipelines as a ‘slurry’, which is simply the ground up rock mixed with water,” said Hudbay.
The company has said its computer modeling concluded that tailings seepage is expected to meet all state aquifer water quality standards and the Environmental Protection Agency’s primary drinking water standards.
