We, the leaders of Tohono O’odham Nation and Pascua Yaqui Tribes representing more than 50,000 Southern Arizonans, are outraged over the Arizona Daily Star’s Jan. 19 editorial endorsing the proposed Rosemont Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson.

Rather than taking the courageous position to oppose the mine and protect our natural resources and sacred sites, the Daily Star is succumbing to the illusion that as long as Rosemont prepares the required studies and issues meaningless paper promises there is nothing that can prevent the mine’s eventual construction.

We do not accept this shortsighted position and believe the mine will never be constructed because it is impossible for Rosemont to mitigate the mine’s devastating and permanent impacts to the land, water and air.

Unlike the Daily Star, we aren’t fooled by the tens of thousands of pages of studies and reports paid for by Rosemont and vague assurances that it will be an environmentally friendly copper mine.

We know that copper is needed in our modern economy. In fact, the Tohono O’odham Nation has direct experience with copper mining. But just because there is demand for copper, does not mean we should blindly construct a massive open-pit copper mine high on a mountainside that is an integral part of Southern Arizona’s watershed and a key wildlife corridor with no regard for its impacts.

There are places that just should not be mined, and the site of the proposed Rosemont Mine on the northeastern flank of the Santa Rita Mountains in the Coronado National Forest is one of those places.

No amount of public-relations spin can change the brutal truth that this mine will destroy our sacred lands known as Ce:wi Duag by the Tohono O’odham and Heweli Sewa Kawi by the Pascua Yaqui that link our ancestors to our future generations.

Furthermore, contrary to the Arizona Daily Star’s misguided editorial, Rosemont Copper has not yet met all of the regulatory requirements needed to build the mine. The most important outstanding permit is a Clean Water Act permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the denial of which could stop the project in its tracks.

There is serious doubt that Rosemont will ever obtain the Clean Water Act permit. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly told the corps that the Rosemont mine should not proceed as designed because of its negative impacts on surface and ground water. The EPA also has the power to veto the Clean Water Act permit if the corps chooses to issue one.

The regulatory process is far from over, and it makes little sense for the Daily Star to pretend that the mine’s construction is assured.

The Daily Star’s rush to judgment ignores the simple fact that the Rosemont Mine will cause the permanent destruction of a sacred mountain, gouge a half-mile-deep pit deep into the aquifer that will poison our groundwater and dump waste rock and mine tailings across thousands of acres of public lands, which will forever ruin our traditional cultural lands and desecrate the burial sites of our ancestors.

As if that weren’t enough, our members will no longer be able to gather plants for traditional medicine or basketmaking as those resources will be ravaged, too.

The Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui are not the only tribes that have expressed concerns over the desecration of cultural resources. Tribes across Arizona have weighed in with similar concerns, and to date none has signed the agreement that outlines how adverse effects to cultural resources will be resolved.

There can be no mitigation for this level of harm.

This is why both of our tribal governments have unanimously opposed this project. We will always oppose this destructive mine and we will never cease fighting it until it is stopped.


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Ned Norris Jr. is chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation. Peter Yucupicio is chairman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe.