Resolution Copper wants to dig up a massive amount of copper ore beneath Oak Flat inside the Tonto National Forest. And by doing so, a site that some Apaches consider sacred may be destroyed. But the multinational company’s general manager, Vicky Peacey, insists mining will have a minimal footprint.
“It has such a small footprint compared to other mines that would be this scale,” she told KJZZ. “It’s a one-stop shop, really, and bang for your buck on the amount of copper it would produce relative to the small amount of environmental impact.”
But now imagine a nearly 2-mile crater – 1,000 feet deep – decimating Oak Flat. That’s what the U.S. Forest Service expects to occur. For context, Arizona’s famed Meteor Crater – east of Flagstaff, near Winslow – is only half that size.
“This is going to be twice as big as that,” said Henry C. Muñoz Sr. “That’s not like an attraction site. We’re going to have this huge hole over here that's going to be there forever.”
Right out of high school, Muñoz began working at the Magma Copper Mine in the town of Superior before it shut down in 1982. Then, the fifth-generation miner went to nearby San Manuel in Pinal County until that copper mine also shuttered in 1999.
“Copper was king, definitely,” Muñoz recalled. “Copper mining is not one of the big C’s like it was back in the day.”
Muñoz is a former three-term Superior councilman and now chairman of the Concerned Citizens and Retired Miners Coalition, made up of about 20 members. He claims Resolution Copper repeatedly denied that subsidence – which is essentially when the earth’s surface sinks in – would happen.
“‘Hey, don’t worry. There’s only going to be little to no subsidence,’” Muñoz recalled the mining company saying. “And if you work in a block cave mine, you know you can’t pull that wool over my eyes and say there isn’t, because it’s going to happen.”
But Muñoz says that was the company’s stance. That is, until the final environmental impact statement, or FEIS, was published in 2021. Then, Muñoz says Resolution Copper just tried to downplay it. Some of his neighbors, who want to see Superior booming again, hear his messages as merely doom-and-gloom.
“Everything that we had said about the mine, the bad part, was true. I’m not here to frighten you, I’m educating you,” he explained. “This is documented facts. You know, these are studies the government has done.”
“This is what the state is telling you,” added Muñoz. “I’m just relaying the message. Everything that I say comes from a bona fide source.”
That source, made up of six volumes and thousands of pages, is the FEIS. It clearly states that the project’s proposed block cave mining would result in this colossal subsidence crater by removing such a large volume of rock.
Subsidence could still be avoided with cut-and-fill mining, which Muñoz likened to a dental patient “getting your tooth drilled out and then getting it refilled.” The same concept would apply when extracting an ore body.
But due to the depth and size of this unique deposit, Resolution Copper told KJZZ that non-caving underground alternatives were “determined not to be practicable or suited” after consulting with mining experts while drafting the FEIS.
As a result, subsidence would still be expected to begin by the sixth year of mining and would continue growing over time. No damage is anticipated for Apache Leap, Devil’s Canyon and U.S. 60.
But subsidence would still be expected to eliminate numerous recreational opportunities – world-renowned rock climbing, cycling, hunting and camping – from large swaths of the Tonto National Forest.
Up to 14,300 acres of state and federal lands would no longer be open to the public, possibly even the Oak Flat campground, with much of that area “fenced off.”
As many as 17,000 acres of soil and vegetation may be disturbed for thousands of years, adding rare species of plants and animals with specific habitat requirements are “unlikely to return.”
“They believe everything the company tells them,” said Muñoz, warning Superior to not trust Resolution Copper. “So, you know, don’t bet your future on them.”
Neither should Apaches bet on the future of Oak Flat, according to Roger Featherstone, executive director of the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition.
For more than a decade, Featherstone has been attending Rio Tinto annual shareholder meetings in London. He thinks Resolution Copper, like the rest of the industry, “spends a heck of a lot more time mining shareholders than they do minerals.” In his eyes, the pair of foreign-owned companies that form Resolution Copper have bad reputations.
Both have made international headlines in recent years.
The 2015 dam collapse in the Brazilian city of Mariana at an iron ore mine owned by Samarco sent 1.6 billion cubic feet of waste flowing in thick red mud 400 miles to the Atlantic Ocean.
The death toll was 19.
For context, Resolution Copper’s proposed 3-mile long, 500-foot-tall earthen dam would contain close to 20 times the volume compared to the collapsed Brazilian tailings facility.
Samarco is made up of mining giants Vale and BHP – the latter of which is also the minority stakeholder in Resolution Copper. In October, nearly a decade after the fatal incident, these companies agreed to pay Brazil $30 billion to settle damages.
Five years after Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, Resolution Copper’s majority stakeholder – Rio Tinto – obliterated a pair of ancient aboriginal rock shelters in Western Australia, while blasting to expand an iron ore mine in 2020.
The destruction of 46,000-year-old dwellings in Juukan Gorge prompted investors to swiftly force Rio Tinto’s CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques and two other senior executives to step down.
Featherstone fears Oak Flat could be next.
“Rio Tinto and BHP promised that they’d never again cause the destruction of a sacred site,” he elaborated. “And of course, the mining plan is such that they could not do the project without destroying a Native American sacred site.”
Resolution Copper believes Oak Flat’s significance is still up for debate.
“We’ve had very meaningful dialogue, not just with tribes,” Peacey said. “And I think we have to, you know, really respect and acknowledge that there’s deeply and legitimately held differences of opinion within the San Carlos Apache Tribe about whether Oak Flat is sacred.”
The Fraser Institute, a conservative-leaning Canadian think tank, has been annually rating the global mining industry through its “Investment Attractiveness Index” since 1997.
Arizona sits in the top 10 – ranked 7th out of 86 jurisdictions worldwide – behind only Utah, Nevada, Saskatchewan, Western Australia, Quebec and Manitoba.
In the most recent index, published in May, surveyed miners expressed concern about the uncertainty surrounding which areas, like Oak Flat, may be protected from mining in the Grand Canyon State.
Either way, Resolution Copper told KJZZ the Oak Flat campground “will not be within the disturbed footprint (fracture zone) of subsidence.” However, the company has also promised to construct a new campground – should it need to be closed one day.
“The campground will remain open for as long as it is safe,” reads a statement from Resolution Copper. “That may be decades or in perpetuity.”
The FEIS states Oak Flat – which has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2016 – will be “directly and permanently damaged,” adding “its loss would be an indescribable hardship to those peoples.”
Although Resolution Copper doesn’t agree, Peacey says they’ve pledged to offset potential damage – even avoiding 70% of what the tribe defines as an Apache holy site and forgoing another 800 acres of mining claims by leaving Apache Leap alone.
She’s still hoping to find common ground with the San Carlos Apache Tribe.
“We can work together on just about anything, from cultural heritage to economic empowerment and generational wealth,” added Peacey. “We remain committed to open and honest conversations about the project. Our relationship with local communities and with tribes is long-term.”
Featherstone has his doubts.
“What I’m most worried about is the company getting approval – just screwing up the land and the water royally,” he said. “We all know that as soon as this project is over, the company would declare bankruptcy and walk away. I think that would be the biggest tragedy of all.”
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Watch a KJZZ panel discussion about Oak Flat — an area sacred to generations of Apaches that may soon be home to one of the largest copper mines in the world.
