Elected officials in southern Arizona are once more voicing concerns over Copper World, a controversial mine proposed less than 30 miles south of the Tucson metro by Toronto-based mining company, Hudbay Minerals.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors has sent a slew of letters to investors, including the Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Corporation, which owns a 30% stake in Copper World after committing $600 million to the joint venture earlier this year.
Penned by Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher, Hudbay executives and a pair of Canadian regulators were also told that the foreign-owned mining project poses “unresolved risks” to the Santa Rita Mountains — “an area of significant ecological, cultural and hydrologic importance ...”
“This is a county that embraces mining,” said Matt Heinz, vice chair of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. “We work with ASARCO. We partner with them, so this isn’t like a no-mining — not in my backyard — never ever. It’s just, why here?”
The letters were first made public by the nonprofit Save the Santa Ritas Association, which were mailed out by the Pima County Board of Supervisors just before Hudbay’s annual meeting of shareholders on Tuesday.
Last month, Hudbay bought 160 acres of auctioned state trust — east of Sahuarita and Green Valley — from the Arizona Land Department for just less than $1 million. This area is supposed to become Copper World’s future tailings site for mine waste.
The letters also bring attention to how Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, all six Tucson City Council members, three Pima County supervisors, four state legislators and two leaders from the Tohono O’odham Nation all previously disagreed with the land sell-off.
“I represent over 200,000 constituents. Many of them are living right next to where this is going to happen,” added Heinz. “And I don’t care if they’re my district or not. There are people in the area, there’s a school less than two miles from the site.”
The Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Hopi Tribe have also opposed previous iterations of the decades-old project, once named Rosemont. Now, Copper World sits on private land, but Hudbay has been looking to expand its footprint to the Coronado National Forest.
This $1.7 billion investment could generate up to 3,400 direct and indirect jobs in Arizona over two decades — in addition to $850 million in federal, state and local taxes and an average of roughly 187 million pounds of copper annually.
While the Mitsubishi Corporation declined to comment when asked by KJZZ, Hudbay wrote that “conflict between infrastructure development and environmental activists is the norm” in Pima County.
The Hudbay statement added that “rightly, these projects are scrutinized by neighbors and elected officials,” but mentioned how certain county board supervisors have been “resolute in their opposition to Copper World” despite the Canadian mining company's efforts to provide “real project information” to local leadership.
The Copper World team is drafting its response to the Pima County letter.
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