Earlier last year, Darrin Lewis paid $ 800,000 for a hardware store in a small Arizona town where mining giant Rio Tinto Plc (RIO.L) hopes to build one of the world’s largest underground copper mines. .
Rio buys materials from Lewis’s Superior Hardware & Lumber for my resolution site, accounting for a third of the store’s sales and helping keep it afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.
But US President Joe Biden suspended the mining project last month in response to concerns from Native Americans that it would destroy the sacred land and environmentalists who worry it will swallow water in a drought-stricken state.
This has fueled anxiety among Lewis and others in Superior, Arizona, who want to reap the economic benefits of a mine that would harvest more than 40 billion pounds of copper.
“I sank everything I have in this place,” said Lewis, surrounded by hammer drills, keys and other goods in his shop. “It would absolutely destroy us if this mine didn’t open.”
Interrupting the project, Biden overturned a decision by his predecessor Donald Trump to give Rio land for the mine. Biden ordered several government analyzes of the project.
The ongoing fight pits conservatives and Native Americans against local officials and residents who support its economic benefits. The complex debate is a harbinger of the struggles that will follow, as the US aims to build more electric vehicles that use twice as much copper as those with internal combustion engines. The resolution mine could fill about 25% of the demand for American cooperation.
The Arizona dispute centers on Oak Flat Campground, which some Apaches consider home to deities known as Ga’an. Religious ceremonies are held on site near the San Carlos Apache Reservation to celebrate teenage girls. Many Apaches have ancestors buried under volcanic rock.
In 2014, the Obama administration and Congress launched a complex process to provide Rio with 3,000 acres of federal state-owned land, including camping, in exchange for 4,500 acres that Rio owns nearby. Biden interrupted this transfer.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
“If Rio gets this place, then the mine will kill the angels and deities who live here,” said Wendsler Nosie, a member of the Apache San Carlos tribe who led a protest camp for 18 months at the site. A sign there describes the earth, known as Chi’chil Bildagoteel in the Western Apache language, as a physical embodiment of the spirit of the earth.
Nosie organized broad support for his cause, helped by increasing global attention to the rights of indigenous peoples. Rio itself fueled the cause last year, when it exploded culturally significant aboriginal rock shelters in Australia.
If the land exchange is approved, Rio said it will keep the land open for the next few decades before the underground mine causes a crater to swallow the site. The company also said it would seek tribal consent for the project and study ways to avoid challenging the crater.
“The land exchange gives us the opportunity to collect more data, then we can refine our plans and look for ways to continue to avoid and minimize damage to the site,” said Vicky Peacey, senior project manager. Rio.
Rio, based in Australia and the United Kingdom, has also promised to preserve other cultural sites, including Apache Leap, a rocky cliff overlooking the Superior and where Apache jumped to death to avoid capture by U.S. troops. at the end of the 19th century.
“AMERICAN COPPER”
Politicians in Superior – a town of 3,000 people who voted nearly two to one for Democrat Biden in November last year in a Republican-majority county – are now urging the president to change his mind.
The land exchange, if Biden approves, would also allow the Superior City to buy more than 600 acres, which officials say is crucial to diversifying the local economy by expanding the airport, developing an industrial park and building affordable housing. accessible.
“President Biden will have to make some courageous decisions,” said Democrat Mayor Mila Besich.
Mining is key to Biden’s goal of expanding EV production, she said. “We will need more American copper,” she said.
While the region has long been popular with hikers and caravans, it is better known as the “Copper Corridor” with me from Freeport-McMoRan Inc (FCX.N) and others.
The closure of the Magma Copper Mine in 1996 devastated the Superior’s economy. Officials have now put their hopes in the Resolution. Since the copper mine was first discovered in 1995, Rio and minority partner BHP Group Plc (BHPB.L) have spent more than $ 2 billion digging a mine exploration well and dismantling an old smelter. Magma. They have not yet produced any copper. BHP declined to comment.
More than half of the buildings in the center of Superior are empty. Several Tesla Inc charging stations (TSLA.O) allude to the city’s aspirations to be part of the EV boom. Nikola Corp (NKLA.O) and Lucid Motors are building their own EV plants less than 80 miles away.
Rio has promised to hire 1,400 full-time workers at an average annual salary of more than $ 100,000. This represents almost half of the population of a city whose average income is one third below the national average.
“What is sacred to my community is that people have a job and a home,” said Besich, the mayor.
The mine would increase state, local and federal coffers by $ 280 million annually and add $ 1 billion to the state’s economy, the Arizona governor said.
Besich pushed back when studies showed that Rio would pay the city only $ 350,000 a year in taxes, well below the $ 1 million it would need annually for increased policing, firefighting and road maintenance.
Rio agreed to pay more to the city, guarantee the Superior’s water supply, and donate $ 1.2 million to the school district. Superintendent Steve Estatico said that without Rio’s support, schools in the district – where enrollment has dropped 13 percent since 2016 – could close.
“Rio has had to find out in recent years that it cannot take host communities for granted,” Besich said.
STOLEN NEGOTIATIONS
The San Carlos Apache – one of the first Native American tribes to approve Biden’s presidential bid – did not negotiate with Rio because its tribal council favors direct talks with the US government, said President Terry Rambler.
Rio’s chief of staff, Bold Baatar, said he hopes to negotiate directly with the tribe when he visits Arizona as early as June, once pandemic restrictions allow.
“We listen to everyone’s concerns,” Baatar told Reuters. “There will be no mine until we make the maximum effort to seek consent.”
Not all local Native Americans oppose the mine. Some members of the White Mountain Apache tribe, whose reservation is just north of the San Carlos Apache, say they do not consider camping a sacred place.
“The belief that the site is religious is news to me,” said Alvena Bush, a White Mountain Apache adviser who supports the project.
WATER WORKS
Rio dug a mine pit nearly 7,000 feet (2 km) underground on the land it owns near the campsite. The bottom of the tree has become a deployment ground for future mining operations.
The miner drains water from the nearby copper deposit to facilitate extraction. More than 600 gallons of water are pumped every minute to surface treatment plants for use in local agriculture.
Rio intends to mine copper using a technique known as block speleology. This involves sculpting a cave from a large section of rock, which then collapses under the weight of the rock above, creating a crater 2 miles (3 km) wide and 1,000 (304 m) deep.
This method would damage the aquifers that supply two local springs, according to an environmental study by the US Forest Service. The entire mine would reduce the available groundwater in the area, which has been in a drought since the late 1990s, the report said.
“This land will be worthless if there is no water to go with it,” said Henry Munoz, who leads a group of retired senior miners who oppose the project.
Biden is expected to decide later this spring whether to give Rio the land for the mine. Lewis, the owner of the hardware store, hopes that his situation will be considered among all competing interests.
“If I had one thing to say to President Biden, it would be, ‘Let the mine open,'” he said.
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